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.

Before I moved here, I thought of Brooklyn as Brooklyn. It was one place, one thing. To my uninitiated mind, Brooklyn itself had character and an identity as a whole. It’s not that I was wrong, the Mother Borough does have an overarching identity and character … but it’s defined by the unique nature of its neighborhoods.

Brooklyn is comprised of so many distinct areas each with their own qualities that to live here and call oneself a Brooklynite is a bit like calling oneself an American. Sure, it’s true, but how much do urban New Yorkers and rural Kansans really have in common, besides that overarching American moniker? It’s the same with Brooklyn.

People from Flatbush are not people from Brooklyn Heights. Those from the Slope aren’t those from Bensonhurst. Some nabes in proximity have more in common with each other than with certain other ‘hoods, but even the like areas have their differences: the brownstones of Bed-Stuy versus the huge apartment buildings and pre-war opulence of Crown Heights, for example.

When I lived in the Stuy, the girlfriend I was living with would tell me that her students thought we were hardcore for living there. She taught in Crown Heights, and those kids thought Bed-Stuy was the baddest place on Earth. They weren’t far off; gunshots nearly every night, drug dealers doing their business in broad daylight right there in your face.  Ineffectual cops letting the crimes that weren’t murder go on because they had their hands full with more major felonies. But Crown Heights ain’t no walk in the park neither, son. Still, those kids thought their hood was tame compared to the Do Or Die.

That most recent bid in Bed-Stuy was my second tour, and I was deep in it. The first time around, I was dangling on the fringe, in the DMZ between Clinton Hill and Bedford-Stuyvestant proper. That DMZ was pretty tame, even with the Evergreen project Houses diagonally across the street. I got more grief in Prospect Heights, where gentrification was often met with violent opposition. I consider myself lucky I only got punched in the head instead of shot like some of the other invading honky forces.

I know I’ve used this before but, like Johnny Cash said, I’ve been everywhere, man. 4th Avenue at Pacific Street, “Clinton Hill”, Prospect Heights, Park Slope, Gowanus, Bed-Stuy and Flatbush. I spent a little while without a home, and I passed it sleeping on my friends’ couch in Windsor Terrace. I almost moved to Borough Park, but the realtor didn’t like the idea of inter-racial dating. I put a deposit down on a shithole in Sunset Park, but wound up bailing on that bad idea. I’ve been to almost every nabe except Starett City, and I can’t think of any other place than Brooklyn that varies so greatly within an area of about 80 some-odd square miles.

I identify with Flatbush. I don’t feel like as much of an intruder here as I did in Bed-Stuy, but I’ve definitely enjoyed living on the fringe. I’ve been far from the spoiled, trust-funded white brats that pollute Park Slope and Williamsburg, and I’ve been happy for it. My neighborhood is genuine, full of people who work hard and appreciate others who do the same. Sure, there’s not much in the way of nightlife, there’s no fancy cafe with pretentiously named beverages, but there’s also nothing keeping me from sleeping with my window open at night … except chihuahua-sized wasps, of course.

I’ve been in too many places to feel much of a bond with a particular neighborhood. I’ve been alien almost everywhere I’ve lived in this borough, either from being white in a black neighborhood, or being the wrong kind of white in a white ‘hood. As big and as varied as this place is, a niche is not something I’ve yet carved out.

But, more so than someone who’s only lived in one of its neighborhoods, I’m a Brooklynite. I may yet identify with Flatbush more than the whole, but not at the moment. In six years I’ve been too many places to have taken root in any of them. The only permanent place I’ve occupied is the borough herself. So while Brooklynite is more vague than Flatbusher, it’s more specific than American and more significant than just being a New Yorker. As far as I’m concerned, Brooklyn is my country, state and city all in one. I only go to Manhattan to get paid.

I was down in one of my old ‘hoods last weekend (maybe two weeks ago, now, I can’t remember; every day bleeds together) and I was taken aback by how much had changed. I’ve only been in Brooklyn for six years, so I wonder how many things lifelong residents have seen, the ebb and flow of “progress.”

One man’s progress is another man’s ruination. Sure, everyone would rather have new and nice bars and eateries, maybe even a Starbucks or a generic, mom-and-pop facsimile thereof. But with all of that comes higher rents and more stuck-up white people who think, because either their parents or their trust funds are paying their rent, that they’re better than everyone else.

It galls me that the price of a brownstone in Bed-Stuy has topped a million dollars. I’m dumbfounded that people will plunk down $400,000 or more for 400 square feet. And that — for my brand of white person (that is, one who has to pay for everything himself ) — an apartment that’s more than a grand per month apartment is a “bargain.”

I’m grateful I found a place affordable on the ridiculous scale of NY affordability, and when I first came to Brooklyn, some dipshit renting a place south of the Prospect Expressway and west of 4th avenue wanted $1100 for a basement apartment that’s not even as big as what I’ve got now. So, things weren’t hugely reasonable when I first came here … but if I’d looked where I should have back then, I’d be paying less than a grand right now.

But I don’t. And the ridiculous thing is that my place is the cheapest — and one of the biggest — of those rented by everyone I know. Soon enough, I’ll be priced out of this neighborhood, though, just like every other one in which I’ve lived. At some point, the critical mass of uppity whites is reached and the rents explode skyward.

Video Edge, that blessed alternative to Blockbuster, my old stand-by on Flatbush Avenue, is gone. The Prospect Cafe is vacant. Lorena’s is a taco stand. Christie’s is still around, but they moved to the north side of the street because Crunch gym bought out their old space, just like they’d bought out the independent gym that had been next to the Flatbush Pavilion theater which is now a clothing store.

To me, that’s all ruin. The theater is gone. The independent businesses are gone. A shitty, modern condo went up around Prospect and Park places.

Still, Gran Castillo is still around (the one not evicted so that a Duane Reade could go in), and though she’s not all that, Li’l Miss Muffin and her Stuffin’ is still right up from the train at 7th Avenue. Brownstone Billiards, from what I could tell, is still in business.

Yeah. So, things come and things go. I’m still here, but other things have either died in my tenure, been born and died, or were just born and have yet to die. Some businesses are going to fail, others are going to thrive. It’s always the way. Gorilla Coffee is responsible for killing the .25 cent Ms. Pac-Man upright I used to play. Some people wouldn’t have it any other way. I couldn’t care less about GC; I’d rather have an old ducan with an upright arcade machine.

Enough nostalgia and sour grapes for one day, though; I’ve got to eat. I’ve got a hockey game to win tonight.