The Times Sports section on the Nets-related comic books

In today's New York Times Sports section, a promotional report on the two Nets-related comic books, headlined online Nets Comic Books Are Latest Newcomers to the N.B.A. Library and in print "Drawing Upon the Nets for Inspiration."

(I'd suggest there are reasons for skepticism about both.)

The text:

From Walt Whitman to Jonathan Lethem, Brooklyn has served as a muse to a string of celebrated writers. The Nets, although new to the borough, have also inspired writing, in a less highbrow genre than poetry or the novel: comic books.

It started with the Nets’ new mascot, BrooklyKnight, who was lowered from the ceiling of Barclays Center before the team’s season-opening win over the Toronto Raptors. Applauded by some, derided by others, the black-and-chrome BrooklyKnight superhero is far more intimidating than the team’s former mascot, Sly Fox, and the Nets made it clear that he was not to be trifled with.

“He is equipped to handle almost any threat with a protective metal B on his chest,” a news release said. It added that he had “defined muscles, including a six-pack, and a multifunctional cape.”

As part of BrooklyKnight’s introduction, the team released a comic book in conjunction with Marvel Comics, telling of his adventures protecting the team and Barclays Center.

The trend continued last week when Bluewater Productions released a comic, “Orbit: Mikhail Prokhorov,” describing the ins and outs of the life of the Russian billionaire who owns the Nets.

The Prokhorov comic, written by Tony Laplume, begins: “If ever there was a real-life Bruce Wayne, it’s Mikhail Prokhorov.” The notion that his business persona is only half of the story could make some more whimsical fans wonder if Prokhorov, who estimated that he would attend about a quarter of the Nets’ games in Brooklyn, might be secretly donning the BrooklyKnight costume.

But one attribute proves that they are not the same. Prokhorov is 6 feet 8 inches; the mascot appears to be much shorter. It is worth noting that a Web search for a photograph of Prokhorov and BrooklyKnight together yielded no results.

My City Journal essay on the New York Times's record covering Atlantic Yards: "The Barclays Center's Media Enabler"

I have an essay in the online section of the urban-policy magazine City Journal, The Barclays Center’s Media Enabler: From the start, the New York Times was reluctant to challenge Brooklyn’s new arena.

An excerpt:

[The sanitized story] again signaled the paper’s inability to get tough on Forest City Ratner, the Times’s partner in the New York Times Building in midtown, which opened in November 2007. Atlantic Yards has involved nearly $300 million in direct subsidies from the state and city, substantial tax breaks, and an inside track (and discount) on public property for the developer, along with the state’s use of eminent domain to deliver purportedly blighted land for Ratner to warehouse. All of this presented ample opportunity for scrutiny.
...Ratner has enjoyed heavy-duty support from New York’s political class since announcing the project nearly a decade ago. That left the press as the only potential counterweight. The New York Daily News regularly cheered for Atlantic Yards. The newspaper now sponsors the Barclays Center plaza, and on October 28, it produced a 44-page special section, chock full of ads from arena sponsors. The New York Post, while occasionally critical, never really dug, while its sports page was predictably enthusiastic. That left the Times. While it occasionally broke news, the paper never truly mustered the effort to dissect Atlantic Yards. The Times ignored important events or relegated coverage to its online edition. Except for a 15-month stretch ending in 2006, the paper failed to make Atlantic Yards one reporter’s responsibility, losing institutional memory.
If there was no newsroom thumb on the scale for Ratner, neither did anyone dig too hard... Outside the newsroom, the Times’s preferences were more glaring.

For the rest of the article, click here.

Eminent domain

City Journal, published by the conservative Manhattan Institute ("new ideas that foster greater economic choice and individual responsibility"), frequently challenges the Times and is a critic of eminent domain. (See the Winter 2010 article regarding Atlantic Yards, Eminent Domain as Central Planning, by Nicole Gelinas.)

With Atlantic Yards, it should be noted, critics of eminent domain span the political spectrum; after all, a leading voice slamming New York state's condemnor-friendly laws is longtime civil libertarian Norman Siegel, while liberal New Jersey law professor Ronald Chen has declared that "the New York Court of Appeals basically abdicated any meaningful role for the judiciary in determining whether a blight designation even passed the laugh test."

