January | 2010 | Amusing the Zillion

Archive for January, 2010

Coney Island 2010: Good Riddance to Thor Equities Flopped Flea Market, Hello Rides?

Posted in Real Estate, Redevelopment, tagged amusement park, Coney Island, Coney Island Redevelopment, flea market, Joe Sitt, Stillwell Avenue, Thor Equities on January 8, 2010| 5 Comments »

Good riddance to the tube socks, cellphone accessories, shoe stores and automative supplies of Thor’s Flea in-fest-ation of last summer! Welcome back amusement rides on Coney Island’s Stillwell Avenue? We hope so….

January 7, 2010: New Sign on Stillwell. Photo © Bruce Handy/Pablo 57 via flickr

On Thursday the Coney Island Rumor Mill was abuzz as new signage advertising the property “For Lease” was going up at Thor Equities flea market on Stillwell behind Nathan’s. Photographer and ATZ contributor Bruce Handy/Pablo 57 snapped a photo as dusk fell over the wind-ripped tenting that housed Joe Sitt’s flop of a flea last summer. “Maybe the second highest bidder for city land would be interested in this parcel,” Handy speculated. “Gets a lot of traffic from Nathans and the subway.”

Our guess is that several bidders, including the soon-to-be designated winner, have already made inquiries about leasing Thor’s Stillwell property. During the reply period for the City’s RFP for a Coney Island Amusement Operator to bring rides and attractions to land newly purchased from Joe Sitt, potential bidders asked the City about the adjacent vacant lots. The contact info for Thor Equities and Horace Bullard was posted on the City’s Q & A for all potential bidders to see.

Land for Lease by Thor Equities: The Stillwell parcels north of the city-owned Parcels B & C and south of the Bowery. Parcel A is the former Astroland, which is now owned by the City and was up for bid in the RFP. NYCEDC Map.

The timing of Thor’s signs couldn’t have been better. The short-listed respondents to the City’s RFP were reportedly in the City yesterday and today for meetings with the NYCEDC. If the bidders who didn’t make the short list have fire in their belly to come to Coney Island, now is the time for them to deal with Sitt or Bullard. Given Thor Equities’ history of sky-high rents and onerous lease terms, we think the parcels will go to the most highly motivated bidder.

We think the winner of the City’s 10-year lease on their newly acquired 6.9 acres will want to get control of all of Stillwell and keep other amusement operators from gaining a foothold in Coney Island. Joe Sitt sold approximately half of his Stillwell property to the City. But what good is half a sandwich? It’s not enough if you’re an amusement operator with ambitions of becoming the City’s single operator in Coney Island at the end of the 10-year lease.

Summer 2009: At Thor Equities Flea by the Sea, "Tons of Fun" = Lots of Schlock. Photo © Tricia Vita/me-myself-i via flickr

A RECAP OF THOR’S UNAMUSING FLEA IN-FEST-ATION

After we reported “Memorial Day Weekend Mania: Thor Equities Coney Flea In-Fest-ation Is a Flop” (May 27, 2009), Thor brazenly went back to calling the so called fest “Flea by the Sea,” both on their website and ads. And why not? “Festival by the Sea” was indeed a flea market by the sea. Even though the permit was for a “temporary fair” because the original application for a flea market was disapproved by the DOB, the City did not enforce its own zoning against the illegal flea market in the amusement zone. “Tons of fun” it was not. A salsa band playing two sets on Saturday and Sunday was the sole entertainment at what was wrongfully billed as “A uniquely entertaining and amusing flea market in Coney Island.” We are not exaggerating. If you can stomach it, please view our complete flickr set of Thor Equities Flea Market.

