Bloomberg, Paterson and Jay-Z Dig the Barclays Center

Today, New York City Mayor Mikey Three-Term Bloomberg, New York Governor David Lame-Duck Paterson, Jay-the music mogul with an Empire $tate of Mind-Z, Barclays Capital CEO Bobby We're Coming to America Diamond, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Mouse Markowitz and Bruce the Ratner, among other phat cats, broke ground a.k.a. stuck silver shovels into hard dirt at the intersection of Atlantic and Fifth Avenues in Brooklyn's Prospect Heights neighborhood to commemorate the beginning of the building of a new stadium called the Barclays Center for the NBA's New Jersey Nets.

The ceremony was met with protest, as has the project for several years, and one protestor was even arrested by the NYPD.

The new structure, according to the celebrity ground-breakers, will bring some much-needed jobs to Brooklyn. It will also, according to protestors, many of whom live in adjacent neighborhoods, bring some not-so-much needed more mayhem to an already insanely trafficked corner of the borough.

In addition, according to Bobby D. and the rest of the birds and blokes at Barclays, the Center will bring some serious street cred to an institution largely known as possessing blood the color of the Caribbean Sea.