Beyond the article

Given the space constraints, there's much I can't address in the article, so I'll augment it here.

Do I recognize that the Times's staff was shrinking and that it's tough to cover complex stories? Yes. Do I recognize that the Times missed other big stories, such as NYU's absorption of Polytechnic University? Yes.

Doesn't coverage of Atlantic Yards reflect the fact that Brooklyn still lags in comparison to coverage of Manhattan? Probably. Do I think Times coverage suffered from “The View from Nowhere”--as detailed by NYU media scholar Jay Rosen--in which journalists position themselves between poles to appear impartial, no matter who’s lying? Yes.

Do I think those are excuses? No, not for not showing up or ignoring counter-evidence--especially with the copious information available from others' reportage (including this blog) and Brooklyn activists.

Yes, the Times has done some good work in the midst of its erratic, inadequate coverage. But the Times has made numerous groaningly bad calls, some cited in my City Journal article (the MTA deal, the Community Benefits Agreement, hyping Jay-Z, etc.), others not. Here are some of the latter:

• critic Herbert Muschamp, in his rapturous 12/11/03 essay hailing Atlantic Yards, claimed, in glaring error, “The six-block site... is now an open railyard.” The Times wouldn't correct it
• a 11/6/05 article that allowed Forest City Ratner point man Jim Stuckey to claim that criticism of the developer was "Orwellian, almost"
• the 9/5/06 lead story that treated rumors of a 6-8% scaleback in Atlantic Yards as big news, even though that would bring the project back to the square footage initially announced
• a month after Atlantic Yards was first approved, the Bloomberg administration in January 2007, quietly doubled the size of its direct subsidy for Atlantic Yards, to $205 million (now closer to $180 million). The Times waited until 4/5/07 to backhandedly mention the subsidy increase
• the newspaper failed to cover the 5/29/09 state Senate hearing on Atlantic Yards, the only such state oversight hearing in the project's history
• the Times on 4/17/12 unskeptical transmitted Forest City Ratner's claim that retail changes on and around Flatbush Avenue were "evidence that the arena has already met its goal of transforming a dreary section of Brooklyn," including the railyards--but they remained undeveloped

What it meant

Tougher Times coverage might not have killed Atlantic Yards. More responsible coverage, however, could have helped shape deals more in the public interest, delivered a project with less neighborhood damage, and dissected the flaws in the eminent domain process.

Above all, such coverage would have put public on notice that such high-stakes, decades-long real estate development demands steady skepticism and democratic oversight. Even after the project has been approved.

Times Sports columnist interviews arena GM, concludes "Packing Brooklyn’s Arena and Packing Away Discord "

In a column today headlined Packing Packing Brooklyn’s Arena and Packing Away Discord (but, curiously enough, originally headlined online "in-packed-opener-at-barclays-center-controversy-is-absent"), New York Times columnist William C. Rhoden visits Barclays Center General Manager David Anderson and declares all is well, albeit posing one microscopically challenging question at the end:

But will the Nets ever be good enough to pull Spike Lee away from his beloved Knicks and back to his Brooklyn roots?

There's mention of the postponement of the heavily promoted opener against the New York Knicks, but nothing about how Nets CEO Brett Yormark aggressively justified it, then reversed himself.

Vague mixed emotions

Rhoden quotes Nets coach Avery Johnson and a fervent Nets fan, plus a friend of the latter, who expressed more mixed emotions:

Silverstein’s friend Tim Stettner said he accompanied Silverstein to the game out of friendship, not fandom. Stettner has lived in Brooklyn for eight years and followed the emotional and ultimately failed protests against the arena project.

“It’s a complicated issue,” he said. “A lot of people say the Nets have not lived up to a lot of their promises. But it’s here, so I’m trying to enjoy it, but it’s definitely a moral dilemma.”

And why might that be? Rhoden is vague, and Stettner is as close as the column gets to a skeptic. It's a rather skewed set of interviewees.

Mending fences?

Rhoden writes:

While the Nets revel in the magic of a new arena and laying down fresh roots, they acknowledge the many fences that must be mended. The arena is the anchor of a larger development initiative that still irks opponents of the project. Residential properties are planned to be built behind the arena.

“There are a lot of detractors with this building,” Anderson, the general manager, said. “A lot of people pushed back on this building, so everything we do is under a microscope.”