We were not amused by auto supplies at Thor Equities Flea Market in Coney Island. Photo © Tricia Vita/me-myself-i via flickr

May 31, 2009: We were not amused by auto supplies at Thor Equities Flea Market in Coney Island. In the background: Shuttered Balloon Racing Game in Thor-owned Henderson Bldg. Photo © Tricia Vita/me-myself-i via flickr

Yet we saw police towing away ice cream carts belonging to vendors who lacked licenses. The little guys get their businesses shut down while Thor gets this incubator project for his shopping mall. To people who say to us, the tents are pretty or it’s better than an empty lot, we say Thor Equities deliberately created the empty lots on Stillwell in 2007, when they evicted or bulldozed thriving amusements. Remember the batting cages, go karts, bumper boats, mini golf, and climbing wall? Let’s bring ’em back to Coney Island in 2010.

Shoes Galore at Anchor Store # 7 at Joe Sitt's Flea by the Sea.vPhoto © Tricia Vita/me-myself-i via flickr

July 12, 2009: Shoes Galore at Anchor Store # 7 at Joe Sitt's Flea by the Sea. Photo © Tricia Vita/me-myself-i via flickr

From Coney Island to Russia: Time Travel via Graphic Novel

Posted in Reading & Writing, tagged book review, comic book, Coney Island, Danijel Zezelj, graphic novel, Kevin Baker, Luna Park, Russian history, Vertigo Books on January 7, 2010| 1 Comment »

Luna Park is the dazzling collaborative debut of novelist Kevin Baker (Dreamland, Strivers Row and artist Danijel Zezelj, the author of more than 20 graphic novels. Their graphic novel starts out as a noirish tale set in a Coney Island closed for the winter and being gobbled up by a Russian mobster from Brighton Beach. The year is 2009, but the narrative takes the reader hurtling through history to the war in Chechnya, as well as to Coney Island’s Luna Park, Dreamland and Steeplechase Park in the early 1900s, and the Russian Civil War (1917-1923). The trip is vertiginous, but Zezelj’s bold and emotive illustrations and colorist Dave Stewart‘s palette will sweep you away.

When we first meet the protagonist Alik, he is prowling the bleak landscape of Coney Island, murmuring his favorite line from Pushkin’s “Bronze Horseman”: “I’ll fix myself a humble, simple shelter. Where Parasha and I can live in quiet.. “

The Russian émigré is an enforcer for a loan shark who runs a shady kiddie park on the site of the original Luna Park. Of course this is a fictional alternate universe since Luna Park closed in the 1940s and the site has been occupied by a housing complex since 1959. In the novel, the Astroland Rocket and Burger Girl are still in place on the roof of Gregory & Paul’s Boardwalk food stand, but G & P’s has become a sideshow instead of Paul’s Daughter. As the saying goes, any resemblance to real characters or events is purely coincidental.

Luna Park’s lovers Alik and Marina and their doomed counterparts in the novel’s other times and places resemble a set of nesting Russian dolls. “Hey soldier c’mere and know your future,” Marina calls to Alik when they meet at the mobster Feliks’s nightclub and center of operations. Her tarot cards are inspired by the illustrious figures of Mother Russia’s past. Alik is haunted by nightmares of the war in Chechnya and guilt over the death of his lover Mariam. He tells Marina: “I don’t believe in the future.” Despite Alik’s addiction to heroin and Marina’s enslavement by the mobster who controls Coney Island, the new couple find refuge in each others arms.

Two thirds of the way though the book, Alik either falls though Baker’s equivalent of Alice’s Looking Glass or is blown to eternity in a shoot out with the mob. Perhaps Alik or one of his reincarnations is hallucinating. We’re not entirely sure. All of a sudden, Alik is no longer himself, but a little boy spending the day in Coney Island with his parents.

It is the early 1900s because the family traipses through Luna Park and Dreamland. They ride the Steeplechase horses before Alik finds himself back in Russia where he grows up to be a soldier in the Russian Civil War. The time travel speeds up and history repeats itself: love, war, betrayal, death. The shocker of an ending reveals a crime novel within a crime novel that will have you reconsidering history and re-reading Luna Park to find the clues carefully planted along the way

Luna Park. Writer: Kevin Baker. Artist: Danijel Zezelj. Colorist: Dave Stewart. Letterer: Jared K. Fletcher. Published by Vertigo Books/DC Comics, 2009. Hardcover, $24.99.

