I think Bruce Ratner’s reach has far exceeded his grasp. I think he envisions himself as the new Robert Moses, with the power to seize and destroy at his whimsy for his perception of the greater good. I think he’s a lunatic for thinking that his plans are more important than the lives he’s going to disrupt, the businesses he’s going to destroy and the viable community he aims to sunder.

I think a basketball arena is Brooklyn is a smashing idea. I also think Ratner is a greedy fool for spilling beyond the bounds of the rational and having a vision far too grand for the purpose of bringing an arena to Brooklyn.

Freddy’s Back Room is a great little joint. Pretty cheap drinks, nice community atmosphere. It is a meeting place, a watering hole and an example of the vitality of the area Ratner wants condemned as “blighted.” There is a church further down Dean Street, amidst beautifully kept homes that would all be demolished if Ratner gets his way. The amount of “blight” between Pacific and Dean Streets & Flatbush and Vanderbilt Avenues is so scant that Ratner might as well be smoking the kind of crack rocks one would find in a truly blighted area. And he’s been sharing those rocks with the antipathic politicians who have been helping to push ahead his demolition of Prospect Heights.

The Sam Underberg building deserved to go. It was empty and had been unused for ages. The JRG Fashion Cafe seemed like a viable business, but it met the wrecking ball. Harriet’s Alter-Ego saved itself by moving down the street but, in the end, the land where the arena itself is going to go was far more expendable than the land-grab Ratner is attempting so to build glitzy new housing for the rich, high-rise set. Where the arena is planned to go is a U-Haul lot, a train yard, an MTA-owned parking lot and was the Underberg building and the aforesaid businesses (and perhaps a few I missed). In short, no big loss. But why the grand, sweeping and inhuman lack of consideration for everyday citizens who face being uprooted from their lives?

Money, obviously. But I let the rhetorical question stand.

Personally, I feel cheated that the Dodgers are in L.A. instead of within walking distance from my apartment.  I am about a ten-minute stroll from the site of the former Ebbets Field and, god, would I be the happiest boy on Earth if I had a local, professional baseball team in my back yard. They were driven out by Robert Moses. Despite all the enmity a lot of Brooklynites have for Walter O’Malley, the man did try to keep the Dodgers in town until the city tried forcing him out to Queens (where the Mets ultimately would play). O’Malley rightly said that the Dodgers were the Brooklyn Dodgers and said if a plan wasn’t going to made for them to stay in the borough, he’d take them all the way to California. Moses and the Greater City of New York called his bluff and off the team went to Chavez Ravine.

My point is this: they could have build a new stadium for the Dodgers. Where, you ask? Well, right where Ratner is trying to build his basketball arena, of course. It was precisely the site O’Malley had craved when Ebbets was no longer tenable. Moses said no, citing that putting a new stadium at Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues would “create a China Wall of traffic” in downtown Brooklyn. This was in 1956. It’s now 2008. Are you telling me the traffic issue Moses feared 50 years ago is less significant now? Of course not; it was a bullshit excuse. Obviously traffic was of no concern to the city when approving Ratner’s project.

Funny thing is, if Moses hadn’t been such a bastard, this Ratner business wouldn’t even be happening. Ratner’s pieces of shit Atlantic Center, Terminal and Bank of New York buildings wouldn’t be there and we’d have Dodger baseball to watch. Unfortunately, though, we’ve got Ratner and no Dodgers, and Moses is thankfully unable to influence policy anymore because he’s quite dead. Still, even though the man who destroyed vast swaths of Brooklyn is deceased, we’re faced with his semi-successor who wants to wreak further and similar devastation on our much-beleaguered borough.

Thank goodness for Develop, Don’t Destroy Brooklyn. I’m glad someone is standing up and fighting Ratner’s eminent domain abuse, especially since nearly everyone else is content to let him get away with the murder of a section of Prospect Heights.

Like I said, I don’t have a problem with the arena itself being built. So we lose a spur of 5th Avenue and they’ll have to divert the B63. Big deal. But to lose the Spalding Factory and the scores of viable businesses and housing that pepper the land Ratner wants to grab … that is unacceptable. I hope he’s stopped. Build over the damned train yards. Fine. They’re a lingering eyesore from a bygone era. But don’t evict people and destroy historic portions of a neighborhood that is not blighted, by any stretch of the word.

Ratner’s agenda, in its entirety, is criminal.

I have to say I’m grateful that I’ve never even thought to fear having my throat slashed for supporting any of my favorite teams.

Yesterday, Celtic and Rangers met up for the Old Firm Derby in Glasgow. Rangers beat Hoops 1 – 0, which is a huge disappointment, but worse than that, a gang of North Irish Protestants set upon a guy wearing a Celtic strip in Belfast and sliced his throat. Those purported to have done the slashing weren’t even Rangers supporters, they were just Protestants who singled the guy out as Catholic because of his Celtic shirt.

I root for Celtic because I’m Catholic, sure … but I wonder, sometimes, how religious affiliation could matter so much to someone that it’s worth slashing someone’s throat. I know it’s Belfast but, come on, it’s still barbaric. Then, Belfast is hardly a love-thy-neighbor kind of town.

As I think of it, there really isn’t an American sports rivalry with the same kind of acrimony about it as there are between clubs in Great Britain. New York has two baseball teams, but who really cares? Being a Mets fan usually just means you’re either from Queens or you just hate the Yankees organization. It’s not like Episcopalians root for the Mets and Evangelical Baptists go to Yankee games. Maybe Giants against Dodgers was (is) a big rivalry, but still nothing compared to the venom in Northern Ireland between Catholic and Protestant.

There aren’t even enough cities with multiple teams in America, either. While London has gobs of football clubs, Liverpool and its area has a handful, the Northeast of England has three teams in the Premiership, only Chicago and New York have two baseball teams apiece (yes, I did not mention LA or the Bay Area) and only NY has two football teams. Sure, Cubs fans and White Sox fans are not, in theory, buddies … neither are Jets and Giants fans … but has anyone in the U.S. had their throat slashed over a sporting event.

Probably.

But nothing springs to mind.