Willoughby Plaza was one of the very first asphalt strips formerly dedicated to cars that was closed to vehicles, taken over and transformed into a space for pedestrians, helping to inaugurate the city’s popular if occasionally controversial NYC Plaza Program. Before Times Square and the Broadway Boulevard, before the new Grand Army Plaza or Fordham Plaza, before Janette Sadik-Khan even became DOT commissioner, there was Willoughby Plaza.

And now it is permanent, a thoughtfully designed, well-integrated piece of the streetscape rather than a bastardized piece of roadbed dressed up as well as DOT and the local business groups could manage. This is the dream for all 50 (and counting) of the city's new temporary plazas, and 16 finished spaces are already in the works. But standing in the freezing cold with Commissioner Sadik-Khan and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz trading barbs, one wonders how many more plazas might be in store for the city.

"It's a pleasure when the commissioner and I can be on the same side of a project," the Beep said, a veiled reference to his disputes with DOT over the Prospect Park West protected bike lane, among others.

Past disputes aside, both agreed this was not only a boon for pedestrians but also shopkeepers and landlords.

"You saw the frenzy of new interest from retail stores and restaurants like Shake Shack and Panera Bread, and it's just a wonderful sign of the energy that's coming to the downtown streetscape," Commissioner Sadik-Khan said. "It doesn't take an economics degree to understand just how much pedestrian space can contribute to the bottom line of local businesses."

"This is a new landmark for Brooklyn," she added.

Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, who helped secure federal funds to pay for the project, concurred. "This has already become a destination for people walking and biking over the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan, and this new plaza will bring more people here to stay," she said.

After the ribbon cutting speeches—which lasted all of seven minutes, no doubt due to the frozen ears everyone was suffering from—Design and Construction Commissioner David Burney pointed out to The Observer that this is about much more than pedestrians, but involved a full overhaul of sewer and utility pipes and lines under the street. "It's an infrastructure improvement as much as anything, and this is just the cosmetic side of it," Mr. Burney said, gesturing around the plaza, which had new planting beds and christmas lighting strung from the trees but was otherwise little more than a very large and generous 14,000-square-foot sidewalk.

Inside Shake Shack after the event, Commissioner Sadik-Khan spent a few minutes discussing the future of the plaza program with The Observer. First off, why had it taken so long for this plaza to go from temporary to permanent? Five years is actually the average time for city capital projects to get approved and built, Ms. Sadik-Khan explained, once all the various agencies and approvals, contracts and designs are factored in.

She stressed that lots of community outreach, something she has emphasized with every one of these projects, as adding time, but time worth taking. Contrary to popular belief, the plazas are only installed after a community group or local business improvement district requests them.

"It depends on what the construction season looks like, but pretty soon, these are going to be popping up all over town," Ms. Sadik-Khan said.

Various surveys, reports and community board votes have shown widespread support for most of these plazas. Still, some politicians have vowed to reverse the mayor and his street reshapers once he leaves City Hall. Is this program established enough to continue once Ms. Sadik-Khan and her cohort is gone?

"This is set in stone," Ms. Sadik-Khan said, pointing out the window. "And all across town, the public is setting it in stone. If you look at the demand, at the applications that are in the door, there's just no end in site to the number of communities that want more pedestrian space and more space to meet and sit down and create a more livable community."

And it was not just local residents pushing for these new plazas. "You have to understand, the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, working on behalf of the business community down here, has been pushing for this for years," Ms. Sadik-Khan said. "And we're seeing the same push all across the city. Businesses get it. They get that additional foot traffic is better for business."

"It's not only a safety project, it's not only a livability project, it's an economic development project," Ms. Sadik-Khan added. "So it's really a triple-bottom-line win for communities all across the city."

By Alex Fine.

Basketball is back. Three weeks after opening night was canceled in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, four months after the Knicks let Jeremy Lin slip out of town, 13 years since the Knicks’ fluke run to the NBA finals, and two decades since Pat Riley’s tough-guy team captivated New York in the early years of the Giuliani era, fans in the world’s greatest basketball city care without cynicism again.

The Isiah Thomas era and the Knicks’ failed pursuit of LeBron James are old news. The Nets’ long struggle for big-city relevance got lost somewhere in New York harbor. When the teams squared off Monday night in Brooklyn’s new Barclays Center, the city had plenty to cheer about: real stars, the top two spots in the Atlantic Division standings and the eyes of millions upon us.

“Brooooooklyn,” they sang in the style of Biggie Smalls—the best rallying cry in American sports—when the Nets scored a bucket. “MVP!” they chanted when Knicks star Carmelo Anthony stepped to the free throw line. The crowd was so loud at times it was hard to believe that the 17,000-plus fans weren’t all cheering for the same side.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg was among them, as were Michael Strahan, Charlie Rose, Richard Gere and, of course, Nets part-owner Jay-Z and his wife Beyoncé. By our count, there were 100 members of the press on hand, including representatives from Chinese, German and Italian outlets. ESPN had 12 journalists at the game, in case you were wondering how the sports network gauged its importance.

In the end, Mr. Anthony missed a jumper that would have won the game in regulation, and the Nets outlasted the Knicks in overtime. It didn’t matter, much.

For a night, we could forget that the Knicks hadn’t won a title in 40 years, forget about Bernard King’s balky knees and Patrick Ewing’s shaky nerves, forget about anything having to do with Mr. Thomas.
New York was back where it belonged, as the basketball center of the universe.

New York is a basketball town, God help us. There’s something in the collective DNA that tells us hoops is the most important sport, some vague understanding that there are neighborhoods where a kid can still become immortal on a playground, some distant memory of the days when teams traveled to media and not vice versa, the days when the Garden earned the right to be called Mecca.

So what if it’s an empty boast? So it’s been 40 years since Willis and Clyde led the team to glory, longer still since the city produced a truly elite player. (Best New York City product in the last 25 years is ... Stephon Marbury?) Basketball is the ultimate confidence sport, and New York is the fake-it-till-you-make-it confidence town. Don’t forget the darker days when the city’s greatness wasn’t a given, the days of “It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there,” when we could swap tales of Earl “the Goat” Manigault snatching quarters off Harlem backboards—or Willis Reed staggering onto the court for game seven of the 1970 finals, John Starks rising high over Jordan and Grant for a left-handed jam—and recognize a grace and gall and toughness we imagined in ourselves.

