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Several members of our hard-working staff were actually enjoying a Brooklyn Lager the other night when they heard a bit of disquieting news: Opponents of Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards mega-development are calling for a boycott of this most drinkable beverage because of the brewery owner’s allegedly cozy relationship with the developer.

And so they ordered another beer to ponder the situation.

Brooklyn Brewery owner Steve Hindy does, indeed, do business with Bruce Ratner, who sells Brooklyn Lager and other fine comestibles at Nets games in New Jersey.

And we assume such lagers, ales and stouts will be available if the Nets ever do move to Brooklyn.

Yes, Hindy stands to benefit from a Ratner-built arena in Prospect Heights, but that doesn’t make him a “traitor,” as one blogger called him, or “an evil man,” in the HTML words of another Web writer.

In fact, Hindy is a model Brooklyn businessman.

Yes, when he started his Brooklyn Brewery, the beer itself was made upstate (and some still is). But he has also shown an amazing commitment to the borough, opening a brewery and tourist attraction in Williamsburg and donating plenty of kegs to worthy organizations and community fundraisers.

The supreme irony is that Brooklyn’s soaring real-estate values are pricing Hindy out of Williamsburg.

But, as the brewer told The Brooklyn Papers’ Gersh Kuntzman, he doesn’t have a landlord paying him to relocate or finding him new space, as residents of the Atlantic Yards footprint have in Bruce Ratner.

Over another beer, another thought occurred to our staffers:

A lot of things are happening in Brooklyn right now — not all of them great — and Steve Hindy’s product helps provide great comfort in these stressful times.

So let’s drink a toast to Steve Hindy.

May the boycott fail.

©2006 Community Newspaper Group