What's Poisoning the Air at Madison Square Garden?

When's a good time to clean your building of asbestos? More like when isn't it a good time to clean out your building of asbestos? Unless the basketball season just started and you're the New York Knicks, in which case, what could possibly go wrong?

Everything.

• An air-quality detector goes off.
• They shut down the Garden and cancel the Knicks game last night.
• They look for asbestos.
• And then they find out that asbestos isn't't what set off the air quality detectors.
• And now, via CBS-2 New York, there is no word on when it's going to reopen, but via the Daily News, there's also no word on Friday's game being moved anywhere else:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Wednesday that even though there was no health risk, the arena's operators deserve credit for putting fan safety first. A spokeswoman for Madison Square Garden declined to comment on the timetable for a return to normal operations.

Thanks, Mayor Bloomberg, as the guy who thinks term limits are healthy for him and nobody else and who has pursued the violent reign of salt in New York City as a greater threat than a massively corrupt police force. Anyway, something is literally in the air at Madison Square Garden and they're not reopening until they find out what it is. At some point, there should probably rule out the stenches that are Amare Stoudemire's experiments with Gefilte Fish, the exploded brain material of New York City hipsters who witnessed DAFT PUNK PLAY WITH PHOENIX OMG, and the smell of the Knicks' season going down the drain pre-yearly drain-cleaner, but until then, the noxious scents of the now-ironically named Garden will keep it closed. Somewhere, someone with courtside seats is pretending to be upset about this.

[fkamer@villagevoice.com]