Suffice it to say the psychic stakes were high for us Knicks fans setting foot in the Barclays Center on Monday night. Indeed, in the years since Bruce Ratner first broke ground, I often feared that the Knicks’ woes would continue, that the hangover from Mr. Thomas’s tenure, when the team collected overweight players with fatter contracts, would never abate, that James Dolan would remain a pox on the franchise. And that, in the absence of a team they cared about, the fickle masses would give in to the allure of the hottest borough, the newer arena, the team with one owner who’s rich enough to run for Russian president and another who doesn’t simply not suck, but doesn’t suck so much that he’s married to Beyoncé.

Would I blame them? No. Excommunicate? Probably. But something would tear loose from the fabric of my city if New York were no longer a Knicks town.

I can report that a trip to the Nets’ new arena offers temptation enough for a lesser-willed fan to cross over: High ceilings (this is Brooklyn, so exposed ducts, natch) and open sightlines; a thoughtfully curated selection of local food (Spumoni Gardens for the natives, Fatty ’Cue for the arrivistes, Nathan’s for the tourists); instead of the light shows that often mar pregame introductions, a dignified volley of fireworks. Instead of stadium anthems, music that reminds you that Brooklyn belongs to the world. (We have to wonder, though, how big a cut the sound man is getting from Roc-A-Fella Records: with the exception of the periodic Biggie track, it was almost entirely Jay-Z’s catalog.)

Slick Rick played at halftime. He was pudgy, and some of the words were lost in the acoustics, but still, it was a classy nod to New York City’s hip-hop history, and something that’s hard to imagine going down at corporatized Madison Square Garden.

I can also report, happily, that on the evidence of one evening, the fan exodus isn’t happening. Led by Mr. Anthony—reinspired, the sportswriters say, and leaner at the waist after playing alongside Mr. James in the London Olympics—and Tyson Chandler, the biggest man on the court, if not tip to toe, then certainly by the size of his heart, the Knicks have the look of a title contender. Maybe not a favorite, but at least a plausible long shot. It’s not just the fans who think so: the team filled out its roster for this season with veterans like Jason Kidd and Rasheed Wallace, the type of already-rich players lured not by the biggest paycheck but by the best title shot.

So the Nets fans were more numerous, more conspicuous in their “Fan Since Day One” badges (oh really?) and black-and-white Brooklyn gear. Knicks fans were, if not louder, better at the business of being fans. They chanted “Defense” from the first possession and serenaded Mr. Anthony at the free-throw line. Maybe it was simple sports loyalty, as Spike Lee, the world’s most public Knicks fan, tweeted at Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz: “With All Due Respect I’ve Been A NEW YORK KNICERBOCKERS Devotee Since 1967, Not Gonna Switch.” And as Mike Williams, a Knicks fan from East New York, Brooklyn, told us in the spacious bowels of the arena, “Knicks fans have been Knicks fans forever. The Nets are just a novelty.”

But let’s not overindulge in name-calling, at least not in the afterglow of this happy new rivalry. Who cares if the black-and-white-clad masses remember nothing of the Drazen Petrovic tragedy, the Derrick Coleman disappointment, if they had to read the banners hanging from the rafters to know the Nets won a pair of ABA titles in the days before the merger?

Instead, let’s celebrate for a moment the improbable course that led these two teams to their current exalted status. Nets general manager Billy King, who achieved middling results as the decision-maker for the Philadelphia 76ers, bet that by paying heavily for swingman Joe Johnson, late of the Atlanta Hawks, he could convince Deron Williams, his star free agent point guard, to re-sign with the Nets.

Meanwhile, if the Knicks are as good as their early play has promised, the fans will owe the team’s salvation (or at least, above-averageness) to the last figure they’d expect: current GM Glen Grunwald didn’t just play college ball with Isiah Thomas at Indiana University, he was hired by Zeke on two separate occasions. The Knicks are wont to downplay the relationship between the pair, lest they stoke our suspicions that the former GM is still conspiring to ruin the team. Mr. Thomas isn’t so coy: “I love Glen, he’s one of my favorite people on earth,” he told ESPN Radio last summer.

Who cares? Like players, executives come and go: love and hatred for them are fleeting emotions, and for the moment, Mr. Grunwald’s free-agent signing of shot-blocker Mr. Chandler and installation of defensive-minded head coach Mike Woodson (another one of Mr. Thomas’s Indiana pals), are all anyone needs to know.

The Brooklyn partisans can speak for themselves. Mark Anise, a Brooklyn resident who loves his borough so much he had a Nets ‘B’ tattooed on his right bicep on the ground floor of the Barclays Center, told me: “Basketball was the one sport where I always rooted for the name on the back of the jersey. I always said if Brooklyn got a team, then I’d root for the name on the front.”

Never one to mince words when it comes to his love for his hometown, Mr. Markowitz emailed The Observer, “Our fans are so wild, so over-the-top, so proud and so loud that even residents of the outer borough of Manhattan will hear us cheering for the best team in New York and the best team in the NBA, the Brooklyn Nets.”

On the way down to the postgame press conference, I passed an usher with his hands clasped in the air in the shape of the Roc-A-Fella diamond in an homage to Jay-Z. “We’re coming for you, Spike,” a colleague usher said to Mr. Lee, who wasn’t in the arena, or to no one. Or everyone.

Well, let them come—it’s good to have a rival. The great Knicks team of my youth, Pat Riley’s boys, tapped into the ethos of 1990s New York: tough as Charles Oakley, the man who used to ride an exercise bike to the point of tears, and cocky as John Starks, who played his college ball in nowhere Oklahoma, and believed even then that he was better than any of the anointed kings of the NBA. And so we loved them for it.

In the hearts of the city’s sports fans, they were displaced by Derek Jeter’s Yankees: brilliant hardworking men who made their fortune in New York City, tapped in less to the town’s blue collar roots than to the Wall Street princes who defined a revitalized city.

These Knicks aren’t that tough or that classy, and neither are these Nets. But the city doesn’t need an NBA title. Yet. For the moment, it’s enough to care.

pclark@observer.com

Coney Island last night, as documented by Councilman Greenfield. (Photo: @NYCGReenfield)

Amid reports that looting has occurred in neighborhoods like Sea Gate and Coney Island in Brooklyn, as well as the broader recovery needs of hard-hit areas, Borough President Marty Markowitz has called on the military for further help in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy's devastation.

