Part Two Best Curious Boutique Tracy ...

Part Two Best Curious Boutique Tracy Feith 209 Mulberry St. (Spring St.) 334-3097 Carnaby Street Updated. Sexy slips in swell colors and paisley patterns. Dresses that make any woman look like a beautiful ballerina. Nice jewelry selection: very delicate and not too expensive. There are some men's shirts at Tracy Feith, but only for the most bold. We love our almost see-through orange paisley print blouse.

Best Calendar Mütter Museum 2000 Boning Up. Back in time for the Big One after a few years' hiatus, this calendar celebrates the famous anatomical collection at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Our friend Laura Lindgren, the book designer, makes this amazing thing happen as a labor of considerable love?she's kind of obsessed with all this anatomical skeletons-and-fetuses stuff, and it pays off in this gorgeously printed, most intelligently art-directed work. Photographers Joel-Peter Witkin, Rosamond Purcell, Olivia Parker, Arne Svenson, Max Aguilera-Hellweg and Scott Lindgren highlight various aspects of the Mütter collection, and different "moods" as well. There's a haughty-looking fetal skeleton, an otherwordly flayed corpse showing the filigreed infrastructure of preserved veins and arteries, a cat's brain in a jar, a wax-museumish sculpture of a severed head.

Beautiful, strange, dignified and unlike any other calendar you've seen. It's $14.95 at St. Marks Books, Tower, Evolution on Spring St., Shakespeare, ICP?and in the 18th St. Barnes & Noble, where the sissy nimrods have sort of hidden it among the medical books instead of putting it with the other calendars.

Best Beanie Baby Selection Balloon Saloon 133 W. Broadway (Duane St.) 227-3838 Open the Wallet, Dad. We can only hope that Ty Warner is really going to retire his line of Beanie Babies on Dec. 31 and spend time in the sauna of The Four Seasons hotel that he bought recently off his earnings. If he launches a marketing campaign for Beanie Toddlers, we're going to be one very pissed-off pop. Anyway, Balloon Saloon is a cool store in Tribeca that has a boatload of the criminally priced BBs and plastic cases to contain them. We think that the owners know it's all a Ty scam too, but they're not complaining.

Balloon Saloon, if you live downtown, is also the place to go for birthday parties: not only do they sell monster, tiger, bear, zebra and mylar balloons, but also plenty of stuff for the goodie bags that are inevitably handed out when a shindig is wrapping up. Key chains, fake poop, hand-buzzers, goofy glasses and other novelties.

Best Secondhand Hi-Fi Equipment The Bargain Stop 195 7th Ave. (betw. 21st & 22nd Sts.) 463-9740 Boom Boxes. It was probably our father's fault that we became interested in high-end audio equipment. Growing up, we didn't have Sony or Sanyo in the house. We had a Bang & Olufsen turntable. (With a diamond cartridge. The diamond cartridge part was drilled into our impressionable brain.) And a MacIntosh tube amplifier; a Teac reel-to-reel tape that we used to create our own version of Walter Cronkite's nightly news broadcast; and a rotating cast of speakers that came in the size of either a pocketbook or a pygmy, but never a height in between. When we weren't listening to a shortwave radio broadcast (usually BBC), we were listening to a record of chamber music or a reel-to-reel of a family friend's most recent recording session. More often than not, these sessions involved some combination of an oboist, a harpsichordist, a flautist, a violinist and occasionally a French horn player. Famous musicians with bad rhythm were the butts of jokes in our house, as were interpretive geniuses who always played wrong notes. And we dissected all this great music via the clarity that our "hi-fi" granted us.

In college, we sunk to pedestrian levels and covered up the cheap Aiwa component system whenever Dad visited. We slowly, very slowly, converted Dad from vinyl to compact disc, although it was only a matter of time before he returned to the warm analog of the former. So when we finally earned enough to throw out the embarrassing plastic hunk that masqueraded as our stereo system, we were so thankful to find a store like the Bargain Stop. Dad would be proud. Our first purchase was an Onkyo computer-controlled amplifier with no fewer than nine ports on its rear including two VCR ins, a phono in, two tape ins, a CD in and the all-purpose-auxiliary in. Fingering it in the shop, we imagined wiring up a whole studio's worth to its snazzy, big-volume-dialed front. To keep the sassy Onkyo company, we bought a Bose subwoofer system, with a pair of positionable cube speakers and a powerful bass bottom. The grand total: around $500.

