Three years out from the 2011 sexting scandal that forced him from office and just over a year from his failed mayoral bid during which more explicit messaging with women was revealed, Weiner is slowly but steadily building a post-political life.

In a recent interview with POLITICO in New York, the former Democratic congressman spoke extensively for over an hour about being a father to son Jordan, who turns 3 in December, and how he keeps busy these days with business interests and media appearances. He had nothing good to say about D.C., the city he left behind which he now dismisses as “a little hokey town” (and revealed he’s no “House of Cards” fan, either). But two subjects remained firmly off limits: the role of Weiner’s wife’s in a possible Hillary Clinton presidential bid — and whether he’s still messaging women.

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At a coffee shop in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, Weiner says that while he’s not quite sure yet where he’s going professionally, one thing is clear.

“I mean, realistically, my political career is probably over,” says Weiner, who turned 50 last month. “The only job I ever wanted more than Congress was mayor, and I don’t think that either of those two jobs are going to be available. So, no, it’s not like, ‘OK, how do I get back in?’ I’m not thinking that anymore. I think I kind of took my stab at that.”

Since losing the Democratic primary for mayor 13 months ago in a disastrous campaign, Weiner has maintained a modest public profile, contributing columns to the New York Daily News (“ Mayor de Blasio is anti-crime, pro-cop”) and Business Insider (“ Here’s Why Elizabeth Warren Is Wrong To Attack Politicians Who Work On Wall Street”), as well as appearing weekly as a panelist on NY1 to chew over the week’s news. He also occasionally does other cable network shows such as HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher.”

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Weiner consults for a few clients and is working on setting up a nonprofit hybrid restaurant/social service agency aimed at helping at-risk youth by giving them experience in the food service industry. He says other projects are “in the works” but declines to provide details.

“It wasn’t like I wanted to see it as a career,” Weiner says of his media appearances, “but I still have an itch to scratch of having ideas about things and wanting to talk about them. You don’t just after a 25-year career, caring about issues and caring about what’s going on in your city just kind of turn it off.”

“There’s no Pulitzers in my future,” he quips.

We talk at the just-opened Seven Grams Caffe on Seventh Avenue. Weiner wears a Mets cap, a white thermal long-sleeve shirt, khaki shorts and Clarks shoes. He looks every part the typical city dad on the go.

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He is recognized almost immediately. Weiner knows an older man in the cafe and the pair shake hands and chat briefly, promise to catch up. Weiner tells me later that he still gets stopped on the street, sometimes by New Yorkers who still think he’s in office or running for something.

“People say hello, they want to take a picture, they want to give you a hard time, they wanna break your chops, they want to give you an idea,” Weiner says. “People ask me to vote for A, B or C thing, you know. A guy came up to me yesterday on the train and said, ‘I’m gonna vote for you! When’s the election?’ I’m like, ‘OK, you kind of missed your shot.’”

We talk, as he sips a coffee with cream, about whether he now sees the destruction of his political career as a positive, allowing him to be more involved with his son’s upbringing.

“I would have quit Congress to be home with Jordan, plain and simple. I would not be sitting around in Washington waiting for the Senate to come back into session to pass some CR,” Weiner says. “I could not imagine it any other way. I would’ve lost my marbles.”

Only days before our meeting, he took Jordan to his first baseball game at Citi Field to watch Weiner’s beloved New York Mets.

I ask whether he’s thought about conversations he’ll have some day with Jordan when he’s older about the sexting scandal, and whether that makes him nervous.

“A little bit. Look, I can’t and don’t dwell too much on how people are going to write my Wikipedia entry,” Weiner says. “I know that if people can walk up to me on the street and say, ‘Thank you’ for something or say, ‘We love ya, run again!’ or ‘I voted for you,’ I am quite confident that my son will have the ability to look at the totality of the experiences he has with his father and the record that I’ve got and judge me appropriately.”

He continues, “Maybe, you know, it teaches him a little something about adversity and everything doesn’t go great all the time.”

Plus, there are other fatherly concerns, “I got the birds and the bees I gotta worry about.”

Weiner and Abedin are already navigating the enormous complexities of childhood education in the city, beginning with their first open school night that evening.