"Governor Cuomo also acted quickly by activating the National Guard prior to the storm, and I urge him to allocate as many troops as possible to Brooklyn—troops from New York or any other states that can spare them," Mr. Markowitz said in a statement. "During my tours of the hardest-hit Brooklyn neighborhoods yesterday and again today, it was apparent that the devastation is so widespread and overwhelming that it’s in the best interest of all of our residents for a more significant National Guard presence to supplement the great work being done by our brave—but overwhelmed—first responders, including our amazing NYPD and FDNY."

Mr. Markowitz cited the borough's most flooded, low-lying neighborhoods as the one that need particular assistance from the National Guard.

"In addition to flooding, power outages, lack of utilities, sanitation and water issues, and no transportation in neighborhoods such as Coney Island, Sea Gate, Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach, Gerritsen Beach, Mill Basin, Sheepshead Bay, DUMBO, Red Hook and others, there have been unfortunate incidents of looting in some locations," he continued. "All of our resources have been stretched to the limit, but in the name of public safety we need to send more National Guard personnel into Coney Island, Manhattan Beach, Gerritsen Beach, Red Hook and any other locations the governor deems appropriate."

According to DNAinfo's police sources, the following incidents have already occurred in Queens and Brooklyn:

The Rockaways
Three suspects were arrested at a Radio Shack 87-09 Rockaway Beach Boulevard
Two were allegedly caught burglarizing a store at 85-14 Rockaway Beach Boulevard
Six were arrested at 38-01 Beach Channel Drive.
One person was arrested at 57-25 Shore Front Parkway.

In Coney Island:
One person was arrested at Mermaid Avenue and West Street.
Another suspect was arrested at Neptune Avenue and 36th Street.

The Thunderbolt in 1995.

Called “the People’s Playground,” Coney Island is perhaps the most popular piece of New York City’s entertainment puzzle, Times Square and the Bowery having been thoroughly scrubbed of any excitement the past few decades. Chic and refined it’s not—at least not yet—but in terms of crowds, ice cream cones, corn dogs and cheap(ish) amusements, this corner of the city is the one calling.

The season may be over, but the enthusiams persists.

Today, the city's Economic Development Corporation announced an RFP seeking the development and operation of new amusement rides, game booths and other entertainment attractions at a vacant site at the heart of the Coney’s amusement hub.

The site, located along West 15th Street between the boardwalk and Surf Avenue, formerly home to the famed Thunderbolt roller coaster, is approximately 45 feet wide by 860 feet long; it is nestled neatly between newly expanded Scream Zone—now featuring a go-cart track and the Boardwalk Flight sky-coaster alongside its four rides for the thrill-seekers among us—and the soon to be Steeplechase Plaza, a 2.2-acre space that will house the restored B&B Carousel, Coney Island’s last remaining historic carousel.

Seth W. Pinsky, President of NYCEDC, commented, “The activation of the West 15th Street site will further expand the amusement core, and build on the ongoing revitalization taking place in Coney Island.” It will also continue the revitalization that the opening of Scream Zone and Luna Park has prompted over the past three years.

“America’s Favorite Playground,” as Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz called it, is a major attraction; the summer of 2011, was one of its most successful seasons to date, with over 640,000 visitors taking over 2 million rides.

“The launch of this site will further propel Coney Island as New York’s premier tourist destination,” said Domenic M. Recchia Jr., councilman for Coney Island and City Council finance chair. Ms. Markowitz concurred: “Its redevelopment will mean even more places to see and more things to do at Coney Island.”

The Coney Island Revitalization Plan will both preserve and nurture this affluent amusement area; it will open up retail opportunities for its neighborhood, with nearly 5,000 new units of housing, and it will generate more than 25,000 construction jobs and 6,000 permanent ones. The plan is expected to generate more than $14 billion in economic activity for New York City over 30 years.

The cards are on the table; we just have to wait for Oct. 23 to see them.

Brooklyn seniors get a free boat ride courtesy of the commission on aging. (www.nysenate.gov)

Sure, it lacks the slow pace of life and comfortable weather of Miami or Scottsdale, but at least Brooklyn has plenty of places to play shuffleboard? Marty Markowitz makes a not-altogether-unpersuasive argument that downtown Brooklyn is a good place to retire, The Brooklyn Paper reports.

Mr. Markowitz is proposing that developers get tax breaks for building housing for elderly residents, who will no doubt be delighted to live so close to the new Barclays arena and the area's burgeoning bar scene.

“A lot of older people want to stay in Brooklyn because of the stimulating environment, but no longer need a brownstone or a five-bedroom house,” the 67-year-old borough president told The Brooklyn Paper. “We have to find ways to keep seniors living here, rather than having them move to New Jersey, or North Carolina, or Florida.”

Brooklyn—even the less-than-desirable cluster of discount stores and somewhat pell-mell condo towers—must be better than New Jersey, right?

The Brooklyn Paper helpfully points out that living in downtown Brooklyn, while it might be expensive for someone on a fixed income, means easy access to cultural institutions, public transportation and hospitals. And Downtown Brooklyn Partnership spokesman Shane Kavanagh points out that the neighborhood's pedestrian crossings with countdown clocks and abundant sidewalk seating are popular with elderly residents. No word on the borough's bridge and bingo scenes, however.

And then there's the nearly priceless benefit of being able to interfere in their children's and grandchildren's lives on a regular basis, rather than just once or twice a year.

kvelsey@observer.com

Fireworks on the Hudson (YouTube)

For those of us living in the outer boroughs, navigating Manhattan during the holidays can serve as a great reminder as to why we migrated off the island in the first place.  New Years Eve, St. Patrick's Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving...the term "amateur hour" was practically invented to describe the hoards of revelers who descend upon NYC like a plague of locusts to "celebrate" these annual events by getting as drunk as humanly possible and clogging up the sidewalks and public transit systems.

Now, most of the time, this does not pose too much of a problem for Brooklynites and Queens residents, who would just as soon stay in their district anyway, throwing  Skrillex-themed rooftop parties.

But the 4th of July poses an issue for non-Gotham-dwellers: since 2009, the incredible light show thrown by Macy's has been held on the Hudson River, making it almost impossible to view from the top of a Brooklyn Heights townhouse.

In late June,  the discontent of outer-borough residents were voiced  in a public press conference, where Public Advocate Bill de Blasio (D-Brooklyn) and Senator Daniel Squadron (D-Brooklyn Heights) railed against the dearth of explosives on the East River; a supposedly "one-year hiatus on the Hudson (that) has now become the new norm." From 1976 to 2008, the East River held the event, and it was originally  moved to the Hudson to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson in 2009. But the fireworks were never moved back to their original location.

