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Lottery to Become Member of Coney Island Polar Bear Club

Posted in Events, News, video, tagged Coney Island, Coney Island Polar Bear Club, membership, Polar Bear Swim, winter bathing, winter swimming on November 3, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Coney Island Polar Bear Club, November 6, 2011. Photo © Bruce Handy via Coney Island Photo Diary

Best known for their New Year’s Day Polar Bear Plunge, the Coney Island Polar Bear Club actually goes for a dip in the Atlantic every Sunday at 1pm from November through April. Today, November 3rd, is the first swim of the 2013-2014 season for the country’s oldest winter bathing club, founded in 1903 by Bernarr Macfadden.

In this video by Polar Bear Capri Djatiasmoro, taken on April 28, 2013, the final cold water swim of last season, the Bears “circle up” at the ten minute mark. The water temp was 50F / 10C. Want to join them? For the 2013-2014 season, the Coney Island Polar Bears are accepting 10 applicants for membership chosen by lottery.

To register for the lottery, you must sign up here and will be notified of the results by November 9th. Selected applicants are required to pay a $25 application fee (non-refundable), participate in 12 swims within a single season between November and April and be voted in by a majority of the membership. The club has approximately 150 full-time members with about 100 coming out for weekly swims. Here’s another vid, also by Polar Bear Capri Djatiasmoro, of the group walking to the water on a cold day in January. Can you say camaraderie?

You can also join the Coney Polar Bear Club for one guest swim. Just show up at the Bears “Clubhouse” at the Aquarium’s Education Hall on the Coney Island Boardwalk at West 8th Street by 12:30 pm with your bathing suit, a towel, surf boots or an extra pair of sneakers, and some warm clothing.

Membership is not required for the January 1st Polar Bear Plunge, a fundraiser for Camp Sunshine and local charities. Besides being a great way to start off the new year, the event raises more than $20,000 annually for Camp Sunshine, a retreat for children with life threatening diseases.

Photo of the Day: Coney Island Children’s Halloween Parade

Posted in Events, News, Photo of the Day, tagged children's event, Children's Halloween Parade, Coney Island, Coney Island USA, Domenic Recchia, Halloween, Halloween costume, Luna Park on October 22, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Kids in Costume including ‘Lily’s Arcade” for last year’s Coney Island Children’s Halloween Parade, October 27, 2012. Photo © Tricia Vita

This year’s Coney Island Children’s Halloween Parade, a free event for kids up to 15 years of age, is on Saturday, October 26th. The festivities begin at 11am at MCU Park, with magicians, live music, face-painting and costumed characters like Sandy the Seagull and Nathan’s Frankster. The parade will march down the Boardwalk to Luna Park, where registered participants will receive a 4-hour Luna Park wristband and other goodies. The registration form is available here [pdf].

ATZ snapped the above photo of “Lily’s Arcade,” one of the cutest costumes at last year’s parade, but never got to post it since prep for Hurricane Sandy began the next day and Halloween was cancelled in the storm’s aftermath. This year’s 4th annual parade is hosted by Coney Island City Councilman Domenic Recchia, Jr. and the Alliance for Coney Island. The event is produced by Coney Island USA, with the Chief Justice of the Mermaid Parade, Mark Alhadeff, overseeing the Halloween Costume Contest at 12 noon.

The Coney Island parade reminds us of the early days of the now ginormous, 40-year-old Village Halloween Parade. Founded in 1974 by puppeteer Ralph Lee as a Halloween activity for children from the Westbeth Artists Community, where Lee lived, the charming little parade used to wend its way from Bank Street to Washington Square Park, while a small audience of neighborhood residents watched from the curb. Oh, yes, those were the days!

The weekend of October 26 and 27 is also the final spin of the 2013 season for the rides at Coney Island’s amusement parks– Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park, Luna Park (including the Cyclone roller coaster) and Scream Zone– which open at 12 noon. Happy Halloween!

Video of the Day: Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show

Posted in Events, Music, Music Video, tagged Barclays Center, Bob Dylan, Brooklyn, carnival, concert, girl show, Ketch Secor, Old Crow Medicine Show, Wagon Wheel on October 15, 2013| 5 Comments »

The news that Nashville-based string band Old Crow Medicine Show is coming to Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on March 7 reminded us how much we like their carnival-themed music vid for “Wagon Wheel.” Played more than 20 million times on YouTube since its debut in 2006, the video has the band on the bally stage of an old-timey carny girl show, with the girls shimmying up to the musicians as the ticket-seller counts his cash and the Rock-O-Plane whirls on the midway. It was shot in Smyrna, Tennessee, next to Snyder & Metts Amusements, which was owned by Hill Snyder and is now part of carnival history, says a poster on Matt’s Carnival Warehouse.

The band members have roots in Virginia and upstate New York, where fiddle player and vocalist Ketch Secor wrote “Wagon Wheel” as a teen. The song took its inspiration from bootleg tapes of Bob Dylan’s “Rock Me Mama” to which Secor added lyrics about hitchhiking to North Carolina.

According to music writer Peter Cooper, when Secor sought to copyright the song with Dylan for use on an album, he learned that Dylan credited the “Rock me, mama” chorus to bluesman Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, and Crudup probably borrowed his idea from an early 20th century recording by Big Bill Broonzy. “That song drags a heavy chain,” Secor told Cooper. “In a way, it’s taken something like 85 years to get completed.” Released in 2004, the song went platinum this year and the band was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry.

Tickets for the March 7, 2014 concert at Barclays go on sale Friday, October 18, with pre-sale to fans via OCMS’s website now available. The band’s 2014 tour dates in support of the Avett Brothers also include Boston, Pittsburgh and Fairfax, VA. On December 30 and New Year’s Eve, OCMS will play Nashville’s legendary Ryman Auditorium.