Photo Album: Coney Island Boardwalk, New Year’s Day 2010

Posted in Photo Album, tagged Boardwalk, Coney Island 2010, Coney ISland Polar Bear Swim, Freezin for a Reason, January 1, New Year's Day 2010, photo, Photography on January 2, 2010| 2 Comments »

After the January 1st Coney Island Polar Bear Club Swim, the Bears and Cubs and everyone else who’d come to celebrate New Year’s Day on the Beach and Boardwalk gathered in and around Ruby’s Bar. Here are a few pix of Coney Island luminaries, friends, strangers and their pets enjoying the occasion and the warmish weather.

Donny Vomit, MC and performer extraordinaire with the Coney Island Circus Sideshow, strides purposefully down the Boardwalk accompanied by burlesque dancer Legs Malone. Donny posted a photo diary of his third annual New Year’s Day Swim on his always engaging blog: “The water was cold but the walk back was the painful part,” he writes. “Feet were too cold to jam into the shoes so my little piggies took a beating on the way back.”

Coney Island entrepreneur Dianna Carlin aka Lola Staar and Raja Azar of Jollyship the Whiz-Bang were wearing the most adorable matching hats. The top of the Parachute Jump appears to be part of Lola’s hat! Is that freaky or what? Dianna is looking forward to a lease from the City in February 2010 for the Boardwalk spot next to Ruby’s where the Lola Staar Boutique thrived until Thor Equities evicted her in 2008. Lola’s Dreamland Roller Rink in the Childs Building on the Boardwalk at 21st Street will open for its third season in the spring.

Bow-wow! New Year’s Day doggies all dolled up for a stroll apres the Polar Bear Swim. ATZ arrived too late to see Target the famously friendly Coney Island Arcade Cat take a little walk on the Boardwalk. Among the friends with whom we exchanged New Year’s greetings in front of Ruby’s were Target’s owner, Manny Cohen of Coney Island Arcade; Stan Fox, Coney Island Arcade and the Coney Island History Project; Mark Blumenthal and Ruth Magwood of the Cyclone Roller Coaster; Benny Harrison, Jones Walk game operator; Coney Island photographers and ATZ contributors Bruce Handy and Norman Blake; and photographer Lou Dembrow of the Lower Eastside Girls Club. Happy New Year Everyone! Happy New Year to Coney Island!

Hanging out at Ruby’s Bar & Grill is both a summertime must and a New Year’s Day tradition. The joint was jumpin, inside and out, with a live band performing on the Boardwalk. Wish we hadn’t just missed the photo op with Ruby’s owner Mike Sarrel after he got back from a good luck dip in the ocean. Here’s to another great season at Coney Island’s oldest bar on the Boardwalk!

Summer or winter, dancing on the Boardwalk is a Coney Island tradition, too. The contrast between this guy’s wacky costume and the gal’s everyday attire is what caught our eye.

When we got to Ruby’s, the first person we noticed was somebody’s wonderful Grandma (wish she were ours) sitting at a table by herself watching their stuff. She was wearing a pair of glittery gold 2010 specs. Do you think she would mind if we adopted her as ATZ’s honorary Grandma of New Year’s Day?

Wet sneakers parked at Shoot the Freak apres swim while their owners party at Ruby’s. Congrats to all the Bears and cheers to all who contributed to Freezin’ for a Reason. More than $27,000 was raised by the Coney Island Polar Bears for Camp Sunshine. There’s still time to send in a check!

John D’Aquino was part of the dive team that raised the century-old Dreamland Bell from the ocean this summer. John, who swam today with his girlfriend Jamie Segschneider, has been a member of the Coney Island Polar Bear Club for a decade. If you missed the New Year’s Day Plunge, there’s always next weekend. The oldest cold-water bathing club in the U.S. goes for a dip in the Atlantic at 1 pm every Sunday from November through April. See you on the Beach!