He still sees protesters standing across the street from the arena. But all of the protests and emotion were no match for money and power. Still, as Anderson noted, Barclays Center has presented significant employment opportunities, albeit most of them part time.

“I’ve had this one guy, a pastor from a church, and I probably have 20 people who go to his church working here,” Anderson said.

And how does that compare to the promises made initially? Are the numbers used now honest? What about the people suing over promised full-time jobs and union cards?

Actually, people aren't "protesting" across the street. They're monitoring what's going on, including the periodic penetration of bass into the neighborhood and people's homes. Why not ask Anderson about that?

The GM's take

Rhoden writes about Anderson without pointing out that the original GM, John Sparks, left mysteriously, as did the arena's head of security, Bob Sena:

A native of Chicago, Anderson has extensive experience opening and operating arenas, including United Center in Chicago, Staples Center in Los Angeles and Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. He also ran the Olympic basketball arena in Beijing.

“This is the toughest building I’ve ever opened because of the dynamics,” he said. “It means so much to a lot of people. It took eight years to get built; it’s very controversial. You really have to double- and triple-check what you’re about to do before you do it.”

And have they done that? What about the bass? Whether trucks really are using the loading dock in a timed fashion, rather than idling in the streets? What about people flooding Atlantic Avenue after events, causing either a freeze of traffic or posing hazards to themselves and vehicles?

And what about those $15 tickets? Forget neighborhood protesters; fans in general should be alerted about the hype.

Times critic Kimmelman salutes Barclays Center (antithesis of MSG), raises doubts about overall Atlantic Yards plan, suggests "variety of architects... with different developers"

New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman finally weighs in with his review of the Barclays Center, saluting the arena for its design, fan experience, and operations--and calling it the antithesis of Madison Square Garden--yet raising significant doubts about the overall Atlantic Yards plan, both as urban design and urban planning.

He suggests that, by hiring SHoP to wrap the much-derided Ellerbe Becket design, the architects "have created something tougher, more textured and compelling, an anti-Manhattan monument, not clad in glass or titanium but muscular and progressive like its borough."

I think Kimmelman lets the Barclays Center off too easily on some fronts--if the Times had had better coverage of arena operations, that would have been avoided--but I'm glad he waited until after the arena opened 9/28/12 to write, since he does acknowledge some lingering issues. It's by far the most wide-ranging, and thoughtful of the reviews, as it recognizes this fundamental fact: Atlantic Yards is not just an arena.

And if  Kimmelman--who contrasts his starchitect-loving predecessors with a serious interest in larger issues of urbanism--only partly acknowledges episodes that are part of what I call the Culture of Cheating, he comes to a slyly subversive conclusion that surely infuriates developer Bruce Ratner :

Notwithstanding that [original architect] Mr. [Frank] Gehry’s involvement sold many skeptics on the development in the first place, the area doesn’t need a single architect for all 22 acres because a multiplicity of designers, or better, a variety of architects teamed up with different developers, would avoid the monotony of all such megaprojects and accelerate construction.

Take the project away from Ratner? Well, let's see if the long-delayed, court-ordered Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) addresses that possibility.

(Kimmelman, unfortunately, does not mention that SEIS nor the lawsuit that led to it, a response to the surprise news that the state would give the developer 25 years rather than the promised ten years to build the project. And there's no mention of the fact that the developer plans to build on the railyard--the blight removal that was a prime justification for the project--only after building on the southeast block of the project. Nor is there mention of the absurdity of declaring this oddly-shaped 22-acre site blighted.)

Leading off

Kimmelman writes, in An Arena as Tough as Brooklyn. Now How About Some Street Smarts?:

The arena opened around a month ago, a hunkered down, hunchbacked, brooding sight at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues. At first blush it’s a shocker, which is one of its virtues....
The panels swoop and curl lengthwise around the building, ancient chains binding a giant Gulliver. They leave openings here and there for ribbons of windows that provide peekaboo views out from and into the interior. At night the center mostly dissolves in the darkness, save at street level, where a monotonous concourse of shiny shops flanks its glossy front door..

In operation

Kimelman, who attended both a Jay-Z concert and a Nets game, likes crowd circulation and sight lines, praises the "sophisticated chill" of design, "warmed by an eager, Disney-trained staff."

