The departure of Target the Coney Island Cat from Jimmy’s Balloon Dart on the Bowery for a new life in Las Vegas has left the People’s Playground without a cat mascot. It got us thinking about Italia in Miniatura, a theme park in Rimini, Italy, where a colony of cats have made themselves at home amid the tourist attraction’s 273 miniature reproductions of Italy’s monuments, churches, piazzas and landscapes.
Fed and cared for by the Rambaldi family, who own the park, the cats have appeared on calendars and starred in this 2008 film. This is not trick photography — the park’s scale models are the playground of the cats, whose names are Premuroso, Zuccherina, Pastrichio, Vittorio Emanuele, Oxford and Stu. “A thoroughly weird tour of Italy from a giant cat´s perspective,” writes Russell Bekins, who shot and edited “Italian Holiday” over a three-year period.
Several years ago, after meeting Bekins at the IAAPA convention, we first learned about Italia in Miniatura and its cats and did a story on Europe’s miniature parks for IAAPA’s Funworld Magazine. In addition to the scale models and landscaping, the park also features an interactive driving school for children, a water cannon ride featuring a replica of Rimini’s medieval castle, and other novel attractions.
Grandma’s Predictions and Zoltar at Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park, Coney Island, July 2012
The venerable, circa 1929 “Grandma’s Predictions” has been telling fortunes under Coney Island’s 1920 Wonder Wheel all her life. A couple of seasons ago a brand-new Zoltar was brought in to keep her company and proved very popular with visitors to the arcade. Hurricane Sandy soaked both of them, and decapitated poor Zoltar. A new Zoltar Speaks machine was promptly ordered and is already here, but Grandma, an irreplaceable antique as well as a good luck charm for the three generations of the Vourderis family who have owned the park, was sent off to be restored.
Last night these riveting videos of Grandma’s wax head getting “eye surgery” at National Jukebox Exchange appeared on YouTube. The octogenarian tarot card reader is also getting new wax hands cast from the original mold, according to arcade restorer John Papa. He appears in the video along with fellow arcade restorer Bob Yorburg, who told ATZ that Grandma will get a new wig, dress and cabinet, too. The rare arcade piece is known as the “Cleveland Grandma” by collectors since she was built by the William Gent Manufacturing Company in Cleveland, “Grandma’s Predictions” is expected to come home to Coney Island on Mother’s Day, where a welcome home party will be held at Deno’s Wonder Wheel.
The strange saga of the zip line that came to Coney Island last summer and never opened (except for an hour-and-a-half) due to a permitting snafu with the City is about to end. The attraction was supposed to be part of the BK Festival and was set up on Thor Equities Stillwell Avenue lot behind Nathan’s, where it was left standing after the festival closed. Bob Rigsby, Project Manager of Scaffold King Rentals, Inc. of Rockville, Indiana, the company that rented the scaffolding to independent operator CAT 5 Zipline, has come to Coney Island to reclaim it.
“There’s $80,000 worth of metal, if we had to replace it,” Rigsby says of the two towers, which survived Superstorm Sandy just fine. “Right now we’re $60,000 in the hole.”
Scaffold King has hired a local crew to take down the towers starting this morning. It took five months for Rigsby to prove ownership of the scaffolding and get the necessary permits to dismantle it. The actual zip line is from a company in Boston that Scaffold King works with frequently, he says. Rigsby added that they will be installing a zip line elsewhere in New York that will go over the rooftops. We’re jealous. It’s too bad Coney Island never got to see this attraction in action. Based on the astronomical number of hits on ATZ posts updating the status of the Coney Island Zip Line and the emails and comments from people eagerly waiting for it to open, it would have been very popular and could have been a year-round attraction.
In January 2012, Scaffold King erected the launch and landing towers for the first-ever Super Bowl zip line, which was the single-longest temporary one ever constructed. Here’s a video of the 800-foot zip line at Super Bowl XLVI Village along Capitol Street in downtown Indianapolis.
UPDATE May 5, 2012
Tangled Up in Red Tape Department: First the zip line couldn’t open because of City permitting issues, now it’s stuck here because of permitting issues. The dismantling of the zip wires got underway as scheduled on Monday, but before the scaffolding could be taken down, work was stopped due to the wording on the permit. “The I’s have to be dotted and the T’s have to be crossed,” Rigsby said before he went home to Indiana without his company’s zip line, leaving Thor Equities to work out the details of the permit to take it down this week. (It was finally dismantled and trucked away.)
Still wanna zip line in New York City? Last year, a 160-foot portable zip line was added to the Summer Streets Program, run by the City’s DOT. Locations included Union Square and Foley Square in Manhattan. The annual event is on three consecutive Saturdays in the summer. The zip line was offered free of charge and was very popular. Will it be back this year?
Fed and cared for by the Rambaldi family, who own the park, the cats have appeared on calendars and starred in this 2008 film. This is not trick photography — the park’s scale models are the playground of the cats, whose names are Premuroso, Zuccherina, Pastrichio, Vittorio Emanuele, Oxford and Stu. “A thoroughly weird tour of Italy from a giant cat´s perspective,” writes Russell Bekins, who shot and edited “Italian Holiday” over a three-year period. 
