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Coney Island Summer Reading: The Wonder City

Posted in Books, history, Reading & Writing, tagged book review, comic book, Coney Island, Courtney Zell, graphic novel, Justin Rivers, New Amsterdam, The Bell House, The Wonder City on June 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

It seems unbelievable, but in 1954, Murray Handwerker of Nathan’s Famous leased an embalmed whale and put it on display next to his Coney Island eatery to attract customers. The seventy-ton, seventy-five foot finback was on show for two months when a heat wave struck and “A Whale in Bad Odor” began driving away customers, according to news reports at the time. Neighboring business owners called the Health Department, which issued summonses for maintaining a nuisance. It ended up with Handwerker having to pay people to cut up the whale and tow it out to sea.

This odd tidbit of Coney Island history was one of the inspirations for “The Wonder City,” an ambitious new graphic novel by Justin Rivers and Courtney Zell that re-imagines the history of New York City starting with Peter Minuit’s purchase of Manhattan. Subtitled “The Great Whale of Coney Island,” the first volume in a planned six-volume series is a captivating mix of history and mythology. “Where does myth end and history begin? What if there was no difference between the two?” asks Rivers, a playwright and educator whose literary influences include Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Set in New York City in 1942, the story begins with the delightfully named and drawn “gumshoe” Velma Graydon turning up at the Brooklyn home of the Tulip family. She is ready to spend a large sum to acquire the Parelzaad, a centuries-old charm that six-year-old Lizzie Tulip nonchalantly wears around her neck. Velma is told the heirloom was a gift from the girl’s Dutch grandmother and is not for sale.

But Velma is persistent and unable to let the sought-after charm out of her sight. The next day, she follows Lizzie and her brother Owen on an outing to Coney Island. The Wonder Wheel, which graces the cover of the book, and Grandma’s Predictions, the fortunetelling machine under the Wheel, play a part in the story, along with a dead whale on display as a sideshow attraction and a live whale whose appearance causes havoc in Coney Island.

Courtney Zell’s drawings have a quirky edge and convey emotion and intrigue. As the story unfolds and the mystery deepens, we learn that Velma belongs to a group called The Light Keepers who have long searched for the Parelzaad. Velma’s research has uncovered documents that trace the charm’s origin to 17th century New Amsterdam. “My father said the charm brought prosperity to his crop,” wrote a resident of the Dutch colony in 1661. “It is our hope that you take it and bring prosperity back to our great city, the symbol of our worldly triumphs and a testament to our survival in the wilderness.”

ATZ first learned about “The Wonder City” last year via the website Kickstarter, where Rivers and Zell posted snippets of the novel-in-progress that piqued our curiosity. “The advice we’ve received from comic publishers is that the economy is bad for new comic book projects right now,” they wrote. “And the best way to get our book noticed is to self publish and get the book out there ourselves. And we’re determined to do it!” The project was successfully funded to the tune of $5518 by 62 backers, who received hand-pulled prints, signed copies of the book and the chance to be drawn into the comic as thank-yous.

The finished book was self-published this month and is on sale for $10 on the Wonder City website, etsy and Amazon. A book release party and comic book creators meet-up is set for Wednesday, June 29, at 7 pm, at The Bell House, 149 7th Street in the Gowanus area of Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Coney Island Summer Reading: Dreamland Social Club

Posted in Books, Reading & Writing, tagged book review, Coney Island, Dreamland Social Club, fiction, novel, Tara Altebrando on June 14, 2011| 2 Comments »

The quirky characters and Coney Island setting of Tara Altebrando’s new novel were so engaging that I read it on the subway to and from Coney, and then in a car on the road, in an effort to keep the story from ending.

Who wouldn’t want to belong to the Dreamland Social Club? In this novel for teenage readers, the club is an unofficial group frequented by a freaky clique at Coney Island High School. Among its members is Babette, a goth dwarf who befriends the novel’s 16-year-old heroine Jane with the explanation: “You seem cool. And you’ve got carny blood, even if it’s highly diluted.”

Jane is cool, though it takes most of the book for her to develop a sense of belonging and join the club. She and her brother Marcus have lived a nomadic life with their dad, who has designed roller coasters from Tokyo to Paris. The carny blood that Babette refers to comes from their mom’s side of the family, who were genuine Coney Island characters. But Jane and Marcus have never met their late grandparents and can hardly remember their mother, who died when they were little kids.

As a carny kid and Coney Island devotee, I felt drawn to the story of Jane’s life in Coney, where her family moves after inheriting her grandfather’s house. There’s lots of fun stuff in the attic. Jane soon learns that her grandfather “Preemie” Porcelli got his start in Coney as one of the premature babies on exhibit in Dreamland’s Baby Incubator Show. Her new friends remember him as the operator of a water race game on the Boardwalk calling them in to win prizes.

There’s also Jane’s tantalizing flirtation with Leo aka Tattoo Boy, whose father owns a Boardwalk dive bar that’s being evicted by a real estate developer who has bought up Coney Island. Does the last part sound familiar? The author has done a remarkable job of weaving Coney history and current events—both real and imagined– into a marvelous coming-of-age story.

Among the novel’s memorable details are a carousel horse from the fictional equivalent of Coney’s “B & B Carousell” chained to a radiator, vintage films of Jane’s grandmother who was a “Birdwoman” in the sideshow, and keys hidden away by her mother that still unlock long-vanished attractions. Jane’s family home gives up all of its secrets and Coney Island becomes her real home.

Tara Altebrando will appear at “Great Summer Reads for Teens” with a few other teen authors on Thursday, June 16, from 6-8 pm at Books of Wonder, 18 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011. Ph 212- 989-3270.

Dreamland Social Club by Tara Altebrando. Ages 14 and up. 389 pages. Published by Dutton Books, 2011. Hardcover, $16.99.

Boardwalk: Photos by Meredith Caliento, Spoken Word by Michael Schwartz

Posted in Photography, Reading & Writing, tagged Boardwalk, Coney Island, Meredith Caliento, Michael Schwartz, spoken word on January 8, 2011| 1 Comment »

Photographer Meredith Caliento, who lives in Sea Gate, teamed up with Coney Island poet Michael Schwartz to produce “Boardwalk,” a slideshow with words.

“It’s tough to choose a favorite photo from the slideshow, almost impossible,”” says Caliento, who studied photography at the School of Visual Arts. “But I am very fond of the far-off lifeguard chair. It reminds me of the very end of the season, those bittersweet weeks when it’s warm enough to go barefoot in the sand, but no longer warm enough to swim.”

The photographer is also partial to the two old ladies. “They represent some of the spirit of Coney Island, and the image makes me think of all the generations before us who walked on the same boardwalk we walk on today.”

Poet and playwright Michael Schwartz’s work is inspired by his Coney Island boyhood. Funded by a grant from the Brooklyn Historical Society, Schwartz delved into the Society’s Coney Island collection that includes postcards, photographs and artifacts to write his own short stories, poems, monologues, and songs about Coney Island. Schwartz hopes to complete and publish his collected works as a book. He has performed at the Bowery Poetry Club, Coney Island USA, and the Brooklyn Historical Society, among others.