Madison Avenue

NEW YORK -- In the frosty, frantic rush-hour traffic at 42nd Street and Third Avenue, this guy's set up his permanent floating business operation, which is a card table full of jewelry and a sales pitch that pretends to glance over its shoulder."

NEW YORK -- A Maryland couple helping their daughter pick out a wedding gown at a swanky Madison Avenue boutique were seriously wounded yesterday by two bandits as the bride-to-be watched in horror.The bandits shot Edith Schaeffer, 47, of Potomac in the chest after she refused to give up her $60,000 diamond ring -- and then broke her finger as they ripped the ring from her hand.Her husband, Gerald, 48, was wounded twice in the torso after lunging to his wife's aid. The couple were in serious but stable condition last night after several hours of surgery.

Pauline Brooks, now 78, remembers joining the YWCA in the 1930s because "I was interested in doing some kind of work in the community with children.""I became more active after my daughter joined," Mrs. Brooks says. "Paula was in a dance group when she was 2."Paula Brooks, now 41, recalls the smallest details."I remember my first ballet class and my first tutu," she says. "It was a stiff pink. I was 3 or 4 and thrilled to be on the Madison Avenue stage."Now her daughters, Naeemah Leftwich, 9, and Sade Leftwich, 6, are building their own YWCA memories.

It would not be unusual to find 41-year-old designer Nicole Miller personally waiting on clients in her Madison Avenue Boutique.She likes to keep in touch with the public. She finds out which styles are in demand by frequenting the Manhattan nightclub scene."Her styles are always up-to-date," says Mary Carroll, owner of Panache of Greenspring Station, where a trunk show of Nicole Miller designs was presented Tuesday to benefit the Johns Hopkins Oncology Center.Ms. Carroll says the line is all style without the eccentricity.

Signs made in Laurel welcome All-Star guestsWhen visitors to Major League Baseball's All-Star FanFest at Festival Hall and the Baltimore Convention Center gaze upon the 20-by-20-foot Orioles' banners and other signs, they will be viewing the work of Madison Avenue Signs of Laurel.Owned by Steve Hall and Charles Wiemers, high school soccer teammates from Chicago who were recently reunited in this area, the company has been in business since January.This, however, is the firm's second "baseball job."

NEW YORK -- When America tunes in to the Super Bowl on Sunday, advertising executives will be watching as well -- for the commercials rather than the grunt-a-minute game.The football fest is also Madison Avenue's championship, with one multimillion-dollar creation trying to outdo the next. An audience 100 million strong makes the Super Bowl television's premier advertising event, one that can bring fame to Spuds McKenzie as well as to Broadway Joe Namath.Not only are reputations on the line, but the ads also are studied as a measure of the health of the $130 billion industry, which has suffered during the nationwide economic slump.

Church and neighborhood leaders from across Baltimore negotiated agreements with commanders of three police districts yesterday to make officers more involved with the communities they protect.The effort by Baltimoreans United In Leadership Development (BUILD) is designed to fight crime while creating relationships between police and law-abiding residents of neighborhoods plagued by drugs and violence."By the nature of their work, the people the cops see are the people they arrest," said one BUILD leader at a crowded meeting yesterday.

Lillie A. Ross, "the mother of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church," stood at the altar yesterday and sang one of her favorite hymns, "Discipleship and Service."Her 90-year-old voice was indistinguishable from the dozens of others rising from the pews before her."Come, labor on," they sang. "No time for rest, till glows the western sky. Till the long shadows o'er our pathway lie, and a glad sound comes with the setting sun. Well done. Well done. Amen."They came yesterday then to celebrate Miss Lillie -- and everyone calls her that -- and her labor in their church, in their schools, in their neighborhood, in their city.

NEW YORK -- It isn't the kind of bold message the advertising industry tends to favor, but there are some subtle signs that the industry's visit to purgatory might be ending.Philip Geier, chief executive of the vast Interpublic Group, which handles advertising for Coca Cola, General Motors, Unilever and RJR Nabisco, among other accounts, said yesterday that overall industry billings should expand about 5.8 percent this year after contracting about 1.5 percent last year during one of the worst slumps since World War II.Mr.

MOSCOW -- With communism on the outs and capitalism on the rise, Fyodor decided to switch careers last year.He quit the KGB and abandoned his aspirations to be a spy in the United States. Now he runs an advertising agency from a room in a dank, dark apartment building in Moscow.Advertising is the new career attracting ambitious Russians, luring college journalism graduates and former government workers with promises of easy money.But in a country that has the largest McDonald's restaurant in the world, you won't hear the strains of "You Deserve a Break Today."