May 9, 1999

Knicks Rout Miami The Knicks took a 1-0 lead in their first-round playoff series against the top-seeded Miami Heat with an easy 95-75 victory. Allan Houston, above, and Latrell Sprewell led the Knicks with 22 points each. SPORTSSUNDAY SPECIAL TODAY Summer Travel Cross the river to three satellite cities with pleasures and personalities of their own: Brooklyn, Cambridge, Mass., and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. SOPHISTICATED TRAVELER

New York City is in the midst of a movie theater building boom that will see the number of Manhattan screens available for viewing increase by 64 percent from 166 to 273 when projects under way or planned are completed, according to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers, an accounting and consulting firm. Two of the biggest movie theater developments are going up across 42d Street from each other, just west of Times Square. On the north side of the street, Loews Cineplex Entertainment will operate a 14-screen theater in Tishman Realty & Construction's E-Walk project. On the south side AMC Entertainment will operate 20 screens in Forest City Ratner's entertainment-retail-hotel complex.

A HYPNOTIC fugue has fallen over the crowd watching the Mac Neil RW-102's. The powerful water sprayers gyrate frantically inside a stainless-steel cuff. Nearby, attached to an overhead arch like you might see at a carwash, the nozzles stop and turn, flip and churn, like choreographed stage lights at a Broadway musical. People wobble their heads unconsciously as they watch the water cannons dance. No running water has been supplied to the floor of the 1999 International Carwash Association's convention at the Opryland Hotel here, but there is plenty of soft soap.

Rise of Internet and record-industry consolidation has opened window of opportunity, fostering dissatisfaction among pop musicians with major record companies while giving them freedom to act on it; major companies are insisting on cutting royalties paid bands, citing costs of Internet technology; some artists are putting out own CDs, or joining others to form own labels; photos (M)

School shootings in Littleton, Colo, viewed through prism of science, are statistical equivalent of needle in haystack; since such events are so rare, and because it is impossible to eliminate risk from life, there may be no larger lessons to draw and no way to prevent another one; while homicide is second largest cause of death among youngsters, fewer than one percent of child homicides occur in or around schools; while number of school shootings with multiple victims has risen recently, from average of two to five per year, annual total of shootings has declined; photo (M)