Councilman Stephen Levin and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz also stood behind the decision to bring back the sparklers, standing behind a petition  that has amassed 3,100 names so far.

Message received: Macy's has agreed to a sit down with the Brooklyn  politicos to  discuss potential solutions, according to The New York Daily News.

The department store is being tight-lipped on the subject, with a spokesperson only saying, "Macy’s fireworks will take place in and around all accessible New York City waterways and will not be a permanent fixture at any one location."

Hey, we're not unreasonable people: If New Jersey residents are unhappy to lose the view of the fireworks on the Hudson, we'd be more than happy to outsource the whole Thanksgiving Day parade to Newark.

Doug Steiner, studio chief. (Matt Chaban)

“People said we were crazy to build in Brooklyn, no one would ever come to Brooklyn,” Doug Steiner said from the rooftop terrace of his biggest development in the borough. The Jersey-born builder was wearing his usual polo shirt and jeans, comfortable in the unseasonably warm weather in late February, the sun glinting off his clean-shaven head. “In those days, there were wild dogs running in the streets,” Mr. Steiner added for effect.

“But look at these views,” he continued, pointing out across Wallabout Bay and the span of the East River beyond. “You’ve got the gritty industrial underbelly of the city in the foreground, the financial capital of the world in the background.” One World Trade Center and the Empire State Building bookended the panorama.

It was 1999 when Doug Steiner brought the family development business to Brooklyn. As he and so many other fortune seekers have since proved, the decision was anything but crazy. But it was not condos or artists lofts that Mr. Steiner was selling. He was in pictures.

Two weeks ago, with the mayor standing just in front of him at the podium, Mr. Steiner opened five new sound stages at his eponymous Steiner Studios inside the sprawling Brooklyn Navy Yards, bringing the total to 15. That is halfway to the ultimate goal of 32 and, at 50 acres, the largest American film production facilities outside of Hollywood—behind Warner Brothers and Paramount, and rivaling the Walt Disney and CBS backlots.

That can be a hard thing to come by in a city as congested as New York—Steiner’s chief rivals operate out of an old bakery (Silvercup) and silent era stages (Kaufman Astoria)—but the Navy Yards, with its 300 gated acres, offers a development opportunity rarely seen even in L.A.

The unexpected success of Steiner Studios not only underscores the boom in Brooklyn but also a thriving industry in The Industry. Thanks to state tax credits and ample support from the Bloomberg administration, the city saw 188 feature films and 140 television series shot in the five boroughs, up more than 20 percent since 2004, the year Steiner Studios opened. The mayor was there, too, with Mel Brooks, to announce that The Producers would be the first production on the lot.

“I don’t have to tell you how tight real estate is in New York City,” Bruce Richmond, HBO’s executive vice president for production, said in an interview. “So much of what we’re doing now we could not do 10 years ago, without a space like Steiner.

And yet with any great production, the success is as much about the director as the story. “It’s a very fertile place to shoot for a lot of reasons, and Doug is a big one. He’s a very flexible thinker,” Mr. Richmond said. “Being newer to this, he approaches the business very differently than a lot of folks. He certainly has that development part of things down. He likes to figure out how to get things done.”

But this is not the story of a dreamer trying to break into the business, the product a youth misspent in dark theaters. Mr. Steiner sheepishly admits to watching movies no more than the average person. With his busy schedule, he is behind on his television, including Damages and Boardwalk Empire, his two marquee tenants for the past few years. When not working, he is just as likely to be found wandering Chelsea galleries as sitting in front of a flat screen.

If anything, Steiner Studios is simply more of the same for a family that has created an unusual real estate empire spanning 15 states. “We love special-purpose real estate,” Mr. Steiner said, referring to the family business begun by his father, David, after he returned from the Korean War. He worked for the Army Corps building bridges. “The more complex the better,” the elder Mr. Steiner said in a phone interview. “It cuts down on the competition.”

For the Steiners, development is all the same. Industrial conglomerates, mom-and-pop shops, Hollywood executives—it doesn’t matter so long as the rent gets paid on time.

The studio, nestled (at right) into the Brooklyn Navy Yards. (Steiner Studios)

The genesis of Steiner Studios reads like the treatment for a Steven Soderberg film, full of money, spurned lovers and politics, a scrappy David versus the insider Goliath. East River 11. Robert DeNiro could play himself, a mellow Philip Seymour Hoffman would make a good Doug Steiner. Rudy Giuliani as the love interest, no drag necessary.

Hollywood got its start in New York, as many in the business, particularly those living here, like to point out. Ever since it moved west in the 1920s, New Yorkers have been fighting to get it back. The Giuliani administration began casting about for ways to revive the Navy Yards in the mid-’90s, and among them was an idea for movie studios. It so happened a pair of dreamers, Corey Dean Hart and Louis Madigan, a set designer and software entrepreneur who worked out of the same building at the yards, had the same idea, and they signed an agreement with the city in 1998 to develop their plan.

When the project stalled, the city brought on Mr. DeNiro and Harvey Weinstein, who were eager to run the studio. The Hollywood heavies teamed up with another New Jersey developer, Steve Roth of Vornado Realty Trust, then just an upstart who has since become one of the biggest landlords in New York City. A skirmish broke out inside City Hall between competing deputy mayors, some of whom felt Messrs. Madigan and Hart were being brushed aside.

A call went out to Doug Steiner one evening, through a friend of a friend. “As we got to know their work, we realized these were serious guys, with serious building potential,” Marc Rosenbaum, the director of the Navy Yards at the time, told The Observer. Mr. Steiner got the job, and the mayor’s office did not even bother to notify the movie stars until the press conference on Oct. 13, 2000, was already underway.

“What makes it all the more amazing was Doug was in the middle of a very messy divorce,” Mr. Rosenbaum recalled. “I don’t know how he did it.

Mr. Steiner agreed. “If it weren’t for the divorce, I never would have been crazy enough to do this.”

Still, there were more delays, inevitable delays, as the local Chasidic community sued, fearing for the sanctity of its neighborhood from the Hollywood heathens. The suit went nowhere, but it wrapped just as 9/11 hit, delaying the project further. It would be two more years until Steiner Studios finally broke ground.

