(Please also see Aaron Dykes and Luke Rudkowski's response: The NY Post's 'Obscene' Gesture to 9/11 Truth. - rep.)

PURE OBSCENITY: Lunatics take over Ground Zero

By STEVE CUOZZO

January 23, 2008 -- IF conditions on the streets and sidewalks around Ground Zero re flect the state of things inside the hole, we're in for a miserable result when the site is finally rebuilt.

I'll look at what's gone wrong inside the pit in the coming weeks. But for now, consider the sickening conditions the PA and City Hall let fester all around the perimeter of the 16-acre "sacred ground."

Ground Zero's borders deserve a patina of dignity for anyone wishing to recall the World Trade Center that was, to mourn the victims of 9/11 or to contemplate the site's future.

It's bad enough the view remains bracketed by the blackened hulks of 130 Liberty St. and Fiterman Hall. But at least there's a theoretical, contamination-related excuse for the eyesores' continued presence.

But not the flimsiest justification exists for the rowdy, open-air bazaar of illegal junk-peddlers and in-your-face conspiracy-mongers along Church, Vesey and Liberty streets - an indefensible rupture of civic order in a city that's managed to shut down squeegee men and three-card-monte games.

No one can object to the First Amendment right to display or sell 9/11-con- spiracy nonsense (or plain junk). But that doesn't absolve the city and the PA of enforcing their own rules - and making sure visitors can watch what's going on without being hassled as if they're in a Third World flea market.

The conditions have long dismayed Downtown residents, businesses and commuters - yet neither the city nor the PA has responded to their complaints except sporadically.

The sale items affront the memory of those murdered on 9/11 and their loved ones - including ghoulish "Day of Tragedy" booklets, "designer" sunglasses, plastic Twin Towers and "official" FDNY and NYPD uniforms and caps.

A few Saturdays ago, conspiracy-mongers with bullhorns used a Church Street excavation barricade to hang posters claiming 9/11 was an "inside job" and the "so-called hijackers remain alive." (Whether the barricade belongs to the PA, the MTA or the city is unknown; as at many nearby digs, no sign indicates who's responsible.)

There was a brief respite on Jan. 12 and 13: An NYPD special unit swooped in and even made a few arrests. But less than 24 hours later, on Jan. 14, I bought two "souvenir" photo booklets of burning towers for $10 right in front of the PATH entrance - and within 20 feet of PA Police patrol car No. 52450, which sat empty.

The circus was back in force last weekend. On Saturday, demonstrators hung a giant "Do Something Because the Government Won't" sign on the cyclone fence around the pit. When PA cops ordered them to take it down, they simply re-hung it on the Church Street barricade - which was again festooned with loony conspiracy posters.

I asked the PA officers if it wasn't illegal to use the street barricade - a piece of public property - to hang posters. "That's the city's," one of them said. "We can't get involved." But there was no city cop in sight.

Sidewalk-use regulations around Ground Zero are a mess of contradictions and confused jurisdictions. Section 20-465 of the city Administrative Code states:

"No general vendor shall vend on any street which is in the area including and bounded on the east by the easterly side of Broadway, on the south by the southerly side of Liberty Street, on the west by the westerly side of West Street and on the north by the northerly side of Vesey Street."

But the city makes an exception for "First-Amendment" sales, meaning printed matter can be hawked so long as a vendor carries it without using a table or a stand.

Yet a PA sign on the Ground Zero fence behind the PATH entrance forbids even that, banning the sale of printed materials within 25 feet of the fence. But the agency most often winks: The area right in front of the fence is swarmed with creeps peddling crude maps and offering bogus "tours."

As on so much else, the city and the PA are disinclined to talk to one another on these issues - making it a cinch for sleazeball merchants to move from one territory to the other. If the NYPD shows up, the PA cops are absent; if PA cops appear, the NYPD is MIA.

Most days, a sleepy-looking fellow mans the LMDC's perfunctory information booth under the PATH station canopy. But few approach to ask questions.

It isn't necessary: The sidewalks tell the tale of government's attitude at Ground Zero - indifference bordering on contempt.

scuozzo@nypost.com