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February 20, 2009
Why are New Yorkers so damn competitive?
Time Out New York
by Nelson George
How is Atlantic Yards like a game of three-card monte? Writer and DDDB Advisory Board member Nelson George explains:
My favorite metaphor for the competitive nature of New Yorkers is three-card monte. Though its heyday was the loosey-goosey Big Apple of the ’80s, I saw games being run on lower Broadway last fall. And where there is three-card monte, there are crowds of New Yorkers huddled over milk crates, cardboard and three bent cards.
...When competitiveness tips over into selfishness, when the desire for triumph becomes simple greed, you have a formula for social unrest and personal tragedy. And, as we enter the second decade of the 21st century, our moral center will be tested as at no time since the Drop Dead ’70s. Only by tempering our excesses will New York survive this apocalyptic epoch intact. Greed is not good. Developer Bruce Ratner—hell-bent on destroying the charm of Fort Greene and causing traffic jams in Downtown Brooklyn in order to build the ugliest complex since Co-op City—was in the process of proving that. Thankfully, the state giveaway that was to be Atlantic Yards has been a victim of the same vicious capitalism that made Ratner rich in the first place.
NoLandGrab: You'd think that after having picked the wrong card from Bruce Ratner so many times, New York pols would stop putting the taxpayers' money down on his cardboard box. Could it be they're actually shills?
Posted by eric at February 20, 2009 9:34 AM