Naturally we bargained the Bargain Stop's friendly Grenadian owner, Jassie, down a few hundred. He seemed pleased that a young thing like us knew so much about high-end equipment. We returned a few weeks later for a steal: $100 for an Onkyo dual-cassette player. Our mini-studio was materializing in front of our eyes. The only price we paid was the destruction of a once-peaceful relationship with our neighbors and landlord. We'd never had a Bose in a small apartment, see, and just didn't know how thick the bass was. It didn't matter. With this equipment in hand, we were connoisseurs, musicians almost.

Best Travel Agent Kadesh Travel 908-754-4449 KADESHTRVL@AOL.COM Just Get on the Phone. There was a time, in a less complicated world, when people making travel arrangements relied on the friendly agency down the street. While it can be pleasant to do business in person, maybe become friends with the one or two people who owned the shop, often they didn't know squat about discount airfare rates, hotels in Lisbon or economic skiing or mountain-climbing packages. That's why we ditched our own local agency and switched to Kadesh Travel. So what if their office is in New Jersey; everything's done by phone anyway. And Marv Kadesh is one of the most knowledgeable men in the industry.

Whether your dream vacation is a luxurious tour of Japan or a no-frills backpacking expedition in Costa Rica, Kadesh will find the most appropriate itinerary. And unlike most travel agents, Kadesh and his staff have actually traveled all over the world, so they lend their personal experiences to your plans. If you need to schedule a business conference at Hilton Head, weekend getaway or monthlong cruise in the Greek Islands, Kadesh Travel is armed with all the facts, rates and hotel and dining suggestions. Don't be a boob and let his North Jersey location put you off: one trip orchestrated by Kadesh Travel and you'll be a repeat customer.

Best Hair Stylist Dave Hickey at Glow Salon 36 E. 23 St. (betw. Park & Madison Aves.) 228-1822 Not-So-Blue Glow. We've all suffered our share of psychic brutality when it comes haircuts?a crummy clipjob is a hell of a burden to bear. Our own mother?stalking us with a pair of dull kitchen scissors?was afflicted with performance anxiety so crippling and acute that we got smart quick, and started getting our Dorothy Hamills chopped into our shaggy heads at John Dellaria by the time we'd reached the tender age of eight.

By our early 20s, though, we were at once far too old for bowl-cuts and far too poor for the sort of lush tonsorial treatment to which our mother used to treat us. So we were forced to throw common sense out the back window and gamble our heads at Astor Place or Jean-Louis David. We were always as sorry afterwards as you'd expect.

Which brings us to our more financially solvent later adulthood, and to Dave Hickey. It's been years now since we first submitted ourselves to Hickey's shears; and so years since we discovered that what we'd always considered a jittery hassle of an experience?a trip to the salon, that is?could actually amount to an hour's bliss in a chair. We've followed Dave around over the years: He used to work out of an Ave. D tenement; then he logged some time at Red Salon. Now he's at Glow, a boutique he cofounded last November. Hickey's an expert colorist. And while it sounds trite to say this, you should believe us, because we've learned over the course of years of traumatic comparative experience: He's unsurpassed in his gift for the deceptively simple business of cutting hair, which is a craft of no less integrity than any other.

During our consultation, Hickey listens patiently as we describe what we want our hair to do for us; offers his advice; talks us through what's going to happen and keeps our expectations realistic. In other words, you feel comfortable with the man. You trust him.

And just setting foot in Glow Salon is rejuvenating in itself. The tucked-away wedge-shaped penthouse garret is illuminated by a huge skylight; there are wonderful amber Lucite barber chairs, a variety of mod furnishings and a generally relaxed ambience that's stylish, even while it manages to stay on this side of pretension and fashion-culture self-indulgence.

Best Wine Shop Crossroads 55 W. 14th St. (6th Ave.) 924-3060 It Never Comes Up Dry. To be perfectly honest, Crossroads took us a little getting used to. It's?famously enough among the oenoscenti?a rinky-dink, rattletrap, thoroughly charmless space. Cheesy faux-brick arches evoke a time decades ago when the idea that wine shops ought to resemble wine cellars was the central design trope. Every available cubic foot of space is crammed with hooch: bottles, boxes, cases. They threaten the ceiling and trouble the floor. As has been widely noted, the aisles are wide enough to accommodate exactly one ectomorphic Frenchman at a time. The cooler garishly floods the store with a cold fluorescent glow and shelves are sometimes partially obscured. One enters through a tall corridor of cardboard.

