When we stopped by Lola Star’s Boardwalk Gift Shop on Friday, rainbow-colored floor tile was being laid and a humongous “Dollar Sale” was in the works. The fashionably skinny boutique was the only store on the Boardwalk open for business since the others are still being renovated.
The new look for the Boardwalk includes lighted signage replacing the quirky hand-lettered signs of recent decades. Both the old and the new Lola Star Gift Shop signs were designed by the shop’s eponymous owner aka Dianna Carlin. On the new sign, the ‘Lola Star’ is pink neon, the 3D clouds are outlined with dancing circus lights, and the face and star illuminated in brilliant color, she says. The sign will be installed in the next few weeks. According to Carlin, this sign is merely Phase 1. “In Phase 2 there is going to be a gigantic disco ball rotating on the roof with a 3D Lola Star on Roller skates standing on the disco ball!”
The Lola Star Boutique is also undergoing an expansion into the back room formerly used for storage. The “Dollar Sale” of toys and treasures from the boutique’s inventory continues Thursday through Sunday from 12 – 6 pm. “The most popular item in our dollar sale thus far are our action figures! Jesus, Mozart, Marie Antoinette, Van Gogh and more… usually $10 now on sale for only $1,” says Carlin. “We’ve also been selling lots of grow toys for $1. Grow a mermaid, boyfriend, sugar daddy, desperate housewife and more!”
Over the weekend, Coney Island photographer Bruce Handy spotted these protest signs on a building facing the Boardwalk on the east side of Ocean Parkway in Brighton Beach. “The sign is located on the wooden boardwalk just east of the concrete ‘boardwalk.’ It will probably be the next section converted to concrete,” he said.
Last week, ATZ had a bad Monday and so did New York City. I wasted 5 hours of my life at the Public Design Commission’s charade of a public hearing about the reconstruction of the Coney Island Boardwalk. A ten-foot-wide Concrete Lane for so-called “emergency vehicles” and an adjoining Plasticwalk were unanimously approved by the Commissioners for a pilot project in Brighton Beach. Every news reporter who covers Coney was there and stayed till the bitter end, so in all likelihood you’ve seen the headlines: “Pave Paradise and Put Up a Sidewalk: City Approves Concrete Coney Island Boardwalk” (New York Observer) and “New York City To Take The Board Out Of Fabled Coney Island Boardwalk” (WPIX).
As one of the 48 people who stayed to testify–some of my fellow citizens had to leave to go back to work–I have to say the way the meeting was conducted made a mockery of democracy and public hearings. Earlier this month, ATZ wrote “The Ten People Who Will Decide the Fate of the Boardwalk.” Well, only seven commissioners showed up and one–Alice Aycock–left early, kissing her colleagues goodbye in the middle of someone’s testimony.
How does it happen that in a city of more than 8 million people, six people get to decide the fate of the Coney Island Boardwalk and appear to have decided in advance of the so-called public hearing? They are Mayoral appointees. The local Community Board 13 voted against this proposal 21 to 7, but their vote was ignored because it’s “advisory.” One of the public comments at the hearing was that the Boardwalk should be renamed the Public Design Commission Concretewalk because it will no longer be the Riegelmann Boardwalk. After the vote, Commissioner Signe Nielsen turned around in her chair to say defensively to the shocked audience that the commissioners were New Yorkers who’d been to Coney Island and not aliens from outer space.
It was a bad sign at the start of public testimony when the commissioners arbitrarily lopped off the usual 3-minute speaking time for each member of the public to 2 minutes. I felt sad for the people who’d taken the time to prepare written statements that were precisely 3 minutes long. A firecracker of a woman from Brighton Beach exchanged a few words of Yiddish with the commish who said she had “20 seconds” left. Yiddish is a great language to be pissed off in, one of my twitter followers says. The leaders of the Coney Brighton Boardwalk Alliance were pissed off too. Here are a couple of excerpts from Christianna Nelson’s report on the hearing on CBBA’s website:
Mike Caruso traveled all the way from West Virginia just to attend the hearing and speak about black locust wood, a rainforest wood alternative with longevity similar to ipe. This wood expert was only allowed two minutes to share his information. The Parks Department spent a lot of time wringing their hands that there is no black locust wood available when there was an expert in the room who said he has this wood available and would be willing to work with them on providing it to their specifications. When Commissioner Byron Kim suggested pursuing this, the other Commissioners ignored this suggestion and moved on.
Several of the most intelligent questions were never fully answered or explored. For example, Commissioner Byron Kim asked several questions about the concrete strip down the center of the boardwalk. He wondered why, if this is a pilot program testing a new material, they couldn’t use RPL for the whole decking to see how it fared. The Parks Department answered that they had found that RPL was too slippery for vehicles. Kim pointed out that he had seen numerous photos of ice building up on concrete sections of the boardwalk, yet the Parks Department was proposing concrete for the vehicle lane. “Isn’t ice more slippery?” he asked. The Parks Department replied that most emergencies happen in the summer. And the Design Commission left it at that.
The fight goes on to save other parts of the Boardwalk. Please write to the Mayor’s office and tell New York City that you don’t want to see any more of the historic Coney Island Boardwalk destroyed. Please also sign the online petition, if you haven’t already, and continue to circulate it to friends.
As I headed into the elevator, another person who’d wasted the day at the Public Design Commission said into a cell phone: “They approved a bad plan for the Boardwalk. They blew it.”
Since the Coney Island-Brighton Beach Concretewalk Blues has yet to be composed, here’s Counting Crows version of “Paved Paradise…” filmed on location in Astroland and the Coney Island Boardwalk in 2002. Hat tip to @eastcoastimages.
These photos taken on Saturday by photographer Bruce Handy show the first signs of new construction as Coney Island begins to awaken from winter hibernation. Coney’s 62 amusement rides and diverse attractions are ready to open with the usual fanfare on Palm Sunday, which is April 1st. The renovation of the Boardwalk stores is still underway and by the looks of the construction, most store owners won’t be ready till May. Construction hasn’t started yet on Zamperla’s new Speed Zone, featuring go karts and a Sky Coaster, but it is not slated to open till Memorial Day.
At the corner of West 12th Street, Nathan’s Famous new Boardwalk outpost is quickly taking shape and is likely to be the first of the new stores to finish construction. At the moment a coat of yellow paint covers the side of the red storefront formerly occupied by Gyro Corner Clam Bar. The “Hey Joey!” mural by gents of desire is already history. Like the Nathan’s satellite previously at the corner of the Boardwalk and Stillwell, this store will have a walk-up counter and no indoor seating. In the slide show below, you can see photos of the construction at Ruby’s Bar and Paul’s Daughter, the BK Festival lot, Thor Equities new plywood-encased building at Surf and Stillwell and the still-closed Henderson Walk.
The photo above shows construction progress at Steeplechase Plaza, which broke ground in November. When completed in 2013, the oceanfront plaza on the site of the former Steeplechase Park will be home to the B & B — short for Bishoff and Brienstein — Coney Island’s last antique wooden carousel. Purchased by the City for $1.8 million in 2005, the ride will be installed in a glass pavilion with large-scale neon lettering spelling B & B CAROUSELL with a double L, of course.
Between the Parachute Jump and the carousel there will be a public plaza at grade with the Boardwalk. Additional features include a tree-shaded area with seating and a walkway beneath the Parachute Jump structure which will allow visitors to enjoy a spectacular view of the landmark. Construction of the 2.2 acre plaza is expected to cost approximately $29.5 million, according to the City.
This new store will be the home of Popeyes Chicken. The popular fast-food restaurant is coming back to the south side of Coney Island’s Surf Avenue after more than a year’s absence. The location is the first floor of the Popper Building at 1220 Surf Avenue, just a few doors down from the restaurant’s previous spot. Popeyes owner had been in business year-round at this location in Coney Island for 27 years when he lost his lease in the now-demolished Henderson Building at the corner of Surf and Stillwell. Prior to Popeye’s, he operated Kennedy Fried Chicken. Ironically, the generic-looking new building that Thor Equities put up on the Henderson site remains vacant and was recently encased in plywood.
Amusing the Zillion 