Swing A Dead Deal, Hit A Blogger

Sod it. Looks like I'm much too late to feature in the bumper No Land Grab wrap-up of the coverage of the Atlantic Yards rally. For what it's worth, I got there a little late, and listened to Letitia James, State Senator Montgomery, Bob Law, Steve Buscemi and Rosie Perez. What's amazingly weird was that there must have been seven or eight bloggers there that I read, yet I have no idea which ones they are.

Anyway, I had to zoom home to work on some page proofs, and I had comfortably exceded my maximum sun exposure for the day. It also got a little bit wearying listening to so many speeches from politicians - a necessary evil, I know, but utterly wasted on my beautiful little disenfranchised ass. This is, after all, a struggle that even your non-citizens can get behind, your correspondent included

More importantly, the sheer number of petition trolls hustled around the event was overwhelming. It's that time of the year, I know, but if you're the green party, or a Tom Suozzi supporter, or behind that loony that wants to mount a primary challenge against Hilary Clinton (who has, um, $45 million in the bank), then stop trying to hijack an event with only peripheral relevance to your cause. And stop pestering people who can't vote. Turns out that I should probably have worn a gigantic t-shirt saying "LEAVE ME ALONE I DON'T HAVE MY PAPERS".

But I don't mean to come over like a hater. The event was pretty huge, and very fabulous, and the location highlights pretty dramatically that the Atlantic Yards project has finally stirred up some serious opposition in the mainstream Slope. And those guys vote. And donate. It doesn't really matter if there were 2,000 of them or 4,000 of them out at Grand Army Plaza yesterday.

Do I share the confidence of DDDB luminary Dan Goldstein that the project's use of emminent domain is unlikely to get through a court challenge? Nope, because that whole lawyer conflict of interest thing was pretty difficult to make stick (a quality piece of legal advice there).

Best moment from Steve Buscemi's slightly scattershot speech (and I paraphrase very slightly here from memory):

"I live, sleep, eat and drink Brooklyn. Mostly drink Brooklyn. Yep, Brooklyn Lager. [Boos, quite few of them]. No, not Brooklyn Lager, what's the other one? Six Points, yeah, Six Points. Damn, gotta do my homework before I get up here."