The operative analogy is, obviously, the old-fashioned New York bookstore, where a disheveled density of fragrant pulp is far more important?and ethical?than a fussy arrangement of wares. It's the task of the customer to seek out hidden delights, treasures or favorites. Even the location?at the western terminus of 14th St.'s cut-rate retail thoroughfare, a stone's throw from one of Manhattan's seediest intersections?speaks of a down-at-the-heels commitment to the serious consumption of wine, as opposed to debating the esthetic merits of the labels or worrying about how prominently to display that hotshot bestselling merlot.

Nothing is displayed prominently at Crossroads. The sign is a lurid, plasticky yellow. The window display seems always to be celebrating a neglected holiday observed mainly by hobnail sad sacks who tote Strand bags from grim environ to bleak rendezvous. The staff is uniformly?refreshingly?middle-aged. And despite our initial misgivings, after our first few visits we began to warm up to the place, and furthermore noticed that Crossroads understands a fundamental urge of the wine flâneur: browsing. This completed the wine-store-as-bookstore motif rather elegantly. Pit such a throwback democratic attitude against the wine store as Banana Republic successfully pioneered uptown by Best Cellars, or the wine store as snooty temple (Sherry-Lehmann); independent municipality prepared to survive the Apocalypse, complete with private catacomb/fallout shelter (the vast Chelsea Wine Vault complex); perfectly tailored tastemaker (Acker Merrall & Condit); overlit micro-warehouse (Garnet); or gentrified playground (Union Square); and it's not hard to deduce why Crossroads is where all truly devoted winos eventually surrender their loyalties.

All those other places are fine, great, accomplished. But Crossroads is about very little besides booze, and we can envision respecting that stance for years to come. Besides, every imaginable type of customer is going to find what he or she is looking for when they duck into the shop. Gallons of jug wine. Several feet of pinot noir. A definitive array of California chardonnay. Astonishing surprises, like the $140 bottle of '69 Mondavi cabernet sauvignon, tucked in behind more recent cab vintages, that we spotted by virtue of pure dogged luck. German gin. (Every heard of "First Bismarck"? Neither had we.) A variety of different ryes, for the Manhattan mixologist who must cleave to the traditional recipe. A merlot lineup ranging from a $7 dollar Pepperwood Grove to a $45 Forman "Estate Bottled." Heaps of California's latest rages?wines that haven't yet, and might never, enter the mainstream: sangiovese, petite syrah (including a '97 Ravenswood that, at $17, is probably one of the best buys in the store), some esoteric blends. A daunting collection of Southern Hemisphere wines. Barolo and barbaresco galore. One of the best riesling selections in the Lower 48. A refusal to skimp on Bordeaux or Burgundy, and a lovely little colonnade of rosé, placed up high. And then our personal slice of Elysium: the dessert wines, tidily massed in a concentrated display near the front that mimics the sweet, dense nature of the libations themselves. How about an absolutely superb '96 J. Fritz late-harvest zinfandel? Three options for Hungarian Tokaji Aszu ($30-$40). Muscat, muscat, muscat. A '97 Voss botrytis sauvignon blanc ($22).

We could easily knock off several hours in Crossroads, and rarely feel compelled to buy anything. And after every visit, the same thought occurs to us: One grenade would be more than enough to wreck, inconsolably, the life of every honest wine drinker in town.

Best Park Slope Pharmacy 7th Avenue Pharmacy 274 7th Ave. (6th St.) 718-788-3218 Drug Bust. When we first moved to the Slope, a little exploration revealed that most everything we needed was within walking distance. And, though there was a good handful of drugstores in the area, we chose 7th Avenue Pharmacy for convenience sake. We're glad we did.

It's a tiny place, with a small-town, mom & pop feel to it, but they stock everything we need?various pills and solutions and ointments. The owner was smart, kind and straightforward, and he took very good care of us?calling us at home when we forgot something in his store, keeping a careful eye on our prescriptions, staying open a little later if we had a last-minute need. We got the sense that he did the same for all of his customers.

As he took on more help, though, things began to slip a little. Some of these new employees just didn't come with the same sort of care and concern he did. Still, though, we figured it was the times, and kept bringing our business there, because we knew it was his place, and we wanted to give him our support.