"We need these stages, that is a critical component of the entire industry’s success," said Katherine Oliver, commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, which oversees the industry. "For the industry to keep growing, we need more stages, good stages, modern stages." This not only accommodates new and better productions with a wider range of demands, it also takes stress off the city's sometimes overburdened streets.

Even Mr. Steiners rivals look favorably on his expansion. "Competition is good for the business," said Stuart Suna, who founded Silvercup Studios with his brother in Long Island City three decades ago. Never again will they have to shoot Seinfeld or NYPD Blue in LA. We're not the financial capital of the world just because we have one or two really good banks." Mr. Suna said that he is looking at expanding his operations, as well, the better to compete with the upstarts.

Cutting the ribbon for the new sound stages with a few stars. (Edward Reed/Mayor's Office)

Doug Steiner does look the part of a certain type of Hollywood big. There is a certain belief that the less well-dressed one is, the more powerful—there is no need to keep up appearances when everyone is already impressed. At the same time, it has its advantages, as others often underestimate, even ignore you, as you go about the business of burying them.

So it goes for Doug Steiner, who never met a tie he liked. He prefers those polos but will wear a button-down shirt when decorum calls for it. This is always worn untucked over a pair of nice but slouchy jeans and either tennis shoes or boots. His childhood friend Joe O'Malley said he had send Mr. Steiner to a proper tailor so he would buy his first suit since his bar mitzah for the studio’s ribbon cutting back in 2004. It was the same one he wore to the ribbon cutting earlier this month, hanging from his 5-foot-6 frame.

While giving The Observer a tour of the studios, Mr. Steiner spoke in proud, almost paternal tones about his project. He shaves his head bald, but otherwise looks young for his 51 years, his small face free of wrinkles. “Mentally I’m 16-28,” he quipped. “Usually on the lower end." Though in decent shape, he said the only real exercise he gets is walking to and from work over the Williamsburg Bridge, “the most underrated bridge in New York,” to his apartment in the East Village.

While the rest of the studios have the stripped down, cleaned-up feel somewhere between Soho loft and suburban office park, Mr. Steiner’s office, just off Stage 5, is chockablock with papers, building plans, models and filmic ephemera. Posters from studio productions line the walls downstairs, including one of The Producers signed by Mel Brooks and Jonathan Sanger, his coproducer, “Thanks for your support.” Alongside it are other early successes: The Namesake, Fur, My Super Ex Girlfriend.

“Doug was very dogged in those early days,” Joe Iberti, a producer of Boardwalk Empire, said during a tour of one of the two stages his show has occupied for the past three years. We were standing inside Nucky Thompson’s office inside the mock Atlantic City Ritz. Just next door was Nelson Van Alden’s apartment, complete with exteriors. A surreal experience, especially with the East River and rows of brownstones just outside the foot-thick concrete walls.

“He’s still very dogged,” Mr. Iberti continued. “Doug employs some of the best people in the business, and if you need something, they will get it done, no matter what. You can’t really operate on handshakes anymore, but this is as close as it gets.” Mr. Iberti remarked how he had brought Enchanted in, at the time the studio’s highest budget production, and then Mr. Steiner cut him a deal on Ghost Town, a personal project he was working on starring Ricky Gervais and Greg Kinnear.

While he is very understated, Mr. Steiner brings the same doggedness to his negotiations, fighting and scheming quietly for every inch. "This is a guy who went to Stanford, he's very smart, and people should not underestimate him just because he is quiet," Mr. Rosenbaum said. The one time he seems to truly let loose is at the now-notorious holiday party, replete with go-go dancers. Everyone from Marty Markowitz to Mr. O'Malley speaks of the parties with reverent awe.

When asked about the dancers, Mr. Steiner said they're for his clients' enjoyment, not his. When The Observer first met him, it was at one of these parties. After a brief introduction, he excused himself, saying, "I have to go leer at some girls." Only after spending more time with him did we realize this was one of his typical jokes.

Besides the annual party, Mr. Steiner tends to eschew the red carpet, but he has still become an industry power.

Everyone at Steiner Studios knows Doug—his name is over the gates, after all—but he is the kind of boss people, even the talent, smile and wave at, rather than averting their eyes. That is Doug Steiner’s job. Though he has worked with almost every big name in the business now, they still intimidate him at times.

It was while walking through one of the dressing room corridors that Mr. Steiner’s smile quickly shrunk. He had been pointing out the graffiti Jim Carrey had littered all over the studio, a stencil that looked like a Polynesian wildman, when he caught Glenn Close out of the corner of his eye. He hustled us by the doorway while he went to see if the coast was clear. “They really don’t like to be bothered,” Mr. Steiner.

Still, he had the gumption to spend a whole half an hour talking to Miranda Kerr, the supermodel, at Steiner to shoot a Victoria’s Secret commercial no less. He was mortified to learn only moments later from a colleague that he had some greens from lunch in his teeth. “She’s really nice,” he said of Ms. Kerr. “Didn’t say a thing about it.”

Over lunch in the commissary, staffed by the individual productions—it was here that he likely ate the offending salad—Mr. Steiner enjoyed some roast chicken, more greens and a bowl full of olives courtesy of Damages. “I love olives,” he said. “I teach a class on olive tasting at the Learning Annex.” Sometimes it is a wonder he does not write for the shows on his lot, so sharp the Steiner deadpan.

Building Boardwalk. (Steiner Studios)

Doug Steiner actually wanted to be a writer when he was growing up. “I love to read,” he explained. “But it’s a lot easier to read than to write.” After graduating from Stanford with a degree in English, he moved to France for a year to try and get his novel off the ground. It never took flight, so he flew home instead and returned to the fold. “He once asked his dad what his title was, because he did not officially have one,” Joe O’Malley, a childhood friend, recalled, “and David responded, ‘What’s your title? It’s son!’”

Doug grew up in the shadow of that boisterous, politically active father, and for a time, that is how it was in the business, as well. But he also found ways to stand out and do his own thing, like developing a number of retail outlets in North Jersey, starting with Bridgewater Towne Centre. “He brought a youthful outlook to the firm,” David Steiner said. It was that same outlook that encouraged him to move the business across two rivers, to Brooklyn, to expanding the real estate empire into new territory.

The studio facilities were designed by Mr. Steiner and built by his father, after both had toured facilities out west. What they created, with the help of Dattner Architects, is an innovative, 1,000-foot-long, three-story building, a spine with five lobbies and five giant pods, for the 16,000- to 27,000-square-foot stages, coming off of the core. Offices are on the top floor, dressing rooms are on the second, and props and storage are on the first, across the hall from the stages.

