Amusing the Zillion

Astrotower Stump Is Centerpiece of Creepy Coney Graveyard

October 7, 2013 by Tricia

The AstroStump, all that remains of the Astrotower, decorated for Halloween at Coney Island’s Luna Park. October 5, 2013

ATZ’s award for the creepiest, most inappropriate Halloween decoration goes to Luna Park for a bizarre attempt at paying homage to the demolished Astrotower. Formerly wrapped in a tarp, the AstroStump is all that remains of the tower, which is now bedecked with skeleton props as the centerpiece of a faux graveyard for the park’s Halloween celebration. Seeing the blackened, blow-torched edges of the chopped down icon for the first time was very unsettling. It’s like seeing the tortured corpse of a dear departed friend who would have been 50 years old next year. They got the date wrong on the tombstone–the tower debuted in 1964, not 1962.

What were they thinking? Well, the original All Hallows’ Eve provided one last chance for humans to propitiate the restless dead and for the dead to gain vengeance before moving to the next world. Not sure if dead landmarks have restless spirits, but the Astrotower was practically human since it used to sing. It’s been three months since the genuinely horrific July 4th Week when the 275-foot tower was cut apart with blowtorches in a marathon demolition following hysterical claims that it was swaying more than usual had closed most of Coney Island. The tower’s cut-down sections were carted off to the Cropsey Avenue junkyard while the stump was hidden from view by a tarp and fenced off like it had the plague.

The Astrostump is all that remains of the 275-foot Astrotower. July 7, 2013. Photo © Tricia Vita/me-myself-i via flickr

Considering that not a trace remains of Astroland at the site of the former Astroland except this stump, it would have been more appropriate for Luna Park to put up a real plaque after the demolition. It’s distressing that a recollection of a tragic episode in Coney Island history, especially one that happened just three months ago, is reduced to a fake graveyard for Halloween.

However, not everyone agrees that this Halloween decoration is in bad taste. One Coney Island fan tweeted that the idea was “extremely clever.” Also in the faux graveyard are tombstones of long dead Coney luminaries such as Tilyou, Feltman, Handwerker and Mangels as well as a gravestone for Astroland Park. What do you think?

@LunaParkNYC Extremely clever idea to make the ruins of the AstroTower into a special Coney Graveyard! That was my favorite part of the day

— AnthonyMark (@anthony0358) October 6, 2013

Video of the Day: The Down Home Daredevils

October 6, 2013 by Tricia

“You want to go to the circus? Good news, you live in the circus!” says Tyler Fleet aka Tyler Fyre at the beginning of this sweet documentary short “The Down Home Daredevils.” Tyler and his wife Jill, whose stage name is Thrill Kill Jill, are the doting parents of two adorable little boys–Hank Lightning and Duke Dynamite. They’re also sword swallowers and fire eaters, and in Jill’s case a snake charmer, with the Lucky Daredevil Thrill Show.

The film by Corcoran College of Art new media photojournalism students Ben Dorger, Jenny Harnish and Emma Scott follows the family from their home in West Virginia to the Hell City Tattoo Convention in Columbus, Ohio. Hank, who is a toddler, joins dad onstage to do a make-believe straitjacket escape and Duke gets his first taste of applause as a babe in mom’s arms. “What the kids do in the show is up to the kids,” says Jill. “We’ll nurture them right into the show. It’s the family business.”

The film premiered at this year’s Coney Island Film Festival and was among “ATZ’s Top 10 Coney Island Film Festival Picks.”

Art of the Day: John Dunivant’s Bizarre Midway

October 4, 2013 by Tricia

John Dunivant at the Lodge Gallery in New York City, through October 12, 2013

Once upon a time, there was an enchanted amusement park, hidden on the edge of a ragged city. For one night every year, this secret kingdom made itself known and sprang to life with fire and music and dance. – until the day it was exposed – and cast out.

The Expatriate Parade began as a single sketch of a scapegoat with a ferris wheel on its back. It bore my burden as it was driven from its home by an unfeeling and unseen power. This sketch led to many more, and the resulting parade of drawings – with its ceaseless forward motion in spite of the ever changing circumstances of the moment – led me to reflect on my own life. –John Dunivant

A few years before Detroit’s Michigan State Fair, the oldest in the nation, closed forever, I had a blast working a game on the midway. “It’s Crazy Ball Fun Time! You pick the colors the crazy ball picks the winners. We’re giving it all away today at the Michigan State Fair!” Friends who lived in Detroit’s suburbs wouldn’t venture to 7 Mile and Woodward Avenue to visit, which helps explain why the fair’s attendance had plummeted to a mere 217,000.

Meanwhile, across the street, artist John Dunivant spent a decade building what he calls an abandoned theme park using iconography from Coney Island and other places. In this video by Makezine, you’ll see a Hell’s Mouth sign that takes its inspiration from the neon THRILLS sign at Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park. The artist lists natural history museums, dioramas, Halloween, souvenir postcards, the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, roadside attractions, reliquaries and religious iconography, and traveling carnivals among his obsessions and fascinations.

The drug wars in Dunivant’s neighborhood made it possible for his friend Ken Poirer to buy up property and once a year, on Halloween, their midway came to life with a phantasmagorical underground party called “Theatre Bizarre.” In addition to elaborately costumed performers, there was an operating Ferris Wheel and a homemade roller coaster. In 2010, the same year the state fair shut down, Dunivant’s illegal amusement rides and funhouses were discovered by city authorities and shut down for code violations.

John Dunivant’s “The Expatriate Parade,” a series of paintings and bronzes inspired by the closure of Theatre Bizarre, is on view through October 12 at the Lodge Gallery at 131 Chrystie Street on New York’s Lower East Side. The artist will give a talk on Saturday, October 5, at 2 pm.

Yet Theatre Bizarre lives on, at a new location –Detroit’s Masonic Temple–and won a $100,000 grant from the Knight Foundation for fostering the arts. This year the party is set for October 18 and 19. A documentary film is also in the works–here’s the splendid trailer…