That's why we panicked a bit two years ago or so when the monster Rite Aid opened up less than a block away from our little pharmacy. We figured he didn't have a chance?and we didn't want to have the robotic dullards at Rite Aid handling our drugs for us. We aren't one of those whiners who throw little hissy fits whenever we see any corporate encroachment in the neighborhood. Some of the encroachment has turned out to be worthwhile. But not this.

But then something happened, in that nothing happened.

7th Avenue Pharmacy stayed put, held its ground and continued, calmly, to dole out the same kind of quiet, personal care they always had, Rite Aid be damned. We were glad to see, for once, that our neighbors agreed with us, and weren't swayed by the flashing lights and the super-specials.

Best Car Service Allstate 333-3333 Look at All Them Threes! Despite what a certain prickly coworker thinks, it is possible to get excellent car service in Manhattan: Just pick up the phone and punch 3 until the speedy, efficient dispatcher picks up. If you're a regular, the whole arrangement can take five seconds. You give your phone number, they ask you where, when and how many bags, you tell them and hang up. About 15 minutes before your scheduled pick-up time, your door buzzer rings and Allstate's there. In our five years of using Allstate, they've been early every single time. Once they called to say they'd be five minutes late, and showed up early anyway.

The Allstate drivers know where they're going and are up on current traffic conditions, don't chew your ear off with mindless chatter and the cars are always clean and comfy. Our colleague can lug two weeks' worth of luggage to the corner, hail a cab to Grand Central, lug some more, wait for the bus, load up the luggage, then lug it some more at the airport. For us, it's always Allstate.

Best Place to Buy Bootleg Videos Lexington Ave. (betw. 58th & 59th Sts.) Nickel Bag. It's always a gamble with these illicit tapes. But the African traders on this stretch of Lexington Ave. who sell just-released movies on video are still worth patronizing. The boxes look like factory originals; it's inside where the gamble begins. The good news: You've got about a 50 percent chance of copping a watchable flick. You might get stuck with one in which people walk in front of the camera, but for five dollars, who's complaining? The Africans are vicious when it comes to giving back money. And since the whole thing is illegal, anyway...

The FBI's recent raid on that bunch of pirate tapers might put a big dent in this operation, but don't bet on it. These items just keep on coming. Close down the Africans, and the Russians will just take over. Squeeze the Russians, and you'll find Azerbaijanis moving in. Are these tapes going to make it into your permanent collection, next to your Citizen Kane? No chance. But they're still worth the piddling amount you'll pay for them.

Best Men's Clothing Paul Stuart Madison Ave. (45th St.) 682-0320 We Don't Know From Stylin'. Problem here. Paul Stuart gets some sort of award for its superlative men's clothing every year. It should. So, how does a "Best of" writer stretch the imagination to come up with copy that isn't similar to the last eight years? We're trying to figure that out right now, but know that it would be dishonest to snub the store just because it's won so many gold stars in the past. Sure, there are competitors: We like Sulka for their boxers and gorgeous ties, but their suits are just too Euro for our conservative self; Brioni is too damn expensive?we're talking $4000 for a casual spring jacket?and we imagine that noxious men like Mort Zuckerman might have their butler shop there for them. As for Brooks Bros., this once-grand temple of WASPdom, which sold quality threads, is downmarket, although it's great for blazers, ties and shirts for your kids.

We own about 35 Paul Stuart suits, piles of German-made slacks, even more cashmere cardigan and v-neck sweaters, two drawers full of calf-length socks and about 10 pairs of shoes. We're not crazy about the ties there, and for shirts we swear by London's Harvie & Hudson, but on some days we wear Paul Stuart from top to bottom. Go there for quality duds, and ask for David Rein, the most attentive and appreciative salesman we've ever met.

