Below is a picture of what the new Ratner Arena will look like. The arena will instantly put the Garden on the ropes. There will be no good reason to book an event in the Garden when you've got a venue like this a subway ride away. Except, of course, for the miserable Knicks and Rangers, who will be serving time in the Garden for the foreseeable future.

The project was from the beginning and is today all about real estate. If you want to understand anything in New York, you have to understand real estate. Look at it this way: the oldest tavern in New York, Fraunces Tavern, is built on landfill. The World Trade Center was built on landfill.The shape of Manhattan island itself was created with landfill.

If you don't have room to develop in one area of Manhattan, you simply invent more Manhattan- or, in this case, Manhattan East.

Of course, while The Times editorial board railed against the West Side Stadium, you heard nary a peep from W43rd Street regarding Ratner's Relm- not surprising, since The Times is partnering with Ratner on their new home on 8th Avenue.

The West Side is another example of politics and real estate in the Big Apple. In the end, the West Side Stadium was a Trojan Horse for real estate interests across this city.

The little snarling old ladies that the Garden used to have its puppet organization, NYABC, bus into West Side Stadium meetings will end up tossed into the streets like so much rubbish by the very hands that were handing them their anti-stadium t-shirts. While all eyes were focused on Abbott and Costello, aka Bruno and Silver, and whether or not they would approve funding and zoning for the stadium, Christine Quinn was signing off on the largest rezoning package in New York City history. Christine Quinn knew what side of her bread the butter was sitting on, even if her little snarling old ladies didn't.

Below is a picture of the area surrounding the new Ratner Arena in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is the borough of churches, but now there is a new God that must be served, the almighty dollar.