Fresh Hataz On The Brookie

Mmm, this is weird. The great Brooklyn Brewery Boycott has been trundling along quite amiably, picking up dazed hipsters along the way. A little bit of back-and-forth, and a little bit of confusion over spokesmen. But mostly, and even though this is probably the most engaged I have been in opposition to the stadium project, it's a side skirmish in the wider war.

Then along comes this fake email business. Some prankster manages to set up a fake email account in the name of Bruce Ratner. Not that difficult, since gmail, for one, managed to provide me with the obviously fake name of Gari N. Corp. This prankster then sends an email to Steve Hindy, the owner of the Brooklyn Brewery, and a strong supporter of this destroying the neighbourhood business. This is the reason, after all, we're boycotting his tasty wares.

The email apparently enraged Ratner so much that that he decided to sue the unidentified authors. Here's part of what the email said, according to court papers:

"Just a friendly messag [sic] to let you know I will not be selling any Brooklyn lager at the Brooklyn Nets Stadium," court papers quote the email as reading. "Nothing personal, but I have to make a deal with the larger suppliers - Anheuser Busch for one - in order to really do the right thing. You're small time and always will be."

It's a point made quite eloquently at the end of Fans For Fair Play's boycott manifesto - that if a Nets stadium ever gets built, Brooklyn Brewery will get shafted in favour of larger suppliers. I doubt he'd ever be able to connect the email to a particular individual. But what's extraordinary is that Ratner decided that it would be a good idea to float this notion more widely, and give the boycott a new lease of life. Thus, we get a few more stories in the Brooklyn press, and even a proper blog (quick explanation to jossip - we don't like the project because it's turning a quite spiffy already part of Brooklyn into a concrete wasteland and demolishing our favourite bar.

I have no idea what might propel Ratner to such strange behaviour, because if it keeps getting weird, then maybe a proper newspaper would take a look, and then Hindy would not be happy.

Brief moment of unrelated levity - I'm starting to believe that NY1's Neil Rosen is gettin' some. He cropped up this morning looking rather suave in a suit and hipster-style glasses. I think he might even have lost some weight. And he was interviewing Natalie Portman in a weirdly competent fashion. Um, good stuff, Neil. Keep getting whatever it is you're getting.