The project is only halfway there, however, with plans for Brooklyn College’s film program in a rebuilt Navy radio building, a Carnegie Mellon satellite on the old naval college site, and a 20-acre backlot. Productions come to New York for the atmosphere, but they still prefer being able to control it, and so a fake Chinatown, financial district, Midtown and brownstone streets will be recreated.

Even so, the studio already has been a huge success, part of a booming Brooklyn. "He is truly a Brooklyn character," Marty Markowitz, the borough president, told The Observer. "He’s recognized what Brooklyn’s all about—show business.

It is part of a booming industry. “This is the dream, to be able to be in show business in New York,” said Terence Winter, the Sopranos writer and creator of Boardwalk Empire, sitting inside his Steiner Studio office, filled with gangster memorabilia. “L.A. is such an industry town. But in New York, you have everything at your fingertips. There’s just a different energy. You don’t feel so suffocated by the industry.”

It is also part of a booming Brooklyn Navy Yard, which after hundreds of millions of dollars in investment from the Bloomberg and Giuliani administrations has undergone a renaissance in the past decade, adding new artisinal manufacturers and artists alongside its old mainstays—Sweet-n-Low is still made at the yards.

“One might say, well, this isn’t manufacturing, and it’s not, in a way, the manufacturing of old, the smokestack, it’s not that," said Andrew Kimball, executive director of the yards. "It’s still manufacturing, though, and it’s still the same good paying, local jobs that have benefits. If you go onto any of the stage, you see manufacturing going on, from acting to shooting to editing to building the sets."

"The days of the smokestack are gone," he continued, "but you have this new kind of manufacturing going on, and our job is, how do you maximize these opportunities."

Soon, Doug Steiner will become a part of it all for good. “Growing up in Jersey, living in Jersey, I have some great memories, but really, it was like a frog being boiled alive,” he said.

His sleek, modern home in Short Hills—where he raised his three kids after the divorce—will be on the market as soon as he fixes it up. But Mr. Steiner cannot wait for it to sell, so he is moving to Brooklyn full-time this summer, into a penthouse in South Williamsburg. It is near 80 Metropolitan, one of those giant faux warehouses on the South Side, though quite a bit nicer than all the rest. Completed in 2009, it is Mr. Steiner’s first New York City project beyond the studio walls.

This is the real reason for Steiner Studio: it is but part of a budding franchise. In February, Mr. Steiner announced plans for another apartment building, a 52-story luxury rental tower at the corner of Flatbush and Schermerhorn avenues in Downtown Brooklyn, also designed by Dattner Architects. “We were late to Williamsburg,” he said. “But here, we were right on time. And it’s only the beginning.”

“It’s about good value, cutting edge design. Hip. Not gaudy or glitzy,” Mr. Steiner said. “Trump gets a premium for putting his name on a million different things. That’s what this is about, building a brand and using the studio, the Steiner name to do that. And to do it tastefully, I might add.”

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Marty and Mario. (Office of the Borough President)

Presented without comment: Two gentlemen of great stature spotted in the wilds of Brooklyn Borough Hall yesterday, for the announcement of a new rooftop farm in Sunset Park, to be the borough's biggest. Can you guess who?

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Comings and goings across from Shake Shack. (Matt Chaban)

Joseph, a slender 19-year-old from Fort Greene, stood inside Downtown Pawn Shop Sunday afternoon turning an almost-new Nokia flip phone over in his hands. On either side of him were glass display cases, chipped and fluorescent.

Those before him held more new and used phones, neatly arrayed. Beside that were purses in an array of colors and material. Across the way was perfume—Lilac for Women, Yacht Man Chocolate—and more jewelry than the Zales across the street, in maybe one-fifth the space. Bomber jackets hung on the wall, besides po sters of President Obama, still smiling, celebrating his inauguration. Bills from every Caribbean nation were taped up next to that. In the back was a tattoo parlor and an optometrist. “Designer Frames Start at $59.99.”

Like generations of Brooklynites before him, Joseph had come to the Fulton Mall to do some shopping. Some historians credit the centuries old strip with pioneering urban department store shopping, with the opening of Abraham & Weschler in 1865 and the many stores that followed, all now long gone but for the Neo-Grec and Beaux Arts temples to retail they erected.

When he arrived on the mall this day, Joseph had passed by the T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T and MetroPCS outlets and come here for his new-enough phone. “They don’t want so much here,” Joseph said, a Dodgers cap—L.A., not Brooklyn—resting on his head. “It’s a good deal.”

But for how much longer? It is getting to be that they want more and more on the Fulton Mall. Just like the rest of Brooklyn before it.

“I am so damn excited,” Albert Laboz said, his fruit cup just arrived. “Even if a fraction of these tenants come in, it’s gonna change everything. It’s gonna be a game changer.”

Friday morning, Mr. Laboz was seated at a round table in the middle of Junior’s, one of the only surviving  Fulton Mall institutions left, having consumed two rounds of coffee in the first half of an hour-long interview. A developer and landlord, he is among the handful of machers actively reshaping the five-block bazaar into his version of a family friendly destination, inviting for everyone from the blacks who have dominated the mall since it fell into decline decades ago to the white bohemians and businessmen who have set about, wantonly or not, dislodging them from many other parts of the borough.

Mr. Laboz insists it does not have to be one way or the other, that all of Brooklyn can happily coalesce around a few stores in restaurants in the middle of some of the most valuable real estate in the country. (Not to mention the GQ-certified coolest.) Just two blocks away is the three-Michelin-starred Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare. The 20-course meal is 30 times the price of dinner at Mr. Fulton, the soul food institution on the corner of Flatbush Avenue.

“We can meet in the middle,” Mr. Laboz said. “Everyone wants a bargain.”

His strategy, and that of his neighbors, is attracting middlebrow retailers who appeal to both the design and price conscious. H&M is scheduled for a new glass building on the corner of Hoyt Street being built by Mr. Laboz, below which will be a TJ Maxx. Aeropostale opened across the street in the fall of 2010, around the same time the new Shake Shack was announced, which opened in December, a month after the Gap announced plans to take space on the mall. Express is coming, too. The gleaming new first phase of CityPoint will open in the first half of next year, quite possibly with a Target inside, so successful is the one half-a-mile away at Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Center Mall.