He found getting to and from the arena by mass transit easy, and points out that "dire predictions" of Carmageddon haven't panned out, thanks in part to increased policing. I'd add that those going directly to the subway like him miss the problem of honking livery cabs--ignored by the Times in its myopic article on yellow cabs--and the unplanned shutdown of Atlantic Avenue after some events.

He does acknowledge a doubt:

The sound system needs adjusting, and alarming reports have surfaced via the local watchdog-blogger Norman Oder from neighbors complaining about noise and vibrations.

It may be a design flaw, or something that will force arena operators to turn down the bass. And neither the arena operators nor state overseers seem willing to respond.

He also calls the building "technologically smart" because Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan swoons, believing that the truck elevators and underground turntable reduce truck backups. Maybe on paper, but the record is of extensive problems.

The issue of money

Like every other critic, Kimmelman misses the fact that the arena plaza was supposed to be the site of an office building, crucial to the cost-benefit analysis that supported the arena.

But he does argue wisely, as no other critic has, that "naming rights and other financial gains from the arena should be factored into the subsidized housing equation that remains one of the major obligations made by the developer, Bruce C. Ratner."

And he points to Ratner's repeated efforts to "ask for more money and concessions about the mix and layout of apartments."

The rest of the project

Kimmelman criticizes the "titanic complex" to be formed by three towers around it, wondering "who wants to live next to it." (I'd say people who get in cheap and others who don't mind booming bass.)

And he offers a larger urbanist criticism:

Sort of, because the Atlantic Yards project also exemplifies how the city, in this case hamstrung by the state, got planning backward, trying to eke public benefits from private interests awarded public subsidies and too much leeway.

The city wasn't so much hamstrung by the state as cooperating with the state.

Kimmelman suggests more attention to the linking neighborhoods, "more pedestrian-friendly avenues and finer-grained architecture, possibly taller than now proposed in places but less monolithic at street level."

And there's still time, he suggests, "to hold Mr. Ratner, the city and the state to their word about creating jobs and building the promised number and type of subsidized apartments." (Well, if there's political will.)

Kimmelman even takes a swipe at Ratner's "obviously profitable malls," suggesting an upgrade, concluding that "the arena might yet become the start of something good."

Some comments from the Times web site

Nikil Saval, Philadelphia, PA

"SHoP has also spared Brooklyn another retro stadium," the author writes. But surely pre-rusted steel, though it ain't brick, is retro enough, recalling the fabled age when the borough supplied both industry and industrial workers. It also calls to mind the somewhat more recent "blight" that supposedly characterized the area, before a cynical use of eminent domain cleared the way for this disastrous project to be pounded into the neighborhood. I concede that Barclays Arena's brand of prefab blight enjoys more modern tax benefits than the original.

Binky, Brooklyn:

You don't really mention what the arena looks like from any side other than the front plaza approach. The view from the neighborhood, around the back, is of just a great big hulking void. Not a very welcoming presence from the back where we live. The biggest bait-and-switch around, and for we who have lived here, the beginning of 20+ years of actual blight.

Keefus, East Village

Now living 5 blocks from the arena, I was concerned about traffic (automobile and foot) when it opened, but to my pleasant surprise, it has not shown much effect on my street.
I do like the design, both inside and out (made it to a Nets preseason game), but find the fact they took factoring in NHL hockey off the table as a cost cutting factor absolutely unforgivable. They knew there was an NHL team an hour away with Arena problems and went ahead and built with hockey only as an afterthought. Now, with a new agreement with Barclays Center in hand, the Islanders will move into a new arena with the smallest capacity with no seating at one end. So short sighted, who actually made that decision?

Mike Richards, New Jersey

Ratner should live up to the promises made on housing and related development, which made the original Atlantic Yards package a good deal for the city (sorry, NIMBY local residents). But New York has a weak policy towards these so-called "Community Benefit Agreements," (CBAs) and the city pays the price. Bloomberg opposes them so they are negotiated deal by deal, without much real enforcement (see the debacle around Yankee Stadium where huge benefits were given in response for virtually nothing from the developers).
In contrast, Los Angeles has a strong CBA policy and has achieved both development and real community benefits in terms of good paying jobs around the Staples Center, the expansion of LAX airport, and the new LA ports expansion agreement. These linked development deals can be good for cities and low income communities but they need a strong, enforceable city legal framework to make sure that developers come through with their promises. Bloomberg's hostility to such a framework has ensured that we get this patchwork of deals that can't be effectively enforced.

