Something Rotten

A quick odds and sods post to alert you to grave happenings in the borough. First off, and considerably later than the competition, a link to the recent New York Magazine article on the Atlantic Yards. It's a rare mainstream city-wide press article that's pretty critical about the project.

Now I suppose I should be thankful that a reporter at a proper magazine has taken some time to go over the main flaws in the Carbuncle that would eat Prospect Heights (Or Robocop's Delta City, as some might have it). I certainly don't subscribe to the "I was into hating it before it was popular" indie wankery coming out of the dear old NY Press.

What really galls me is that the author of the piece suggests that only local residents and those employing the gut instincts of an 80s cop movie hero can truly hate the project. The models do exist to show that the project can't produce enough in tax receipts to pay for itself, and the statistics exist to show that most of the housing that will be built in 30-stoey high monstrosities over my neighbourhood will only be affordable to the same gentrifiers that are accused of mindless obstructionism.

I can't go near the racial and class debates that surround the project, and respect the writer of the piece for trying to engage in them. All I'll say is that the yuppie swine driven out by the Ratner project will go off and probably build some achingly cool communities someplace else, and the middle of Brooklyn will be left with a sad, windswept, empty expanse of towers that will make Co-op City look cheerful.

By way of comic relief, and because we haven't mocked the little creep since he went under the knife, we will notice that Marty "With Great Stupidity Comes Awesomely Little Responsibility" Markowitz has gone down to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens to salute a rare plant that smells just like his mind tastes. Fortunately there does not yet appear to be a picture showing the meeting of these two kindred spirits and intellectual equals.

(As a quick aside, I would like to point out the reports of Mr. Markowitz' interest in running for mayor. I could not be happier at this news. It would prove once and for all that the city's Democratic party is much better at inoffensive hack candidates than able administrators. It may even hasten the demise of a party in urgent need of a brutal makeover. But I digress)