It’s also home to youth and adult ice hockey leagues, and public and figure skating programs for all ages and skill levels.

Children at the rink told NY1 that they enjoy the specialized coaching.

“My coach, he’s very nice. He works very well with all of his students. Like if one person needs help he’ll really work with that person.”

For information on hours and prices, visit cityicepavilion.com.

A State DOH spokeswoman said officials credit the state’s cigarette tax hike last year for the drop, as well as laws against indoor smoking and campaigns to stop smoking.

There are even fewer smokers here in the city. According to the city’s Health Department, 15 percent of New Yorkers reported smoking in 2008.

A survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says nationwide roughly 21 percent of Americans currently smoke. That is a slight increase from 19.8 percent the year before.

The obvious choice for many is retail. Between 24 hour sales and higher customer traffic, plenty of retail stores need people who can help customers, manage cash registers and manage stock.

Experts say if you are serious about working, file an online application. Most stores have websites set up that will guide you through the process. Start online but end at the store location. Put in a physical application too. They may be considering thousands, so you want to be the one to stand out. Look sharp and make an impression.

If you are near a mall, visit other stores and ask the clerks about job info.

Of course, the season creates plenty of work for stock workers, sorters, drivers and delivery people. There will be literally thousands of openings for these jobs.

You can bet plenty of service workers, i.e. bartenders, will have a chance to pick up a healthy tip at holiday parties.

If you are looking beyond a temp job into a career move, employment specialist and executive recruiter Kimberly Bishop says you should not limit yourself to retail and delivery jobs.

“Some companies will have seasonal needs because their current staff is taking time off over the holidays,” Bishop said. “So this can really give job seekers an opportunity to reach out to different companies that they have an interest in and really volunteer and put out there that they’d be willing to come in and do some things over the holidays.”

Bishop says these opportunities could appear at ad agencies, studios, practically any place professionals take time off for the holidays.

“It does a couple of things. One, is you might land someone a job. The other thing that it does is give the job seeker the opportunity to reach out to some prospective employers and get back on their radar screen,” Bishop said.

Bishop says the best way to find these positions is through solid networking and making the rounds at some temp agencies. She adds you should make sure you are reachable at a moments notice and to be prepared to work some undesirable hours.

When you reach out for these types of employment opportunities, stress your willingness to work vacation relief on any shift they might have.

Fire officials say two people died in the house and one later died at Elmhurst Hospital.

The Uniformed Firefighters Association says precious response time was lost when firefighters were sent to the wrong address.

Under the new Unified Call Taker system, 911 operators dispatch firefighters directly instead of first transferring calls to the Fire Department.

In this case, fire officials say a dispatcher entered the wrong address by mistake, sending one unit down the street and delaying it about 40 seconds.

The UFA says errors are common with the new call system and even small delays can cost lives.

“Had we been on the time, we can’t swear we would have saved all lives, however, we didn’t have the opportunity to. A couple minutes or more was lost in time, which allowed this fire to create more heat, more smoke, which unfortunately may have led to the death of three people,” said Leroy McGinnis of the UFA.

Investigators believe the fire was caused by a boiler that exploded.

The buildings department says the two family home had been illegally converted into a five-family home, and issued three violations and a vacate order.

Brigitte Harris, 29, will serve at least five years and as many as 15 years in prison.

Harris claimed she was acting out of rage following years of sexual and physical abuse when she strangled and castrated her father, Eric Goodridge, inside her Queens apartment in July of 2007.

She has 30 days to appeal the sentencing.

For that dubious distinction, the Straphangers Campaign and Transit Advocates gave the snail-like crosstown bus the 2009 Pokey Award, for being the city’s slowest bus route.

“When it’s really cold, waiting for this bus, forget it,” said a rider.

Staff riding the M42 at noon on a weekday clocked it at a sluggish 3.7 mph.

“The crosstown buses are plagued by two things,” said Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign. “One, many customers. People get on and off, the time to put your card in, that’s called ‘dwell time’ and it takes a long time. And those streets are just congested, there’s a ton of traffic on them already.”

Regular riders were not surprised.

“Anytime there’s building and congestion and everything else, it’s a perfect storm out here,” said one commuter.

As they do every year, the slowest bus routes in each of the other boroughs garnered honorable mention.

• The B63 between Fort Hamilton and Cobble Hill in Brooklyn was clocked at 5.1 mph.

• The Bx19, which runs between the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx and Harlem, only goes 4.9 mph.

• The Q56, which trails between Jamaica, Queens and East New York, Brooklyn, goes 6.3 mph.