(I'd say it wasn't Bloomberg's hostility to such a framework, it was Bloomberg's trust in Ratner.)

threecee, Brooklyn

"Ratner should live up to the promises made on housing and related development."
The problem, as pointed out by us so-called "NIMBY local residents" and many others, is that these promises weren't worth the paper the CBA was printed on. Ratner, himself, has almost literally admitted as much as he seeks more subsidies and more union concessions so that he makes the profit that he feels is necessary.

abbcha
brooklyn

The Barclays signage is indeed a disaster.
Meanwhile, in the interests of public safety, street trees would be a non-starter. The sidewalks around the arena are already perilously narrow and struggle to accommodate the thousands leaving after events. The entire site will become more dangerous during and after the construction of the three high rise apartment buildings. Walk around the arena and ask yourself where they fit them in. It beggars belief.

enJ, NJ

I appreciate Mr. Kimmelman's vociferous stance here, calling Ratner and co. out for the outrageous fleecing of Brooklyn. We who opposed this greedy land grab from the start only wish the critics in seats of power were more vocal about their outrage along the way. The criticism is valuable. But I'm afraid it will be too little, and it's definitely too late. Thanks anyway.

Times says Barclays Center serves as magnet for yellow cabs; "clear ripples" from arena, but no mention of impact of black cars, livery cabs idling on residential streets. That's part of "new normal," too.

Update: in print, this article takes up 3/4 of the front page of the New York section. Contrast that with the five paragraphs devoted to the June 2009 renegotiation of the MTA deal, when the Times buried a story that suggested developer Forest City Ratner might be getting a sweetheart deal from a government agency.

Would you believe that the opening of the Barclays Center has doubled pickups by yellow cabs in the vicinity?

The New York Times explores that phenomenon in an article published tonight on the web, in print tomorrow, headlined Yellow Taxis, Rare Brooklyn Sightings, Multiply on Event Nights at New Arena.

It's a fairly sunny portrait:

Interviews with drivers, residents and traffic guards nearby, combined with city data, suggest that a pattern has emerged: throughout the evening of an event, drivers become more willing to perform drop-offs in the area, or even cruise in adjacent neighborhoods, because they can reasonably expect a return fare to Manhattan. And once an event ends, they descend on the arena to greet the crowd as it leaves.
...So far, though, the arena appears to have created some clear ripples. Mo Mullen, 32, from Clinton Hill, said that while she often used for-hire vehicles, she had in recent weeks stumbled upon yellow taxis on Atlantic Avenue on weekend afternoons. “I’ve been about to call a car service and then a taxi drives by,” she said.

The rest of the story

I tweeted to the author, Matt Flegenheimer, pointing out the failure to mention some other clear ripples: black cars and livery cabs idling on residential streets.

noted that a reliance on consultant Gridlock Sam Schwartz, TLC Commissioner David Yassky, and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz missed the rest of the story, which includes video of idling limos and frustration expressed by the police, who don't have a solution.

Flegenheimer replied:

Hear ya, but story doesn't make a quality of life argument. Just laying out what appears to be a new normal for yellows.

My response:

 Ecosystem = public transit, yellow cabs, black cars, etc. Why not address rest of the story? Video is glaring. Cops are frustrated

Another new normal

I also pointed him to another "new normal," with some concerts: pounding bass *inside* people's homes. He said he'd pass it on. Will the Times portray this as residents "finding another reason to complain"?

Or will the paper recognize the failure of design, operation, and oversight? Heck, I couldn't get acknowledgments, much less responses, from the purportedly 24/7 representatives of the arena and state, Terence Kelly and Derek Lynch.

Times Magazine essayist: "the Barclays Center is a shrine to Brooklynland" and the Nets "are the perfect team for Brooklynland" (but what about the sponsorships?)

Jon Kelly, an editor at the New York Times Magazine, has an essay in this Sunday's issue, The Nets and Brooklyn Deserve Each Other, that takes a swipe at the Nets, essentially endorses the arena as an "unexpected gift" (without analyzing gifts to developer Bruce Ratner), and suggests both partake of/invoke a utopia he terms "Brooklynland."

