May 14, 1986

The two-story vacant house on Creston Avenue in the Bronx is the last in a row of occupied brick houses, and the wide wooden steps leading up to its front door are collapsing. Stenciled on the cinderblock wall sealing the entrance is the fading message: ''Owned by the City of New York.'' Two long, rotting boards lean awkwardly against the rickety railing of the porch. ''It's beautiful,'' a cabdriver, Gerard Forestal, said the other day as he studied the bay window and the yellow inlaid brick design. ''The pipes are good. The plumbing is not bad.''

I AM part of the first generation of human beings whose parents were foolish enough to buy them actual automobiles while they were still in high school. Perhaps because of a whine I once perfected, which in pitch and tone was audible only to adult members of my own household, my father bought such a vehicle for me not long after I received a driver's license. Not my kids. I will not buy my children cars because I know what they want them for, and it is not to relieve parents of the burden of driving them to school dances and Burger Kings; I personally used those justifications knowing all the while that they were nonsense. (It is amazing to me that my parents actually believed them. I would as soon have gone to my junior prom with my brother as have allowed my father to drive me to within a mile of a school dance.) Kids want cars because they are apartments on wheels.

Mayor Kenneth A. Gibson of Newark, who became the first black to head a Northeastern city when he was elected 16 years ago, was defeated yesterday as he sought a fifth term. With nearly 90 percent of the votes counted, unofficial results showed Sharpe James, a City Councilman, leading Mr. Gibson, 27,459 to 19,894. At 10 P.M., two hours after the polls closed, Mr. Gibson went to his election night headquarters at the Quality Inn on Park Place in Newark to concede the race to Mr. James, a 49-year-old college professor, who was first elected to the Council 16 years ago. Mr. Gibson told nearly 700 supporters, ''I had written a victory speech, but obviously I can't deliver it.'' A Major Upset The 53-year-old Mayor, whose loss was considered a major upset, said he would work closely with Mr. James and his aides during the remaining month and a half of his term to insure a smooth transition in the leadership of New Jersey's largest city.

Dennis B. Levine, the 33-year-old Wall Street executive who was charged Monday in the largest insider-trading case ever, has led a life filled with contradictions and the unexpected. Although colleagues described Mr. Levine as an open, honest executive who never kept secrets, the Securities and Exchange Commission charges that Mr. Levine made numerous secret day trips to the Bahamian bank through which he conducted his illegal trades, paying cash for his airplane tickets and taking indirect routes, using phony names when dealing with bank employees and never even telling his wife of his whereabouts. Mr. Levine was arraigned in Federal court yesterday and charged with illegally obstructing a commission investigation into his insider trading activities. [ Page D24. ] As an investment banker, Mr. Levine could be so intense, serious and hard-driving as to unnerve fellow bankers, colleagues said. At other times, however, Mr. Levine would be so witty and quick with jokes as to be frivolous.

Because of a film distributor's change of plans, a picture caption in the Arts and Leisure section on Sunday and a film listing in The Guide carried an outdated list of theaters for the opening of ''Sweet Liberty'' today. It will be shown only at the Loews Tower East, Loews State and Loews 84th Street Six.