The Coney Island Dancers, whose Boardwalk dance parties are legendary, had their annual street festival on Saturday. If you missed it, take a look at this video from Jim McDonnell of a solo dancer on West 10th Street. Every year, Jim makes a video titled Coney Island Dancing, so we have a feeling there’s more to come.
The second video by jrmojicannyc1 features a stellar troupe of guest performers’ tribute to Michael Jackson. The Coney Island Dancers outdoor house music dance parties continue through September.
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.
The scaffolding towers for the Coney Island Zip Line started going up last week on Stillwell Avenue, but construction has not been completed. No one was working over the weekend. The gates were locked and the lot was a ghost town. Sources told ATZ that the zip line expects to be ready to open next weekend.
In the meantime, the BK Festival’s merchandise vendors who sell hats, sunglasses, jewelry and other items under the multicolored tents did not open as usual on Saturday and Sunday. Word on the street is they were closed because of the ongoing construction. Will they be allowed to open when people are zipping overhead? The new attraction is being set up behind Nathan’s and runs from the Bowery and Stillwell Avenue to West 15th Street. Originally slated to traverse Stillwell Avenue and open in July, the zip line’s debut has been rescheduled a couple of times due to paperwork delays. “It’s taken a bit longer than we thought to get the engineering drawings required for this project,” zip line operator Patrick Ingram told ATZ when we first wrote about it in June.
Another zip line in the news last week was in the UK, where London’s Mayor Boris Johnson got stuck in mid-air when he tried out the 1,000-foot ride at an Olympics celebration. This comic video of him merrily waving little Union Jacks before the zip stalled went viral and won him fans in China. “I love his spontaneity, not pretentious at all!,” one wrote on the social networking site Weibo, according to the Wall Street Journal. Will Coney Island “Mayor” and Mermaid Parade founder Dick Zigun be the first to ride Coney’s new zip line?
The Zipline is finished and ready for zipliners. On Thursday and Friday the crew was being trained and the zipline was tested. We’re expecting it to open today and will post an update via twitter
UPDATE August 7, 2012
Yay! Construction resumed today on the platforms for the Coney Island Zipline.
Amusing the Zillion 