He writes:

Though it has been under construction since 2010, the Barclays Center is still seen by many in Brooklyn as a Trojan Horse, a kind of unexpected gift that they’re vaguely afraid of. Outside the arena, the crowd was oddly silent. Passers-by pointed and talked in semi-spooked inside voices. The arena’s main entrance felt like La Guardia on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. There was dread, there was foreboding, there were metal detectors but there was also the whiff of excitement people get when they’re about to escape from their everyday lives. For on one side of those metal detectors was Brooklyn — a borough of tree-lined streets and quaint coffee shops, sure, but also big-box stores, empty lots and the Gowanus Canal. (On average, Brooklyn residents are roughly half as wealthy as Staten Islanders.)
On the other side of the metal detectors was the Barclays Center, but also something bigger: the promise of Brooklynland, that utopia of renovated brownstones, craft beer, rich people, farm-to-table restaurants, pencil mustaches, Wesleyan sweatshirts and now, its very own basketball team. In Brooklynland, the Crown Heights riots never happened, and people grow up to become Lena Dunham. In Brooklynland, everything seems new, but sprinkled with a bit of that old-timey stuff — like reclaimed wood, fedoras, the Dodgers — that makes it feel authentic.
The Barclays Center is uniquely connected to this vision of Brooklyn. It’s a brick-and-mortar tribute to a miraculous rebranding campaign of both a borough and a largely mediocre basketball franchise. More than that, though, the Barclays Center is a shrine to Brooklynland.

I think Kelly missed a couple of angles: "Brooklynland" also includes Jay-Z's Brooklyn, sanitized perhaps for in-building consumption, but certainly a different angle than Dunham.

And the Barclays Center is also uniquely, inextricably connected to all the brands that have bought sponsorships.

Embracing the Nets?

The Manhattan-born Kelly, who moved to Brooklyn, several years ago, began to think about becoming a Nets fan:

For decades, I accused the Nets of just being a knockoff version of the Knicks. (We got the good Bernard King, Mark Jackson and Pat Riley; they got the old Bernard King, Mookie Blaylock and John Calipari.) But never before has it been so evident. The Knicks, who also failed to land LeBron, created their own blueprint for building a team around a contingency plan of expensive second-tier superstars (Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudemire), a couple of overpriced decent players and cheap veterans...
The crucial difference is that while the Knicks might be unpredictable and occasionally detestable, they are at least authentically so. The Nets, in all their carpetbagger glory, are the exact opposite. They are a team of pricey stars and Kardashian exes that hasn’t had a winning season since 2006, trying to fool fans, with big salaries and cool new uniforms, into thinking they’re getting a different product than the one that bombed in Jersey.

I think that the distinction between authentic and inauthentic unpredictability/detestability is a pretty minor one on which to hang an argument. (It's about as petty as Jay-Z complaining about how people always want to "diminish your accomplishments," while actually reports of his slim stake in the Nets/arena lauded him for having outsize influence.)

The Nets and Brooklyn

Kelly comes to a conclusion:

the Nets are less a team than they are an idea of a team. In this sense, they are the perfect team for Brooklynland.
Two weeks after the Globetrotters game, I headed back to the Barclays Center for a preseason matchup between the Nets and the Washington Wizards. It was the Nets’ first game of any kind in the arena, and the fans’ excitement outside was obvious. No one seemed to be staring at the stadium as if it were out of place any longer; they just rushed in. 

Um, that's because they stopped using metal detectors.

And they're selling the borough:

During halftime at the Wizards game, I wandered into the concourse and started mulling where the Nets would be at the end of Mikhail Prokhorov’s five-year plan. They might make a deep run into the playoffs, or egos might combust in spectacular fashion. In the end, though, it wouldn’t matter. All that mattered was that, like Ikea and Fairway before them, they were here. Amid this swarm of team iconography, it was clear that the Nets had erased their past and hitched themselves to Brooklyn’s manifest destiny. The borough may have been rooting for the Nets that night, but it was really cheering for itself. And the Nets, a vagabond team with an unspectacular history, deserved that applause. I just couldn’t be a part of it.

The question is: for how long can Brooklyn be sold to itself?