Polishing Up the Big Apple : New York is <i> not</i> an urban nightmare, say those who love it. They hope the rest of the country will see the city at its best during the Democratic convention.

It’s one of those perfect nights in the Big Apple. The Metropolitan Opera is about to give a free performance of “La Boheme” in Central Park, and a soft June breeze ripples across the Great Lawn, where more than 70,000 people sit in blissful anticipation.

Only a politician could ruin this moment.

Stepping to the microphone for some remarks, Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger gestures at the beautiful scene and shouts: “Take that , Dan Quayle!” Greeted by weak laughter and applause, she says: “This is a side of New York that the vice president never sees! Let’s hear it for New York!”

Touchy, touchy, touchy.

But understandable. Last month Quayle cruised into town and announced that New York City--the big, bad symbol of everything wrong with America--was going to be a GOP campaign theme this year. He said it was fitting that Democrats had chosen New York for their convention, charging that liberals “feel a strange compulsion to return to the scene of the crime.”

Democratic politicians here dismissed Quayle’s attack as a cheap stunt, a mean-spirited corollary to his obsession with family values. But it also struck a nerve: New York bashing is back in vogue, and the long political season guarantees that the nation’s largest city will be an issue--especially with the convention beginning today and the spotlight on Gotham.

It’s happened before. New York’s fiscal woes were a national scandal in the 1970s, and the metropolis has since become a target in campaigns across the country, where candidates speak darkly of “the New York Experience.” These days, everyone from late-night comics to weekend tourists has it in for Fun City, and the horror stories never stop. Mention New York, and most people dwell on crime and congestion before they think of Shakespeare in the Park.

But that doesn’t stop local politicians from fighting back.

Hours after Quayle’s comments, New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, Mayor David N. Dinkins and a host of other boosters rushed to the city’s defense, saying the vice president had a lot of nerve criticizing New York when he and his boss, President Bush, have all but abandoned American cities.

Then it got personal. Challenging the veep to a game of one-on-one basketball, Cuomo taunted him: “If you want to come and make a fool of yourself, bring your jock and a pair of sneakers and let’s play ball.” He wondered who wrote “all those big, long phrases” for “Danny the Cabin Boy” and laughed at the man whom columnists have dubbed “The Trust-Fund Kid.” Firing back, Quayle called Cuomo “liberalism’s sensitive philosopher-king.”

Both men got mileage out of the war of words, but as 40,000 Democrats open their convention, the assault on New York is no laughing matter. In the aftermath of Quayle’s attacks, some local newspaper columnists who are normally the first to criticize the city’s problems got defensive.

“We do not have to pay attention to this weenie, folks,” wrote Newsday’s Gail Collins. “Quayle’s like a kid picking his nose,” added the New York Post’s Amy Pagnozzi. “Don’t pay attention. You only encourage him.”

Meanwhile, other defenders of New York cited a blizzard of statistics to show that the city and state don’t deserve their bad reputations. New Yorkers experience homelessness, drug abuse and urban decay more than most Americans, they said, but other states have problems, too:

Compared to New York, says Cuomo, California, Florida, Michigan and 12 other states have a higher proportion of people in state prisons. California and four other states have a larger percentage of people on welfare. Several states are more densely populated, and New York City produced more college scholarship winners this year than the entire state of Indiana, Quayle’s home.

The arguments go on: New York is an international center for education. The bustling port that once welcomed Italian, Irish and Jewish immigrants has become a fascinating mosaic of Asian-, Latin- and African-Americans. Where else can you get a hot dog for $1.25, park yourself by a tree and hear Puccini under the stars? Where else do the streets hum with such excitement?

But it’s an uphill battle. Even as the city mounts a major public relations campaign to spiff up its image, sponsors concede the difficulty of their task. It’s one thing to print bumper stickers reading “New York to Quayle: Get Lost,” as some have suggested, yet another to change long-held attitudes.

“We’re attempting to promote the positive side of New York, to reinforce good images of the city that often get overlooked,” says Henry Miller, who heads New York ‘92, a nonprofit municipal effort to put the city’s best foot forward. “But we certainly won’t be suggesting that we don’t have problems other areas have. This, after all, is urban America today.”

Miller says New York ’92 is encouraging Democratic delegates to visit boroughs outside of Manhattan and will emphasize the rich cultural diversity to be found in neighborhoods like Brighton Beach in Brooklyn and Flushing in Queens. There will be numerous tours offered, including a special insomniacs’ package that begins at 11:59 p.m. and features a late-night dinner.