Best Incense Other Worldly Waxes & Whatever 131 E. 7th St. (betw. 1st Ave. & Ave. A) 260-9188 Smokin'. Whenever we come here, we feel like the witch we wanted to be when we were a little girl. At Halloween, we dressed in all black, but instead of feeling scary we felt powerful. Although the harsh realities of life have dulled our belief, we still come here for colored powder incenses that any Brunhilda would be proud to burn. At $5 for an ounce or $3 a half-ounce, Other Worldly's incenses have names such as Isis (green with silver glitter), Egyptian Temple Incense (used to make a "sacred space"), Goona Goona (burnt-umber-colored, and to foster trust and understanding), Irresistible (a vibrant red) and New Beginnings (deep purple colored and vaguely minty). The incenses burn on their own, but we like putting them on charcoal. We mix the incenses, creating our own little spells, sometimes really believing in them too. Besides, any visitors to your house will wonder what the hell you're up to with little baggies of odd colored powders, dried rosebuds and lavender flowers. Even if you're a pretend witch, maybe you can cause a little gossip amongst your friends, and if you can get them to think you've got special powers, then you're just about a spellcaster. Think about it.

Best Small Hotel on the Upper East Side The Franklin 164 E. 87th St. (betw. Lexington & 3rd Aves.) 369-1000 Franklin, Mint. We've put our mother in here a bunch of times, and for that kind of challenge?older, single woman traveling alone and in need of pleasantly urbane but perhaps not overly solicitous temporary digs?the Franklin can't be beat.

But how incongruous it is, tucked in the middle of a block that seems to have been zoned exclusively for parking garages. Brassy sign, neon lettering. Retro, to be sure, but that particular strain of retro we believe meshes nicely with the city: the retro of mellow-toned wood paneling, zinc bars, black-and-white silver gelatin prints, nickels and pennies and other forms of useless but esthetically appealing currency. The Franklin?a hotel that jangles in your pocket as reassuringly as loose change in small denominations. A hotel that captures your loyalty (and not just because of the marvelous automatic espresso/cappuccino machine, to which we beat a path whenever Mom invites us over for the complimentary breakfast).

The rooms are fairly small, but stylishly appointed. One of our favorites combines a full-length mirror with a sort of partition/closet, an idea that strikes as being an ideal solution for the closet-dearth of just about every studio apartment in town. Beds have gossamer canopies. Headboards are backlit. The decor seems designed to evoke that incontrovertibly classy Manhattan of the prewar episodes?chrome, glass, black lacquer?on a boutique scale, but minus the boutique prices (singles start at $235 per night; doubles at $255).

Looks to us as if the Euros really love the place. Come to think of it, we sort of love it, too. It's an intimate hotel we could easily talk ourselves into inhabiting full time.

Best Bookstore for Annoying HepCats Shakespeare & Co. 716 Broadway (Washington Pl.) 529-1330 Novel Idea. Despite the best efforts of the Internet and the predictions of various tech pundits, we still love browsing through bookstores. All kinds of bookstores?chains, independents, used, wherever we can find something we're looking for, or something we never knew existed.

Let's establish that first of all.

Let's also establish that we have, indeed, found things in Shakespeare & Co. that we've never found elsewhere. And we thank them for that.

But fact is, the prospect of setting foot in this place?whether they're the only place that carries what we're looking for or not?gives us the willies. Even more than Tower, even more than St. Marks Books, the staff and the general population found behind those glass doors?all those goatees, all those fashion statements, all those (archaic as they are) piercings and tattoos, all those cutesy-pie pop-cultural references bandied back and forth in a knowing, snotty way, make Shakespeare less a real bookstore than the Kim's of literature.

They have a very good and worthwhile film section?which, unfortunately, means the place is full of insufferable film students. They have all the latest and hippest gay literature, so they can maintain their p.c. credibility. And they have all that "transgressive" nonsense to assure their continued appeal to the rest of the students at NYU. Just don't try to talk to them about Joseph Conrad, or anything else (even though they may well carry it) that was written?or deals with anything that takes place?before 1986.

Best Food Website chowhound.com After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness? These foodie websites: vanity projects for yentas who want to launch into cyberspace every semiliterate impression of a restaurant their palates have generated since they sprang from their mother's womb, and began, somewhat like the infant Gargantua, to bellow, "FEED ME!" Which is really what this whole "foodie" movement of the last decade has really been about, isn't it? Upper-middle-class gluttons estheticizing, in order to justify their extravagances and compulsions.

Still, some food-related websites are useful indeed. Steven Shaw's New York Restaurant Review & Food Guide, for example , is a great resource, well-organized and offering smart, often contrarian?Shaw's not a real big fan of Chanterelle, for example?reviews of dozens of New York restaurants.

