GET OFF OUR BACKS!

This entry in the blog is dedicated to the community board in my Brooklyn neighborhood with a loving message…

GET OFF OUR BACKS!!!

For decades community boards around Brooklyn have been in the pocket of interest groups that have forced them to stand in the way of progress and development. This has been particularly evident in the areas of Gravesend, Sheepshead Bay and Marine Park, where you cannot buy a book or a cappuccino at a Starbucks unless you take the subway or the car and travel to some distant location. Suddenly the carbon footprint is not important.

Busybodies without anything else to do spend their time attending community meetings where they seem to arrive and ask “What are you discussing so that I can oppose it.”

These busybodies first opposed the building of a large Barnes and Noble on Flatbush Avenue, not far from the Belt Parkway. If you are not familiar with Brooklyn, this area is a wildlife refuge for some exquisite rats, and future archeologists will find there ample evidence of extensive crime and sexual activity. Across from this parcel of land there is a golf course. Still, community board members and some of their constituents managed to raise traffic and environmental concerns and put an end to B&N. Next there was opposition to Wal-Mart, Lowe’s, Home Depot, condominium buildings, private schools, and Starbucks. State Senator Kruger in particular had the gall to compare Home Depot to terrorists. Talk about jerks.

Then the first Starbucks in this area was approved last week. Halleluiah! Our neighborhood is getting its first Starbucks in 2008, probably because in a few months Starbucks will declare bankruptcy.

In the meantime, walking along major thoroughfares like Kings Highway and Avenue U is like running an obstacle course. Dozens of vegetable stores pile up boxes and produce on the sidewalk, leaving a couple of feet free for thousands of pedestrians. The stench from some of these stores is horrendous. Delivery boys ride their bicycles on the sidewalks, but our community board and Kruger continue to pander to the bastions of fairness, economic justice and labor protection known as “mom and pop stores.”

Since much of the opposition to large stores is under the guise of protecting mom and pop stores, can anyone tell me whether these stores pay minimum wage and provide medical insurance for the thousands of illegal aliens they employ? Somehow I doubt it.

Well, I am leaving now. I am driving to Long Island to shop at Wal-Mart, and buy a book at Barnes and Noble. I will drink the cappuccino in Brooklyn. I want to patronize the local Starbucks before it goes out of business.