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or, SHAWN CARTER is the boss of me.

After years of hating on the proposed development over the Atlantic Avenue railyards in Brooklyn I have come around to seeing it built. Not because the developer has agreed to set aside any additional units for local minority residents and not even because the developer has agreed to include minority owned businesses in the contract bidding process. BRUCE RATNER will never agree to either of those stipulations. My single reason for warming up to this inevitable project is the proposal that will create a bigger and better Brooklyn Technical High School.

B.T.H.S. is where I learned the principals of drafting, which they called technical drawing. Tech drawing is the foundation for speaking the language of engineering. When you start to understand the principals of engineering you begin to comprehend the inner workings of the machine world and how parts work together like gears and cogs. In a very real yet rudimentary way you learn that in order to be productive you have to work together. I also learned how to draft on AutoCAD which has carried me through my professional career some twenty years later. Without a college degree and without a BTHS diploma I was still able to form a semblance of a life when I wasn’t busy trying to fuck it up. Whoever says that public high schools don’t prepare kids for life has never been to Brooklyn Tech.

I created a drawing in one of my AutoCAD classes of a futuristic concert hall. I imagined that the facade would have large glass openings that gave the building an image of inclusivity. It was quite different from how I felt about the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s architecture, which was too old and stuffy. Thanks to the Old Jew, another Brooklyn expatriot, who hired this high school dropout I would come to refine my AutoCAD skills under the tutelage of a master architect, and I would understand to appreciate classic architecture like the B.A.M. building. Being a master architect requires much engineering knowledge and the Old Jew further taught me how all the parts fit together. We’ll talk about him one of these days.

One day I showed the Old Jew my elevation drawings of the future concert hall with the huge curtan glass windows and the rooftop gardens that held fruit bearing trees. The younger graduate architects that worked in his office ridiculed the drawings for their relative simplicity and illogical premise. The Old Jew looked at the drawings and told me that it was all possible. I can remember to this day how that single sentence from him has empowered me ever since I was seventeen years old.

When I first saw the images rendered of the architectural model for the new arena slated to be constructed in the Atlantic Yards development I immediately thought about the words of the Old Jew. He never once told me a lie. There was my design being manifested after all these years. The Old Jew returned back home to Brooklyn and he sent me a message. A tree still grows in Brooklyn.

If BRUCE RATNER and JAY-Z will create another building that teaches children the fundamentals of engineering and gives them a place to dream of what might be then I should support them wholeheartedly.

DALLASPENN Dot Com is for the children.