• The S42, which ambles between New Brighton and the St. George Ferry Terminal on Staten Island, only goes 10.6 mph.

A new award, called the “Trekkie,” premiered this year for the city bus route with the longest scheduled running time.

This year’s winner, the M4 running between Penn Station and Fort Tryon in Manhattan, takes an hour and 50 minutes to ride the entire route.

The Straphangers Campaign also handed out the Schleppie Award, given to the city’s least reliable bus route. This year, the B44, running on Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn, received the deplorable distinction.

Reacting to this year’s Pokey awards, Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials said they are working to improve bus speed and reliability. They also said there are plans in the works for new payment methods, stricter enforcement of bus lanes and a system that will let riders know when their bus is coming.

Songwriter and producer M.E. Morganteen is donating her ponytail. Andrew DiSimone, the owner of Face Station hair salon is cutting it. The duo are behind Donate Your Ponytail — a month-long drive where people can do just that by getting a free haircut. The hair is then used to make free wigs for children with cancer.

“As they are going through their treatment, the human hair wig just allows them to stay a kid while they are going through all of that,” Morganteen said.

Morganteen and DiSimone met six months ago. Both have family members who have had cancer. The two were inspired to start Donate Your Ponytail after they met a child who had lost all her hair. Her only wish was to be able to swim with a wig at summer camp. Morganteen and DiSimone gave her one that she could wear in the water.

“You put a wig on someone’s head you restore their dignity, it’s incredible,” DiSimone said.

DiSimone volunteers once a week at the American Cancer Society and styles people’s wigs for free. Morganteen was inspired and asked her musician friends to donate their music to raise money for ACS. One hundred percent of the money raised through downloads of those songs goes to the cancer society’s free wig program.

“He told me beautiful and I was thinking he was talking about the wig, but he was talking about me, he said you and the wig too,” said cancer survivor Rocio Vargas Quintanilla.

On her second day of chemo treatment last year, Vargas Quintanilla lost her hair. ACS provided her with a free wig and DiSimone provided the styling for free.

“To have a professional here that does that and not only feels good about themselves to let them know its okay to feel the way you are feeling but we are going to make you feel better,” said David Pulli of the American Cancer Society.

There are currently eight salons participating in Donate Your Ponytail. DiSimone says it takes six to seven ponytails to make a wig. So far, they have given four free wigs to children.

Morganteen says many of the salons participating in the program have agreed to provide the free service for the next year.

“I hope they get the feeling that they are a part of something bigger than they could ever imagine,” DiSimone said.

For striking a cord with cancer patients of all ages and giving them a brand new do, M.E. Morganteen and Andrew DiSimone are NY1′s New Yorkers of the Week.

Officials say the fire started around 3 a.m. on the fifth floor of a housing complex at 71st Avenue and 156st Street in Kew Gardens Hills.

It took more than a hundred firefighters and an hour to contain the flames.

Four people were hospitalized with serious injuries and four firefighters suffered minor injuries.

The Red Cross is also helping a displaced family find housing.

The cause of the fire is under investigation, but fire officials believe it was an accident.

Three people are charged with exploiting the glitch in the machine to get $800,000 worth of rail tickets.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority this morning confirmed that hundreds of others may have unknowingly received free tickets because of the same software problem.

The Long Island Rail Road says a check of its records since 2004 shows nearly a thousand transactions totaling $74,000 that appear to also be related to the error. Metro-North says it hasn’t done a check that far back, but did find nearly $3,000 in sales earlier this year in which the customer was not charged.

An LIRR spokesman told the New York Times the glitch has since been fixed.

The railroad plans to seek restitution from the three people charged in the scam, and possibly the vending machine provider.

Thirty-one City Council members have sent a letter to Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden threatening to block the Willets Point plan unless the city guarantees not to use eminent domain to obtain land.

Willets Point is the industrial area behind Shea Stadium and the soon-to-be completed Citi Field.

The lawmakers are threatening to kill the plan, unless the city agrees that it will acquire the land through negotiation – rather than forcing landowners to sell by declaring eminent domain.

The council members are also calling for the addition of more affordable housing, a benefits package for the neighborhood, and a relocation plan for several hundred businesses.

The Planning Commission is holding a hearing on the plan this morning at the NYU School of Law.

Proposals to develop Hunters Point in Queens and The Lower East Side and East Village are also on the agenda.

Critics have complained the city is trying to rush through approvals on the projects, by addressing all of them in the same hearing. However, a spokesman for the Planning Commission says officials will not move from one hearing to another until everyone has spoken.