Our condolences to Steve Hindy and the Hindy family.

Steve's son Sam died this weekend, killed in a bicycling accident on the Manhattan Bridge. Over the next few days, the circumstances will become clear. Either the bridge's bike path was blocked, or Hindy and his companion took a wrong turn.

"We're just devastated," Hindy told the press. "This is the worst thing that could happen to any parent. It's any parent's worst nightmare."

We can't add much. For starters, Hindy doesn't like us. Not one bit, due to our bitter disagree over the Atlantic Yards project. For another, it was Hindy's son -- he and he alone has the last word.

It's unlikely Hindy will read this. It isn't for him, but for you.

Make no mistake aobut it -- this is a death in the family.

We preach "Brooklyn" all the time. Everyone connected with the Atlantic Yards development does. Brooklyn is Brooklyn, and a Brooklynite is gone...a Brooklynite that shouldn't be gone.

Brooklyn has been built on generations, a constant swirl of ideas, laugther, tears, paint flecks, grains of sand, cobblestones and flickering lights. We control our destinies -- fate is a fake, a convenient excuse to not try harder. Still, the young should always, ALWAYS, grow old, and keep the memories of their parents alive.

Not the other way around.

A terrible irony here is that Sam Hindy was a member of Critical Mass, the bicycle-rights group that Mike Bloomberg and Ray Kelly have made hell for the last couple of years. Sam died because of a breakdown in bike safety.

As a cycling enthusiast, maybe he should have known never to ride with cars and trucks on the Manhattan Bridge's roadway. Or perhaps, as some media have reported, the bridge's bike lane was blocked. If that's the case, there'll be a huge outcry from Critical Mass and all of us who believe the City Hall continues to ignore bike safety issues.

Tonight those issues get pushed aside. Flow of tears replaces the flow of traffic in Brooklyn.

Steve Hindy has built his brands of beer on Brooklyn's storied past. How terrible, then, that one of Brooklyn's iconographic view, the three grand bridges crossing the East River to Manhattan, is permanently stained. Ruined.

Steve Hindy loves Brooklyn. That much is clear. Hindy and FFFP disagree about Brooklyn's future...we don't want his future, and he doesn't much care for ours...and likely doesn't know what it is.

Still, no one's heart should feel pain with every glance out the window. For Hindy, one of his beloved borough's entry points is now a ghastly, heart-rending portal.

From now on, every day people will pass over the bridge where Hindy's son died -- in cars, buses, subways, trucks, on foot and, saddest of all, on bike. Just because life goes on doesn't this is the way it should.

We hope the Brooklyn sun finds Steve and his family and warms him the way no other sun can.

Immense have been the preparations for me,
Faithful and friendly the arms that have help'd me.
Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen,
For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,
They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.
...
My sun has his sun and round him obediently wheels,
He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,
And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.
There is no stoppage and never can be stoppage,
If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail in the long run,
We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
And surely go as much farther, and then farther and farther.
-- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself