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San Gennaro: Cannoli, Connie Francis & A High Striker Queen

Posted in festival, Photography, Travel, tagged cannoli, Connie Francis, eating contest, High Striker, Italian feast, Little Italy, San Gennaro, street fair on September 12, 2012| 1 Comment »

Festival Wheel at San Gennaro, Little Italy. September 18, 2009. Photo © Tricia Vita/me-myself-i via flickr

It’s that time of year when you get to ride a Ferris wheel set up on the street like in the early 1900s and peer inside apartment windows as you whirl by! The 86th Annual Feast of San Gennaro in New York City’s Little Italy, the world’s most famous street fair, opens on September 13th at 2pm with a Cannoli Eating Contest. If you’ve got the appetite, registration for the contest is now open on Major League Eating’s website. The guy to beat is Patrick Bertoletti, who consumed 32 large cannnoli in six minutes at last year’s festival.

A contingent of Coney Island game and food concessionaires have already decamped from the People’s Playground for Manhattan’s Mulberry Street. Monica the High Striker Queen has packed up her trio of strikers and sundry hammers and prizes, though she says she’ll be back to finish out the season in Coney after the feast ends on September 23rd. This is the spunky gal who told a Voice of America reporter that independent attractions like hers give Coney Island its soul. “Our spirit will live on long after we’re dead, honey. We are the blood, sweat and tears on the block,” said Monica in a feature about Coney’s amusement parks.

Look for Monica, the High Striker Queen of Coney Island at San Gennaro. Photo © Tricia Vita/me-myself-i via flickr

Also making the annual pilgrimage to San Gennaro are the proprietors of Gyro Corner, formerly on Coney Island’s Boardwalk and now on the Bowery. They serve different menu items than in Coney: it’s strictly calamari and Mama’s homemade sauce. Cha Cha’s outdoor bar and Steeplechase Park on Stillwell Avenue in Coney Island are now closed for the season, but John “Cha Cha” Ciarcia is also the owner of Cha Cha’s in Bocca Al Lupo Restaurant on Mulberry Street. They are among the more than 35 restaurants and 200 vendors along Mulberry between Houston and Canal and neighboring streets. Buon appetito!

The official feast day marking the anniversary of San Gennaro’s martyrdom is September 19th. After the 5pm Mass at Most Precious Blood Church, the statue of San Gennaro is paraded through the streets. If you go to the feast, make sure to bring crisp new bills, preferably in large denominations, to pin to the beribboned saint, and stop by the Italian American Museum at Mulberry and Grand Streets. At another parade on Saturday, September 15th, legendary singer Connie Francis, born Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero, will be one of the Grand Marshals riding on a float. Will she serenade the crowd with a medley of her hits from the 1950s and ’60s? A “Meet and Greet” with Connie Francis is scheduled for 4pm on Saturday at the feast’s performance stage at Grand and Mott Streets. The street festival runs from 11am till midnight.

ATZ slide show of the 2009 Feast of San Gennaro…

Traveler: Skywheel at the Wisconsin State Fair 2012

Posted in Amusement ride, Travel, video, tagged Curtis Velare, Jim McDonnell, McDonagh Amusements, Minnesota State Fair, Skywheel, Space Wheel, Wisconsin State Fair on August 9, 2012| 1 Comment »

It’s a treat to see the classic and rarely seen Sky Wheel, one of the flashiest carnival rides of the late 1950’s and ’60s, in action on the midway at the 2012 Wisconsin State Fair. Coney Island photographer/videographer Jim McDonnell made a trip to the fair this past weekend and brought back this POV video.

The ride is owned by McDonagh Amusements and is a 1965 Allan Herschell model refurbished by them in 2003. After the Wisconsin fair closes on August 12, the Sky Wheel will travel to two American fairs famed for their independent midways: the Minnesota State Fair (August 23- September 3) and the State Fair of Texas (September 28-October 21).

Seeing the video brings back memories of the Velare brothers, Curtis and Elmer, who pioneered the eye-catching idea of two Ferris wheels, and then four, set up in a row. Their first Sky Wheel — a double wheel– debuted with Royal American Shows at Tampa and Orlando in 1940. In 1958, they introduced the Space Wheel– a double double wheel. A Billboard ad from our collection trumpets the 92-foot-tall Space Wheel as “The Greatest of all Portable Rides,” “Brilliantly Illuminated,” “Unequaled Public Appeal” and “Front Page Publicity.”

In 1960, Allan Herschell, the merry-go-round and kiddie ride manufacturer in North Tonawanda, NY, bought the patent rights to manufacture the double wheels from the Velares. Herschell president Lyndon Wilson paid tribute to the Velares’ tenacity and ingenuity. He told the Billboard that it took 20 years of hard work by the Velares to develop the double wheel and the double double wheel from wheels which were all steel and had cable drives to wheels with part aluminum, part steel construction and dual friction drives that operate like clockwork.

1958 Ad for Velare Bros Space Wheel. © Tricia Vita Collection/AmusingtheZillion

Coney Island in New Travel Channel Series on Boardwalks

Posted in Travel, video, tagged Boardwalk, Coney Island, Travel Channel, TV Series on July 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Crew shooting at the Coney Island Cyclone for an upcoming Travel Channel series on Boardwalks. July 21, 2012. Photo © Jim McDonnell

Last weekend a crew from Indigo Films was in Coney Island on a two-day shoot for an upcoming Travel Channel series. The new show is tentatively titled “Amazing Boardwalk Empires.” They filmed Coney Island’s 22nd Annual Sand Sculpting Contest and some of the features of the boardwalk as well as Luna Park and Scream Zone, the Cyclone, Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park, the Coney Island History Project, the Coney Island Sideshow and Lola Star Boutique. Coney Island was selected for the show because the Riegelmann Boardwalk is among the top beach boardwalks in the country on lists as various as National Geographic, Travel & Leisure and USA Today.

In the photo above, one of the extras is being mounted with a GoPro helmet cam to ride Zamperla’s Air Race, according to photographer Jim McDonnell. The HD camera is used a lot in shooting sports and POV videos. In the photo below, taken inside the Coney Island History Project exhibit center, Amanda Deutch is being interviewed about the history of Coney’s Boardwalk, where she leads walking tours for the History Project.

Indigo Films is an award-winning independent television production company that has produced such Travel Channel shows as Insane Coaster Wars and America’s Most Haunted Places. The Travel Channel series on Boardwalks is expected to air in September.