And then there's chowhound.com, Jim Leff's eccentric site. Leff used to write about food for NYPress a long time ago, and he now seems?if his website's any indication?to spend much of his time amassing a body of knowledge about lower-end New York eating?which is the type of eating we tend to do most often. Need a take on, say, Tribeca's Capsouto Freres, to stack up again Ruth Reichl's pan of the place? Fine. Look to Steven Shaw. But if you want to find the best and most soulful of mustached wetback taco-slingers manning a food cart at the edge of a semipro soccer field Saturday afternoons in Corona, then you'll want Leff's help. What a grasp of culinary marginalia this guy has. Interested in the quality of the cuisine at that world-renowned culinary institution Las Brasas ("a Spanish place on 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights," as the site explains)? Leff's your man. Visiting Rego Park in the near future? Load up Leff's site, and he'll hip you to Andre's bakery, an Hungarian establishment in that sturdy immigrant neighborhood that according to Leff purveys an extraordinary cheese danish. Leff's the culinary equivalent of that war-buff uncle of yours who can describe for you in mind-boggling detail what happened that day at Appomattox Courthouse. You don't need to hear from him all the time, but it's wonderful that he's around.

Best Kids' Presents Kidding Around 68 Bleecker St. (betw. Crosby St. & B'way) 598-0228 60 W. 15th St. (betw. 5th & 6th Aves.) 645-6337 Rx for Toys R Us. We've been fans of the Bleecker St. Kidding Around for ages. From their "Best of Manhattan"-award-winning puppets (armadillos, pigs, aliens, bisons, though the best is still the cockroach) to the lovely clothes (brightly colored Le Top plush velour sleepers, for example), they've never let us down when we're in the market for nonmainstream kids presents. Our four-year-old goddaughter was into fairy princesses last Christmas, and the satin-ribbon-and-flower festooned crown we sent made us number-one in her book. This year we might get her a whole costume from Kidding Around?they've got a big selection to choose from, including bee outfits and tutus and fireman and cowboy getups.

Star Wars figures are not sold here, but you will find the full line of Brio toddler toys; they're the clunky vehicles and structures meant for indelicate little hands. They've also got some of those wooden and plastic playthings?educational and safe as hell?from those companies with the Euro, slightly fascist names: Bilderlotto, Tolo, Lanna, Chicco, Schiebespielzeug. They're opposite the checkout area, where you'll find dozens and dozens of gewgaws and knickknacks like little girls' necklaces, finger puppets, keychains, yo-yos, stickers, rubber sea creatures and rolling eyeballs. Look to the right for beautiful wood or cardboard puzzles.

Kidding Around's east Chelsea outpost is considerably larger, a bit less charming, but with the same stock as Bleecker St., plus some edifying items: sets of "How Ants See" lenses for two bucks; "Slimey Chemistry" sets and Alien Slime Labs; starter archaeology kits where little Louis and Mary Leakeys can "Uncover the 'bones' of one of the earliest hominids"; and the Lamaze line of "Infant Development Systems" to form them right, right out of the gate.

The staffs at both locations are friendly, know their wares thoroughly and offer helpful gift-selecting suggestions. Plus, they wrap your gifts beautifully for free.

Best Novelty Store Jimsons Novelties 28 E. 18th St. (betw. B'way & Park Ave.) 477-3386 Whoo Ha Ha Ha! Need a whoopie cushion? How about a battery-operated remote control electronic fart noise generator? These guys even have a bubble machine consisting of a fat guy with his pants around his ankles blowing bubbles out his butt. It looks a little like Peter Vallone.

Plastic vomit, fake dogshit, bogus scratch-off lottery tickets (every one a winner), fish-flavored candy, candy that turns your mouth blue, you name it, they've got it at Jimsons Novelties. We've been into this stuff since we were six years old, and this is the best selection we've ever seen. These guys have things we've never seen before.

Best Gourmet Retail Ravioli The Ravioli Store 75 Sullivan St. (betw. Spring & Broome Sts.) 925-1737 www.raviolistore.com Chef Boyargee! Ravioli is one of those childhood favorites a taste for which has accompanied us into maturity. Of course, we now seek out the exotic in our pastas, which is why this little factory in Soho comes in so handy. All of their ravioli, gnocchi, cappelletti, tortellini and agnolotti are made in-house, assuring freshness you don't find in most specialty stores. The Ravioli Store uses egg-based pastas, naturally, but you'll also find shells flavored with saffron, atoli blue corn, squid ink, lime, parsley and black peppercorn.