A huge effort also will be made to influence the 15,000 journalists who are attending the convention. Opinion-makers from Peoria might convey a more positive picture of New York if they are shown upbeat images and glimpses of the city that most visitors never see, says Miller.

It also helps to stuff their faces. New York ’92 is sponsoring an immense block party for the media, shutting down 42nd Street and opening up nearby Bryant Park. There will be 60 food stations serving 12,000 Nathan’s hot dogs; 16,000 sodas; 24,000 beers; 2,000 orders of chicken fajitas ; 3,000 pieces of fried chicken; 2,000 hamburgers; 2,000 knishes and 20,000 tamales. The $300,000 cost comes from private contributors, and Miller says the event will go on rain or shine.

Yet some critics charge that New York is putting too much of a shine on the Apple, to the detriment of people who get a smaller bite every day.

Near Madison Square Garden, for example, the city has created a security zone to protect delegates and speed transportation in and out of the crowded mid-town district. In the process, hundreds of homeless men and women have moved from the area, scattering to different parts of the city.

“I think it’s a joke,” says Rocko, a homeless man who used to sleep on the streets near the Garden and is now living on the congested Upper West Side of Manhattan. “Do they really think TV cameras won’t find people living on the streets of New York, just a few blocks from the convention?”

If the homeless issue won’t go away, the frantic, unpredictable pace of daily life here is also playing havoc with boosters’ best-laid plans. While residents are proud that their community did not erupt in violence after the Rodney King verdicts, the city was shaken last week by riots over alleged police brutality in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan.

New York has also been rocked by new allegations of widespread police corruption, forcing Dinkins to appoint a blue-ribbon investigating commission. Commentators are speculating that the scandal could eventually rival the uproar sparked by Officer Frank Serpico’s revelations of police misconduct in the early 1970s.

Last month there were fears of yet another public relations disaster when a series of mysterious hotel fires broke out. A suspect was apprehended, but not before Dinkins worried aloud over the safety of convention delegates, and Messinger said the fires were “terrible for the image of New York.”

The image of New York. How do you pull the plug on a national joke that’s told and retold in the most unlikely places? Last month Deputy Mayor Norman Steisel complained in a letter to Universal Studios in Florida that the park’s graffiti-scarred Kongfrontation ride painted a negative and false image of the city. He won a quick apology from operators of the hugely popular attraction, in which a replica of the Roosevelt Island tramway over Manhattan is attacked by a giant gorilla.

About the same time, New Yorker Gary Kerzner complained in a letter to New York Newsday that he’d also had a bad experience at Universal Studios, this time in Los Angeles. Before a performance by trained dogs, he wrote, a comedian strutted on stage and asked people where they were from. When Kerzner’s children yelled out that they were from New York, “the comic said, ‘Uh-oh, hold on to your wallets, everyone! New Yorkers are here!’ ”

It’s enough to make you steer a stranger into Central Park at night. Speros Mastoras, a sidewalk vendor who sells hot dogs every day outside the Daily News building, is losing patience with those who trash his city. Outsiders should beware, he says, because residents can only take so much.

“They should be quiet and not say such things,” Mastoras says, plopping a steaming dog into a bun. “We all know about all the bad things. Yet it’s not all bad, and those who do not know this, why do they attack us?”

New York’s a tough town, but things could be worse, says cab driver Roger Collins. As he rocks and rolls through the West 80s, Collins explains: “I was shot at in Vietnam. This town’s nothing. No big deal at all.”

Democrats hope the city will be on its best behavior this week, but there are nagging fears that something terrible might happen: A death or mugging that could put months of hard work to naught and fuel the next round of barbs from Quayle and Co. An embarrassing moment for some dignitary who hits town with the best of intentions and leaves without his wallet.

“You sort of want to tell everybody to enjoy themselves, but also to be careful,” says a Wall Street lawyer, hurrying to work. “You don’t want to read stories about some guy from Alabama in the park after dark.”

At least not this week. But cheer up, Democrats--there’s one rule to make your visit here a safe one. It was spelled out in 1890 by Jacob Riis, a crusading journalist who exposed appalling slum conditions in New York:

“There is nothing to be afraid of,” he wrote. “In this metropolis, there is no public street where the stranger may not go safely by day and by night, provided he knows how to mind his own business . . . and is sober.”

That may be a tall order, folks. But savor the city while you can, skip the games of three-card monte and start spreading the news: If you can make it through a week here, you’ll make it anywhere.