Yet, venture inside that mall, and it is largely devoid—except for the aisles of Target—of the kind of clientele Mr. Laboz and his cohort talk of attracting. It remains to be seen whether the brownstone babies and their cousins in the condo towers will ever migrate to the mall, giving up on Bird, Greenlight Books or the newly arrived Barney’s Co-op.

“The hard part is, black people will shop where white people shop, they don’t have a choice,” one veteran Brooklyn broker said. “It doesn’t work the other way around.”

Sure, there is Shake Shack, but besides that, literally and figurativelyh, the new eateries consist of a barbecue place from Vegas, a candy store called Sugar and Plumm, and a Paneras?

These are precisely the kinds of establishments people moved to New York, and now Brooklyn, since they have colonized so much of Manhattan, to get away from. They are fleeing middle American malls, not craving them.

In the shadow of new towers.

Mr. Laboz and his two younger brothers followed their father into the real estate business, and it was on the mall where they got their start. Daddy Laboz arrived at the end of the beginning, when Martin’s department store closed at 505 Fulton, in 1979. It was a part of Fulton Street’s commercial quartet, along with Abraham and Strauss, May’s and E.J. Korvette. Only the first still exists, in the form of Macy’s. The location is one of the company’s top grossing stores.

Mr. Laboz is a Brooklyn boy, born and raised in as much comfort as the borough could afford: Manhattan Beach, the Riviera of Coney Island. He and a partner set up shop around the corner from his dad’s place in 1985, after they had taken a stake in the property. He eventually bought out his father as he continued to expand along the corridor.

“From a real estate point of view, the building was always a success,” Mr. Laboz said. The ground floor had been chopped up into smaller storefronts and stalls, all paying a decent rent for the tens of thousands of shoppers, office workers and students streaming by each day. Upstairs were government agencies. Now they have been cleared out, along with a stand of five rowhouses, demolished to make way for the H&M. Mr. Laboz is even considering lofts on the upper floors of the old Martin’s building.

“I don’t want to sound like Donald Trump,” said Mr. Laboz, “but my site is the best location in the block. It’s across from Macy’s, it’s on the 50 yard line.”

Part of the problem with developers, politicians and the media talking about the transformation or revitalization of Fulton Street is that it suggests there was something wrong in the first place. Unlike Smith Street or Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, which were largely empty, the Fulton Mall has always been packed. With its 110,000 patrons  a day, it is the third busiest retail strip in the city, besting Madison Avenue and behind only Fifth and Times Square.

The idea is that with 12,000 new residents in the adjacent towers, the people will need somewhere to shop. But this also presumes such changes will not alienate the current clientele. Were this to resemble Smith Street, with its boutiques and boulangeries, it would be a failure for the landlords on the strip, who command $200 a square foot, compared to $70 per on Atlantic Avenue and $50 on Smith, according to numbers furnished by brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman. Some of the national retailers are even paying upwards of $300 a square foot, which helps explain the desire for change, even if the demand may not follow.

Laboz's castle.

“Do we really need 10 sneaker stores and a dozen cellphone outlets?” asked Isaac Chera in a phone interview. His family owns half-a-dozen properties on the stretch and has been a fixture there for four decades. They now own retail properties citywide, but he still credits the Fulton Mall with teaching him how to do business.

"Brooklyn’s a big, big, big, big place," Mr. Chera said. "It’s the fourth biggest city in America. Everything can’t be everything to everybody. There are segments, and that’s who we’re looking to serve."

Borough President Marty Markowitz remembers the days when his mother used to drag him to the mall. “We used to shop at May’s while the nicer folks went to Abraham & Strauss,” he recalled from his office on Monday, overlooking Fulton Street—he boasts of being able to shout his order down to the new Shake Shack. “I never liked shopping,” Mr. Markowitz continued, “I still don’t, but at least I always knew it meant a trip to Chock Full o’Nuts or Nedick’s. They served hot dogs in little white doilies.”

The borough president has been a huge champion of the strip’s transformation, disputing charges of its Manhattanification. “Nobody wants that less than me, I campaigned against that when I ran for office,” Mr. Markowitz said. “Brooklyn is still Brooklyn, there is still plenty of room for mom and pops, but we can find space for other people, too. This is not changing Fulton Street, this is bringing it back to what it was.” But are people really traveling to Manhattan from Brooklyn to shop at the new JCPenney?

Mr. Markowitz said he would like to see some kind of commercial rent control to protect tenants rents, though he was also wary of even mentioning the topic, knowing how it is despised by the real estate industry. “Maybe some kind of mediation, so if your rent triples, you can go to someone about it,” he said. He also said that if he could have any store on the strip, it would be a Nordstrom’s, though he would also settle for a Nordstrom’s Rack.

CityPoint takes shape.

“Can you believe this? They just tried to charge me $50 for this, just ‘cause it says Sony on the side.” James Sanders was standing outside CompuWorld just after sunset on Monday, a grey beanie on his head and burgundy Versace scarf on his neck. Mr. Sanders had managed to barter the men behind the counter down to $10 in only five minutes of work.

Mr. Sanders grew up in the neighborhood, and even though he now lives near Columbus Circle, he said he makes the trip down at least once a week to do his shopping. “You come down here to Downtown Brooklyn, they will always work with you,” Mr. Sanders said. “They never want to let the money walk out the door. You could never do that at a name store. It’s embarrassing, you could come by every day, they still don’t know you.”

Just then, a pack of screaming teenagers could be heard from a few blocks away. At least a hundred of them were packed around a pair of men, there was shouting, it seemed perhaps a fight. It turned out to be the rapper Drake, who stopped into Quick Strike, one of the strips remaining hat-and-shoe outlets. He picked up a Toronto Blue Jays cap, representing his hometown team. Even in Canada, they know the Fulton Mall. Would Drake really have come to shop at Lids down the block?

Lauri Cumbo, a Fort Greene fixture who founded the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art, argues that the loss of the mom and pops is bad, but worse is the erosion of the mall’s culture. She points out that while the Bronx may have been the birthplace of hip hop, the Fulton Mall is where it grew up, with Biz Marquee and Biggie Smalls rapping on the corner. “The way things are going, entrepreneurship will be smothered all together,” she said. “There will be no room for creativity or originality. People may still shop here, but there will be no community.”

At the Brooklyn Fare grocery on Fulton Street, Chris, who lives nearby, was shopping for dinner with his girlfriend. They were deciding which humus to get, and settled on Three Kings. Did he do much shopping on Fulton Mall? Would he if the stores were to change?

