The side of a building on 125th Street and Broadway has become a focal point of AIDS awareness in Harlem. Until March, two huge billboards on the building combined to declare, “We’re not taking it lying down!” – the tagline of an ad campaign by The Women’s Institute at Gay Men’s Health Crisis. The posters were replaced by twin ads for the “HIV stops with me” effort sponsored by the state and city health departments.

The messages and their prime Harlem placement come at a time when African-American women are the group with the highest rate of HIV infection in the city – and the nation.

With food and energy prices rising faster than dough in a brick oven, virtually everything that goes into making and serving a slice has gotten more expensive, New York pizza makers complain.

From flour to boxes, overhead costs for pizzerias have rocketed, prompting some on Manhattan’s East Side to commiserate with the competition and talk about how much to charge for a slice.

“It’s very hard, very hard to stay in this kind of business,” said Nicola Camaj, co-owner for 20-plus years of Adriatric Restaurant on 19th St. and First Ave.

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The South Street Seaport Museum in Lower Manhattan wants to reduce its fleet by one ship. The museum is looking to shed itself of the 2,800-ton Peking, the largest vessel in its flotilla, citing a lack of resources to maintain the aging vessel.

Off the last stop on the No. 2 train, nestled between the noisy trainyards and quiet residential blocks, Bissel Gardens invites the young and the old to come get their hands dirty.

Vegetables planted in the spring are picked off the vine by neighbors in the fall, saplings nurtured there are sent to parks around the city, and children learn and play in a butterfly garden.

The 14-year-old Wakefield oasis aims to make the Bronx greener while bringing the community closer together.

Actor Gbenga Akinnagbe is reaching for new artistic heights after completing his role as assassin Chris Partlow in HBO’s acclaimed drama “The Wire.”

But life for him wasn’t always pleasant.

As he starred in the recent Off-Broadway show, “Lower Ninth,” Akinnagbe talked about his life before and after “The Wire.”

The city is giving the concrete jungle a makeover: Some 1,000,000 trees are slated to be planted across the five boroughs over the next nine years.

Officials say the Million Tree NYC campaign will boost the number of trees in the city by 20%. The city has raised some $600 million in seed money to fund the greening effort.

Residents along Pennsylvania Ave. in East New York have long contended with speeding vehicles and damage to parked cars that lose sideview mirrors, thanks to reckless drivers.

Now the city wants to reduce parking on the strip. But that’s infuriated local car owners who have proposed their own solution: adding bike lanes.

Cheslea residents are fighting to landmark a townhouse that newly discovered evidence indicates may have been a stop on the Underground Railroad.

The W. 29th Street home was once owned by Abigail and James Gibbons, two prominent 19th Century abolitionists with ties to Harriet Tubman’s famed escape route for slaves.

Construction on a penthouse addition to the building has been ordered stopped by the city as the Landmarks Preservation Commission considers whether to declare the townhouse a landmark.

For months, Christopher Zambakari has watched online as the U.S. dollar’s value declined – especially its relation to the Ugandan shilling.

A 22-year-old foreign student living in Manhattan, Zambakari and his mother regularly wire money to Uganda to support 15 relatives there.

And while his classmates at the European School of Economics in Midtown rejoice at the strength of the Euro or the British pound, the dollar’s weakness means trouble for the MBA student’s family in Africa.

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In January 2006, Medicare Part D went into effect, subsidizing the cost of prescription drugs for the elderly.

The federal government touts the program as an effective way to offer senior citizens choice and flexibility. But many seniors, including those at the Elmhurst-Jackson Heights Senior Center, say that Part D has left them confused and frustrated.