“It’s open school night and I can’t find [information] anywhere on the website and none of the other parents at school yesterday seem to know,” he says. “I think it’s just where they have you come in, you see the kid’s classroom, and I think you might get some update from their teacher on how they’re doing. They’ve been in school for like five days, so it’s not a lot yet … I like stuff like — I’m very into it. I take him in the mornings. And yeah, so I’m looking forward to it.”

For someone who was a regular face on cable TV slugfests, a typical day for Weiner now consists of caring for his son, adding that he’s “watched The Lorax 291 times.”

“And just for my own sanity, begged [Jordan] to watch Curious George because we’ve been reading the books to him.”

Weiner adds that he’s also “trying to do anything I can to help be a good house-husband.”

A Brooklyn native, Weiner is not just adjusting to life outside Congress but to life outside the outer-boroughs. He moved to Manhattan — for the first time — with Abedin shortly after his resignation to be closer to her family.

“I like Manhattan. I’m not going to lie to you, I miss Brooklyn, Queens, I miss the boroughs,” Weiner says.

One place Weiner doesn’t miss, however, is Washington.

“I don’t get up every morning, at 2 o’clock, and turn on CSPAN3 and watch the technology subcommittee debating FCC rules and say, ‘Boy, I wish I was there.’ That’s not me,” he says.

However, Weiner keeps in touch with a few lawmakers, but says, “Most of them are trying to reach my wife.”

Away from D.C. for a couple years, it’s clear his New York swagger has returned in full force.

“These D.C. people who work on Capitol Hill would get chewed up and spit out if they’re here in New York,” Weiner says. “It’s a little hokey town with guys who are moving at half-speed. It’s a different speed that you work at when you’re a New Yorker. It’s a different edge, it’s a different thing. And that’s a New York thing.”

Politics or not, some aspects of Weiner’s life remained unchanged, such as his love for ice hockey, which he played throughout his time as a lawmaker. But whereas hockey may have been an outlet at other times in his life (“I’m 50 now, so it’s catching up with me a little bit”), Weiner now says fatherhood has been his solace.

“I’m his caretaker, but he took care of me for the last couple of years,” he says of Jordan. “Ninety percent of the sanity in my life is derived from my son.”

As for downtime these days, Weiner says parenting can be exhausting and “kicks your ass,” so it doesn’t leave much time for Netflix marathons.

“I watched the first season of ‘House of Cards,’ it got so ridiculously implausible that I couldn’t stick with it. Same way with ‘Homeland,’ after the first season I just couldn’t, you know,” Weiner says.

While he is relaxed and chatty throughout most of the interview, when discussing the career of Abedin, a longtime Hilary Clinton aide, who Clinton herself once described as a second daughter, Weiner clams up:

I say: “There has been a lot of coverage obviously of 2016 and I’m not about to ask you if Hillary’s going to run, unless of course—

—Right.

—… How has that relationship sort of changed? …

What relationship?

Your relationship with the Clintons.

I don’t have anything to say about that.

Have you had the chance to meet Chelsea’s —?

— I don’t have anything to say about that.

Ditto on the topic of whether he still continues to message women.

“I tell you, one of the things that I learned, one of the pleasures that I have in my new life is that I get to say stuff like, Lucy, I’m not going to get into any stuff that maybe I shouldn’t have gotten into in the first place,” Weiner says. “Meaning when you’re a politician, maybe you have a right to ask me that stuff. Now, you don’t have a right to ask me about that stuff — or, not that you don’t have a right, you have a right to ask me and I have a right to say, ‘I’m not going to tell you.’”

With his subsequent resignation from Congress over three years behind him, what lies ahead for Weiner, he’s not exactly sure. He acknowledges that in Washington, as a lawmaker, “there are natural ladders that you climb, right?”

“Now that I’m not and I’m not in a particular business, and I haven’t found this place that’s, ‘OK, this is my next career ladder.’ The world doesn’t look that way to me,” he says. “It’s more like a series of kind of turns, and I’m going to try and navigate them each time and try to the best I can.”

What is clear is whether in or out of the spotlight, Weiner still doesn’t hold back his well-known sarcasm and biting humor — as I find out after I thank him for his time and mention the possibility of talking again.

“I like hanging out with you, but you’re a one-coffee interview,” Weiner says and ducks out to Seventh Avenue.