“I mostly come here to shop, or on Atlantic and Court,” he said. “It’s different types of stores over there, and it feels too much like the city. I moved out here a month ago, and I did it to get away from all that.”

mchaban@observer.com

The Fulton Mall will never be the same. (Edward Reed/Office of the Mayor)

Just 20 minutes before opening Tuesday, there was no line outside the Brooklyn Shake Shack. Lines are as much a part of the burgeoning brand as grass-fed patties and seasonal custards. It is even part of the company motto, “Stand for Something Good.” Both sidewalks of the Fulton Mall were clogged with shoppers, students and suits, but none of them had yet queued up outside the boutique burger shop, which was about to have its grand opening.

Marty Markowitz was there, though. He had even come the night before and helped himself to a double cheese burger, Shack-cago Dog, fries and one of the signature concretes (what Danny Meyer likes to call his Blizzards.) that had been named after him, the Fudge-gadabout. (The other was the Borough Precedent, with vanilla custard and granola, not exactly Mr. Markowitz’s cup of custard.)

Mayor Bloomberg was on his way, not only to feast but also to boast—a city program had helped speed the opening, done in just under a year, and facilitated the hiring of 52 Brooklynites.

But where was the crowd? This was the great white hope on the Fulton Mall, the game changer that would gentrify this last unruly stretch in the heart of the once boisterous borough. The opening had been blasted across blogs citywide since it was revealed on Friday.

Had Danny Meyer’s great Brooklyn adventure backfired?

Then, at about quarter to 11:00, they began to arrive, in ones and twos. The first in front of the tinted-glass solarium (reminiscent of a Wendy’s, really) was Arthur Torkiver, wearing a green fleece and rimless glasses and sporting a thick brown beard. A student at Brooklyn Law from Midwood, he said he had always planned to be first, or at least second, through the door. He had subverted the line, though, by taking up a position at a law school building across the street. From there, he kept one eye on his case law, the other on the door, as he studied for exams. When the reporters began filing in, he decided to come down.

“It’s a nice addition,” Mr. Torkiver said. “There’s a lack of eating options in the area. I won’t have to choose between Burger King and Wendy’s anymore.” He said he would order his usual Shack Stack—a beef patty and a cheese-covered, deep-fried mushroom patty married on a bun—plus one of the new Brooklyn-themed concretes, the Urban Lumberjack, which Mr. Torkiver said contained bacon. “It sounds brilliant,” he said. Actually, it was the locally purveyed Redhead bacon peanut brittle, one of many Brooklyn-centric mix-ins available—the Fudge-getaboutit has lip-puckeringly bittersweet chunks of Mast Brothers chocolate inside.

“I went to the one on Vecesey Street and it’s a very decent burger,” said a woman bundled up against the cold in down parka and skullcap and standing just behind Mr. Torkiver. “I was surprised it was coming to Brooklyn, but I guess this is the new Manhattan.”

Michael Wasserman had come from Sheepshead Bay as a special birthday treat. He had taken off from work—his very pregnant wife also happened to have a doctor’s visit in the neighborhood that morning—and he seemed the most eager of all. “I emailed the general manager last night,” he said. “I didn’t want to get here at 10 and find out they weren’t opening until three.” He said Shake Shack served his favorite burger outside of Williamsburg’s DuMont.

Let's eat! (Edward Reed/Office of the Mayor)

The line was about a dozen deep by the time the mayor arrived a few minutes after 11:00. He swept inside with his security detail and placed an order to a flood of flashbulbs. “I just wanted to congratulate Shake Shack, they already have restaurants around Manhattan, at Citi Field, in Washington, Miami, Westport, Conn., Sarasota Springs race track, Dubai and Kuwait City, and now they’ve hit the big time, Brooklyn,” the mayor said, adding, “I think Marty owes me for that one.”

The borough president was indeed happy about his ability to simply cross the street whenever he wants his Shack cravings satiated. He even taught the crew a set of hand signals. “You look right through that window, that’s my corner office,” he said. “This,” he made a peace sign, “means double. This,” he held up one finger, “means a single. And this,” a two-handed come-hither, “means bring it on.” What a hamburger he is!

Steve Levin, the local councilman—who claims to have the best-tasting district in the city, stretching as it does from Greenpoint to Dumbo to Park Slope—said he would be the popular person in the City Council now that the Shake Shack had opened. "It's right between my district office and my legislative office, so I'll be able to bring plenty of snacks to my colleagues."

After the bright green ribbon was cut, The Observer asked Mr. Markowitz if he thought Shake Shack was not just another Manhattan interloper in his borough. “It goes both ways these days,” he replied. “We’ve got people from Brooklyn and Brooklyn restaurants nourishing hungry Manhattanites here and there.”

Darren Cole was standing nearby, one of the first people through the door to place an order—the staff had tricked Mr. Torkiver and his cohort, switching entrances from Fulton to Willoughby when the doors finally opened at 11:30. Another Brooklyn Law student, he said people were saddened when a rumor started going around that Tony’s Famous Pizzeria was closing to make way for something new. “But then they heard it was Shake Shack, and they were cool with it,” he said. “Pizzerias come by the dozen, but this is Shake Shack.”

Still, the life-long Brooklynite could not seem to shake a certain sour taste in his mouth. “Yes, we’re not Manhattan’s stepchild, stepbrother anymore, but maybe you’d like to see less of a chain, more of a mom and pop,” he said. (To think, Shake Shack now ranks as a chain. We remember when it was just a shack.) “Plus,” he continued, “the culture of Brooklyn is changing and this helps facilitate that. Take it as you will.”

By now, the restaurant was packed. The mayor was finishing his meal—he said he had ordered a hamburger and fries—seated at one of the high banquets with aids and a few security guards joining him. He kept inviting people to share in the bounty, as though he might devour it all himself. The Observer could not help but notice that there were no calorie counts posted on the signs.

Outside, the line ran halfway down the block, at the other end of which is a Burger King. A group of workers were leaving, meals in hand, when The Observer passed by. “I took one look at that line, and I said never in Brooklyn,” said a gentleman named Eric who looked like he had eaten his fair share of Whoppers over the years. “I’m gonna wait until someone dies.”

“You know someone will cut the line, there’s gonna be a fight, and that’ll be it,” his colleague Michael said, helping to explain his friend’s macabre vision.

“I’ll wait until they clean the blood off the floor, then I’ll be the first inside,” Eric cut in. “There won’t be any lines after that.”