Amusing the Zillion

Photo of the Day: Coney Island Children’s Halloween Parade

October 22, 2013 by Tricia

Kids in Costume including ‘Lily’s Arcade” for last year’s Coney Island Children’s Halloween Parade, October 27, 2012. Photo © Tricia Vita

This year’s Coney Island Children’s Halloween Parade, a free event for kids up to 15 years of age, is on Saturday, October 26th. The festivities begin at 11am at MCU Park, with magicians, live music, face-painting and costumed characters like Sandy the Seagull and Nathan’s Frankster. The parade will march down the Boardwalk to Luna Park, where registered participants will receive a 4-hour Luna Park wristband and other goodies. The registration form is available here [pdf].

ATZ snapped the above photo of “Lily’s Arcade,” one of the cutest costumes at last year’s parade, but never got to post it since prep for Hurricane Sandy began the next day and Halloween was cancelled in the storm’s aftermath. This year’s 4th annual parade is hosted by Coney Island City Councilman Domenic Recchia, Jr. and the Alliance for Coney Island. The event is produced by Coney Island USA, with the Chief Justice of the Mermaid Parade, Mark Alhadeff, overseeing the Halloween Costume Contest at 12 noon.

The Coney Island parade reminds us of the early days of the now ginormous, 40-year-old Village Halloween Parade. Founded in 1974 by puppeteer Ralph Lee as a Halloween activity for children from the Westbeth Artists Community, where Lee lived, the charming little parade used to wend its way from Bank Street to Washington Square Park, while a small audience of neighborhood residents watched from the curb. Oh, yes, those were the days!

The weekend of October 26 and 27 is also the final spin of the 2013 season for the rides at Coney Island’s amusement parks– Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park, Luna Park (including the Cyclone roller coaster) and Scream Zone– which open at 12 noon. Happy Halloween!

Traveler: Osteria Ai Pioppi’s Homemade Amusement Rides

October 21, 2013 by Tricia

Restaurants with amusement rides in the U.S. tend to be of the Chuck E. Cheese variety, but deep in a forest in Treviso, Italy, the Osteria Ai Pioppi offers a magical playground of handmade, human-powered amusement rides. The documentary “Ai Pioppi” released last week on Vimeo, where it was a staff pick, features a tantalizing peek at the park and an interview with Ai Pioppi’s creator.

Homemade Slide at Ai Pioppi, Treviso, Italy. Photo via aipioppi.com

“The first big ride I made was that iron slide and that was forty years ago,” says Bruno, who built the rides in his workshop after learning how to weld. “At that time it was big news. There were not many strange rides like that.”

Homemade Roller Coaster at Ai Pioppi, Treviso, Italy. Photo via aipioppi.com

Ai Pioppi’s swings, gyroscopes and roller coasters call to mind the hand-cranked carousels of the earliest days of amusement ride history and the Swingin’ Gym carnival ride of the 1960s. The source of Bruno’s inspiration? “A branch falls, a leaf floats down, a stone rolls. And I say to myself. Maybe I can use this movement. That’s how my ideas are born.”

Beautifully photographed by Coleman Guyon and written by Luiz Romero, the documentary was produced by a team from Treviso-based Fabrica, a communications research center, studio and school.

Homemade Gyro Gym at Ai Pioppi, Treviso, Italy. Photo via aipioppi.com

Zipper Doc at Film Fest in Wichita, Home of the Zipper

October 18, 2013 by Tricia

Cinematographer Mark Schwartzbard filming at Chance Factory in Wichita, Kansas in 2011. Photo via Zipper Facebbok

It’s beyond cool that Amy Nicholson’s documentary “Zipper: Coney Island’s Last Wild Ride” is traveling this weekend to a film festival in Wichita, Kansas, the home of the Zipper. Part of the film was shot at Chance Rides factory in Wichita, where the classic ride was invented in 1968 and the company’s elderly founder Harold Chance and his son Dick Chance were interviewed. Coney Island’s Zipper was number 34 of the 224 that were built.

The film will be screened at the Tallgrass Film Festival at 1:30pm on Friday, October 18, and at 2:30 pm on Saturday, October 19.

From ATZ’s review of the film when it premiered last year: “A small-time ride operator and his beloved carnival contraption become casualties in the battle over the future of Coney Island” is the film’s capsule description. Eddie Miranda, who worked on Coney Island’s rides since he was a boy, owned and operated the Zipper and Spider for a decade. In the doc, Eddie’s Zipper represents all of the mom-and-pops who were displaced by the real estate speculation that was set off by the Bloomberg administration’s plan to rezone Coney Island.”

Zipper has an upcoming screening at Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Wednesday, October 30th, 9:30pm and is also available on itunes.