Happy 2005! Now Here's What You Can't Do Anymore

Do you really love your pet emu, Blinky? Have the two of you been living happily together in that fifth-floor walk-up in Red Hook for the past seven years? Have you been a good citizen and filed all the proper papers with the city, letting them know about your and Blinky's relationship?

If not, you now have a choice to make. The two of you can pack up and move far, far away; you can donate Blinky to some crooked petting zoo someplace; you can flush her down the toilet, giving rise to all those future "albino emus in the sewers" legends; or you can just fire up the oven and have yourself a little feast. Emus are practically ostriches, you know, and ostriches are what the British lived on during that last big mad cow scare.

Yes, it's that time of year again. All those crazy laws you hear City Council's been passing over the course of the previous 12 months are finally going into effect. And thanks to good-hearted but unbalanced Antoine Yates and his Harlem menagerie, the rest of us are no longer allowed to keep tigers, lions, buffaloes, Komodo Dragons, wolverines, king cobras, rabid vampire bats, gila monsters, lemurs, proboscis monkeys, wildebeests, or even, yes, emus like Blinky.

Thanks a lot, Antoine!

(If you already own one of the above creatures-or several hundred others on the city's no-no list-and have filled out all the proper forms, you have nothing to worry about.)

There are a few other things New Yorkers need to steer clear of, too.

If you're one of the thousands of teen and pre-teen smokers in the city who counted on nicotine-laced water to get you through those long, boring school days, you're shit out of luck. Thanks to the mayor's (and the governor's continuing and pointless war on anything even vaguely related to tobacco, it's now illegal to sell nicotine water (we never even knew it existed until now. What'll they think of next?) to anyone under the age of 18.

Another law aimed at protecting the health and well-being of the youngsters states that skateboarders under the age of 14-like bicyclists and roller skaters before them-now have to wear helmets. It makes sense. We've seen those kids, and they're just not very coordinated. Those New Yorkers stupid and annoying enough to continue skateboarding beyond the age of 14 are pretty much on their own.

Witnesses in those boring civil cases can now phone or e-mail their testimony into court.

As of Jan. 1, the state minimum wage has gone up just enough for fast-food and department-store executives to bitch about, but not quite enough to actually live on.

And what's the deal with taking photos in the subway? Who knows? But if that's gone through, and if last week was any measure, a whole lotta tourists are going to be getting a special "insiders" tour of Riker's in the coming months.