There’s a free music and culture festival today and on August 14 on the Boardwalk near the Parachute Jump. The Coney Island Reggae Beach Party gets underway at 2pm and the beat will go on till sundown. It’s the second season for the festival sponsored by WKCR Eastern Standard Time and the Sound Liberation Front:
Each event will feature an all-star lineup of music selectors and guest vocalists curated by WKCR host Carter Van Pelt. Some notable talents who performed at last year’s events include dancehall legends Johnny Osbourne, Carlton Livingston, and Mikey Jarrett; seminal NYC sound system Sir Tommy’s; and, legendary record producer Clive Chin.
ATZ attends the Coney Island-themed programs every year and this year is no exception. Here’s a shout out to our friends who are premiering films in Program 13 on Sunday, Sept. 26, at 2 pm! “Gizmo Kaleidoscope,” an experimental short by artist Susan Shaw, is described as “a multilayered love poem to Coney Island. It’s like being inside a ****ing pinball machine.” (Not our asterisks!). In the short “Coney Island: Secrets of the Universe” by historian Charles Denson, “Coney’s iconic cosmology comes into play when a mysterious crypto-governmental force seeks domination of the island.” Photographer and filmmaker Lou Dembrow’s documentary “Last Night in Astroland with Jimmy Prince” features the owner of Mermaid Avenue’s Major Market.
Ticket prices range from $6 for the majority of screenings to $45 for a weekend pass. Some of the programs, including a special screening of “The Warriors,” are expected to sell out, so it’s best to purchase tickets in advance via the festival’s website. Kudos to Indie Rob Leddy for once again assembling a stellar selection and Happy Tenth Anniversary!
Opening Night, Friday, September 24th…”Shape of the Shapeless” by Jayan Cherian. “This documentary tells the story of the spiritual quest of a performer, a yogi, and an artisan who transgresses the boundaries of traditional notions of body, gender, and sexuality.”
Program 6, Saturday, 6 pm…”Last Summer at Coney Island” by JL Aronson, Feature. “Coney Island is known throughout the world as the birthplace of the hot dog, the roller coaster and popular culture itself. But Coney Island is not what it used to be and the area has lingered for years as a specter of its former magnificence. Now, after years of false starts, change is coming. This film profiles a legendary amusement park at the precipice of transformation; a time and place where every summer feels like that last.”
Program 9, Saturday, 9 pm…”Springtime in November” by Jane Dorogoyer. Documentary. “A pastiche of playful images and heartfelt emotions from a Coney Island Polar Bear Club wintertime swim off the beach of Coney Island.”
Program 15, Sunday, 4 pm… “Gelber & Manning in Pictures” by James Lester. A short pilot featuring a vaudeville couple trying to keep from being torn apart in an era when gangsters ruled and burlesque sizzled.
Freak Baby Museum of Dr. Takeshi Yamada at Feast of San Gennaro, Little Italy. September 16, 2010. Photo courtesy of Takeshi Yamada
At last year’s Feast of San Gennaro, ATZ photographed quite a few Coney Islanders who’d decamped with their games, sideshows and food stands to top off the season in Little Italy. One of the strangest sights at this year’s feast, which runs through September 26th, is Dr. Takeshi Yamada and his freak baby museum from Coney Island. The Neptune Avenue resident, whose studio is known as the Museum of World Wonders, has quite a family: There’s a Two-headed Baby, Mermaid Baby, Octopus Baby, Lobster Baby, Penguin Baby, and Three-headed Baby. “His” is not just a figure of speech–the six rogue taxidermy infants are made from Yamada’s own skin!
Yamada, who has an MFA in fine art from the University of Michigan School of Art and was Grand Champion of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists in 2006, considers his artwork “specimens” rather than examples of self expression. He uses a variety of natural materials to create his curiosities including some that might be considered controversial.
When we wrote about the babies last year, readers inquired how the artist collected his skin. Yamada replied: “During summer months, I shed skins multiple times, and I carefully remove them from my body, save them, and preserve them as ‘specimens’ for my Cabinet of Curiosities. I mounted my own skin specimens on the super-realistic replicas of freak human babies, which I created. In this way their body surfaces look really real, [more] than ones replicated in other materials (rubber, plastic, fiberglass, clay etc.). In loose terms, my freak babies are my clones.”
Yamada’s full explanation, titled “Creatures as Art Supplies,” can be read in the comments section of a post written last year, “Thru Dec 31 at Coney Island Library: Artist Takeshi Yamada’s Cabinet of Curiosities.” It remains one of ATZ’s top 25 posts, thanks to curiosity about such curiosities as a mummified six-fingered witch’s hand and a three-eyed human skull. The free exhibition of oddities and rogue taxidermy artwork is currently in its fifth year at the Mermaid Avenue library, a six-minute walk from Stillwell Terminal. But if you want to see the freak babies, head over to San Gennaro or pay a visit to the nursery at Coney Island’s Museum of World Wonders.
Amusing the Zillion 