Events | Amusing the Zillion

Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

Art of the Day: Creepshow at the Freakshow Is Back

Posted in art, Events, tagged Al Capone, Coney Island, Coney Island Criminals, Coney Island USA, Dick Zigun, Halloween, Harvard Inn, Marie Roberts, Scarface, theater on October 10, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Creepshow at the Freakshow Banner by Marie Roberts, painted in 2004. Photo taken October 27, 2012. © Tricia Vita

Artist Marie Roberts, whose sideshow banners adorn Coney Island USA’s facade, painted this one for Creepshow at the Freakshow in 2004. ATZ snapped this photo last October, but never got to post it or review the play since it was cancelled the very next day due to Superstorm Sandy! This year’s Creepshow, titled “Coney Island Criminals,” is opening this weekend, and Marie’s banner, which survived the storm, is once again in the window on Surf Avenue beckoning passersby to stop and buy tickets.

Written and directed by Dick Zigun, the interactive play takes its inspiration from an episode in the early career of Al Capone. The gangster got his nickname “Scarface” in 1917 after getting slashed at Coney Island’s Harvard Inn where he worked as a bartender/bouncer. More of Marie Roberts art will be seen in the show, including a painting of an Ivy League rowing club and the logo of Yale University’s secret society Skull and Bones, which is beguiling considering that the Harvard Inn was owned by a gang boss known as Frankie Yale and Dick Zigun is a Yale School of Drama grad.

The play also features CIUSA outside talker Scott Baker as Jimmy Durante, who got his start playing piano in Coney Island. Set design is by Kate Dale, the Juilliard prop shop supervisor and veteran “Best Mermaid” who has been the Creepshow’s designer for the past eight years. Since the Harvard Inn burned down long ago and even Seaside Walk, the street it was on, is no more, being in the audience at “Coney Island Criminals” and possibly getting hit in the face with spaghetti or made into the mob is as close as you’ll get to this place.

Coney Island USA, 1208 Surf Ave. Corner of Surf Avenue and West 12th Street, Coney Island. Creepshow at the Freakshow runs from October 11 through Halloween. Check website for days and showtimes. Tickets are $15 in advance or at the door.

Art of the Day: John Dunivant’s Bizarre Midway

Posted in art, Events, tagged Detroit, Halloween, John Dunivant, The Lodge Gallery, Theatre Bizarre on October 4, 2013| 3 Comments »

John Dunivant at the Lodge Gallery in New York City, through October 12, 2013

Once upon a time, there was an enchanted amusement park, hidden on the edge of a ragged city. For one night every year, this secret kingdom made itself known and sprang to life with fire and music and dance. – until the day it was exposed – and cast out.

The Expatriate Parade began as a single sketch of a scapegoat with a ferris wheel on its back. It bore my burden as it was driven from its home by an unfeeling and unseen power. This sketch led to many more, and the resulting parade of drawings – with its ceaseless forward motion in spite of the ever changing circumstances of the moment – led me to reflect on my own life. –John Dunivant

A few years before Detroit’s Michigan State Fair, the oldest in the nation, closed forever, I had a blast working a game on the midway. “It’s Crazy Ball Fun Time! You pick the colors the crazy ball picks the winners. We’re giving it all away today at the Michigan State Fair!” Friends who lived in Detroit’s suburbs wouldn’t venture to 7 Mile and Woodward Avenue to visit, which helps explain why the fair’s attendance had plummeted to a mere 217,000.

Meanwhile, across the street, artist John Dunivant spent a decade building what he calls an abandoned theme park using iconography from Coney Island and other places. In this video by Makezine, you’ll see a Hell’s Mouth sign that takes its inspiration from the neon THRILLS sign at Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park. The artist lists natural history museums, dioramas, Halloween, souvenir postcards, the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, roadside attractions, reliquaries and religious iconography, and traveling carnivals among his obsessions and fascinations.

The drug wars in Dunivant’s neighborhood made it possible for his friend Ken Poirer to buy up property and once a year, on Halloween, their midway came to life with a phantasmagorical underground party called “Theatre Bizarre.” In addition to elaborately costumed performers, there was an operating Ferris Wheel and a homemade roller coaster. In 2010, the same year the state fair shut down, Dunivant’s illegal amusement rides and funhouses were discovered by city authorities and shut down for code violations.

John Dunivant’s “The Expatriate Parade,” a series of paintings and bronzes inspired by the closure of Theatre Bizarre, is on view through October 12 at the Lodge Gallery at 131 Chrystie Street on New York’s Lower East Side. The artist will give a talk on Saturday, October 5, at 2 pm.

Yet Theatre Bizarre lives on, at a new location –Detroit’s Masonic Temple–and won a $100,000 grant from the Knight Foundation for fostering the arts. This year the party is set for October 18 and 19. A documentary film is also in the works–here’s the splendid trailer…

Photo Album: 87th Annual Feast of San Gennaro

Posted in Events, festival, tagged Church of the Most Precious Blood, Feast of San Gennaro, Italian feast, Little Italy, San Gennaro, San Gennaro's blood on September 20, 2013| Leave a Comment »

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

This is the last weekend for the 87th Annual Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy, which wraps up on Sunday. Last night, we took these photos of the crowds, the food and the carnival games on Mulberry Street, as well as the procession featuring the Statue of San Gennaro and the interior of the Church of the Most Precious Blood. Yesterday, September 19th, was the day of the saint’s martyrdom in the 4th century and thus the procession and the miracle. We were told that at 9:30am in Naples, where his body is preserved and he is honored as the city’s principal patron, the blood of San Gennaro liquefied.

According to a pamphlet at the Shrine of San Gennaro on Baxter Street

The blood of Saint Gennaro is contained in two glass phials of different shapes and sizes. Both phials are perfectly sealed and are enclosed in a metal case which permits them to be exposed to view. The blood in the larger phial reaches about the halfway mark; in the smaller container only a few drops are seen adhering to the bottom.

And the prodigy? This martyr’s blood, which is normally solidified and of a dark color, occasionally becomes liquid and reddish, sometimes frothing, bubbling up, and increasing in volume. This usually occurs twice a year: on the first Sunday of May, the feast of the transfer of the saint’s relics; also on September 19, the anniversary of the martyrdom

Time Magazine lists the Blood of San Gennaro among the Top 10 religious relics. Belief in the miracle has continued because in years when the blood failed to liquefy, catastrophe struck: the plague of 1527, an earthquake in 1980 and even the defeat of the Napoli soccer club.