And they stuff their little 1-by-2-inch masterpieces with a blend of ingredients that work in delectable harmony with each other. Some ravioli favorites? Wild mushroom and white truffles in saffron pasta, black beans and Monterey jack cheese in atoli blue corn pasta. More challenging? How about caviar and squid ink ravioli or smoked salmon pansoti?a triangle-shaped herb pasta stuffed with fresh and smoked salmon. It's designer stuff, to be sure, but reasonably priced. A dozen ravioli run between four and eight dollars, depending. There are plenty of sauces, tapenades and gourmet sides available here, and later this fall, the folks from out of town can get in on the act when the Ravioli Store starts selling their gourmet pastas online.

Best Futon Store to Avoid World of Futons 361 Broadway (Franklin St.) 274-1852 Rest on Pieces. When our girlfriend told us that she had just bought us a new futon, we were very happy. Over the past several years, we'd slept the one we had flat, and were left, essentially, sleeping most every night on the hard wooden slats of the frame. It was a bit too spartan, even for us.

After checking out a few other places, she'd stopped into World of Futons. It appeared respectable and well-established. It didn't seem like a place that would fuck over their customers?after all, if they fucked over their customers, how could they stay in business as long as they have?

A salesman showed her a series of different brands and models, and she chose a very nice and sturdy one. Paid for it, and arranged to have it delivered to our place.

The day of the delivery, we took off work to wait?as with all such things, the truck could pull up any time between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Our girlfriend came over to wait with us (as it turns out, she had to pay the delivery man when he arrived?she couldn't pay for that beforehand). So we waited. When he arrived, he dragged the futon out of the back of his truck, ran it up to the apartment, dropped it in the middle of the kitchen floor, grabbed his money and spilt.

Well okay, we figured, maybe he has a lot of deliveries to make and he's in a hurry.

But after we pushed and pulled the futon into the other room, ripped the plastic from it and flopped it onto the frame, it became clear that something was wrong. First, it didn't come with a cover, as was expected. Second, the stitching job along the seams was shoddy and loose and already coming apart in places. And finally, when our girlfriend unzipped the corner to check out the filling, she found that it wasn't the futon she'd ordered. In the showroom, she'd been shown cross sections of various styles, and chose one with two support layers of corrugated foam sheeting inside. The one we'd been given was just stuffed with, well, stuffing.

When she called World of Futons and got the salesman on the phone to see if maybe they'd delivered the wrong one by mistake, she was informed that no, they hadn't. When she told him that in that case the one they'd delivered was not the one she'd ordered and paid a good deal for, he told her that she was wrong.

Pardon? We're the ones with the futon right in front of us. She knew what she'd ordered and she knew that this wasn't it. And now the salesman was telling her that she's wrong? He then not only didn't offer to send a correct replacement model over or refund the extra money she'd paid for the nicer model, he became indignant, rude and accusatory as he lied through his rotting teeth.

In the end, we kept the futon, reluctantly, but we're still furious about the lousy treatment and cheap deceptions and the too-late-to-do-anything-about-it bait and switch techniques we found lurking behind the well-respected, stinking bastard walls of World of Fucking Futons.

Best Secondhand Suits Gentlemen's Resale Corp. 322 E. 81st St. (betw. 1st & 2nd Aves.) 734-2739 Beating Down the Dogs of Retail. Probably not the cheapest secondhand suit, but sometimes you want top drawer at cash-in-the-shoe prices. Gentlemen's Resale rarely disappoints, though like all consignment shops, it's sometimes necessary to make frequent visits because the stock constantly rotates. This can be a delight, however, since you might set off in search of a three-button charcoal pinstripe and, failing to snare that, become entranced by something more exotic. Which is another strength of this adeptly managed store (the staff is uniformly helpful, chatty and knowledgeable): conservative suits from Paul Stuart share the racks with fashion-forward kits from Boss, Paul Smith and Prada, among others. Prices range from around $100 to upward of $300-$400, depending on the provenance. The back room features a three-way mirror fast by the long racks of suits (all ranked by size), so you can sift along and try different makes and models on to your heart's content. Plus, once you decide on a suit, there are plentiful shirt, tie and shoe selections, as well as blazers, belts and outerwear. Quality is of the highest order, everything has to be dry-cleaned before the management will accept it, and with numerous sales during the year, we figure you have to be nuts to suffer retail with options as reassuring as this.