Amusing the Zillion

Go Fly A Kite at Coney Island’s 2nd Annual Kite Festival!!

September 28, 2010 by Tricia

Skydiving in Coney Island? © 2009 Norman Blake by NB Photo Flash via flickr. All rights reserved

UPDATE…the 2015 Coney Island Kite Festival is this weekend, September 26 and 27. Go fly your kite or go take photos – FREE!

Last August in Coney Island, photographer Norman Blake photographed this airborne octopus and his skydiver friend. This weekend in Coney, you’re invited to go fly a kite at the Coney Island Kite Festival. The event will be held this Saturday and Sunday, October 2nd and 3rd, from 10 am to 5 pm on Coney Island’s beach. It’s free!

“This will be our first big official event of this year, ” said Leucio Parrella, a member of the American Kitefliers Association (AKA), who adds that the festival of 2009 was cancelled. “Our first test run of the Coney Island Kite Festival was the weekend before Thanksgiving of 2008. We had bad weather.” The good news for kitefliers and their friends is this weekend’s forecast is sunny, in the 60s.

From the official description of “The 2nd Coney Island Kite Fest” on the AKA calendar:

Fly for fun. On the beach there will be big kites such as an octopus kite. We also will have dual kites and Quad kites. Large area for free flights of kites for everyone. On the beach from Bay West 8th Street to the Steeplechase fishing pier. For additional info contact Leucio Parrella of the Kite in Motion Club at buggylou8[AT]yahoo.com or 646-912-2447

Parrella told ATZ there will be three kite fields: “Two fields for AKA members and one field for public use. AKA Dual Kites and Quad kite field is 300 x 300 square feet and starts from West Bay 8 Street, AKA Big One Line Kites is from about West Bay 10 Street (Playground Area ) to Stillwell Avenue, and Public fly field is between Stillwell Avenue and West Bay 15 Street to the Fishing Pier on the beach.”

The festival is sanctioned by the American Kitefliers Association (AKA), a nonprofit organization dedicated to sharing kiting with the world.

The American Kitefliers Association was founded in 1964 by the late Robert M. Ingraham of New Mexico. Now, with over 3,000 members, in 25 countries, we are the largest association of kiters in the world. Our purpose is to educate the public in the art, history, technology, and practice of building and flying kites – to advance the joys and values of kiting in all nations.

We are men, women, adults and children, from all walks of life. Our interests run from kitebuilding to multi-line kite competition, from miniature kites, to aerial photography and more. Some of us are in the kite trade, but we are not a trade organization.

Octopus Spotted in Coney Island © 2009 Norman Blake by NB Photo Flash via flickr. All rights reserved

Photo of the Day: Rest in Peace, John Thomas

September 27, 2010 by Tricia

Rest in Peace, John Thomas. September 27 2010. Photo © Tricia Vita/me-myself-i via flickr

On Sunday, we came upon this touching tribute to Coney Islander John Thomas, who passed away on September 10. “JT” was the longtime manager of Cha Cha’s as well as its predecessor Club Atlantis. Next Saturday his ashes will be scattered in Coney Island. Rest in Peace, JT.

Posted in In Memoriam, News, Photo of the Day | Tagged Cha-Cha's, Coney Island, John Thomas | Leave a Comment »

Video: The Museum of Wax by Charles Ludlam

September 27, 2010 by Tricia

On opening night of the Coney Island Film Festival, the first film up was Charles Ludlam’s silent horror short “The Museum of Wax,” shot in the late 1970s in Coney’s World in Wax Musee. It is a little gem, but seeing Lillie Santangelo’s long-vanished museum was eerie and sad, especially now that the Henderson Building, where it was located for more than 60 years until closing in 1984, is being demolished to make way for Thor Equities’ strip mall.

Equally eerie and sad was seeing the late and much-missed Charles Ludlam‘s brilliance on the silent screen. Ludlam’s over-the-top performances in campy melodramas like “The Mystery of Irma Vep” at his Ridiculous Theatrical Company in Sheridan Square were a must-see for us in the 1980s.

Unfinished at the time of Ludlam’s death from AIDs in 1987, this rarely seen 16 MM film was remastered by Queer/Art/Film as part of the Outfest Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation and the UCLA Film & Television Archive. OutfestLA has also made the 20-minute film available in three parts on their YouTube channel.

At Friday’s screening, Coney Island USA founder and artistic director Dick Zigun referred to the film as “a work of film genius” and noted that it was last screened in Coney Island on Halloween in 1981. The occasion was a day-long theatrical extravaganza called “Tricks or Treats,” which Zigun curated at the Wax Musee. The film was shot in a few days after Zigun introduced Ludlam to Lillie Santangelo, the elderly proprietress of the wax museum. “It was a 100 percent found location,” says Zigun, who had discovered fifty wax heads, which appear in the film, in the museum’s storage area.

“Not much was planned. It was just go for it,” recalled actor Everett Quinton, who was Ludlam’s partner and muse. Quinton, who appears as the second convict in the film, compared it to “the unfinished Michelangelo sculptures that lead up to the David. It is unfinished.” According to Outfest’s website, until the recent digital re-mastering and the addition of a new score by original composer Peter Golub, “Museum of Wax” had not been seen in over 20 years.

In an act of programming genius by Coney Island Film Festival director Rob Leddy, “The Wax Museum” shared the opening night bill with “Shape of the Shapeless,” a new documentary exploring the gender bending life and performance art of Jon Cory aka Rose Wood, and the effervescent “Dirty Martini and the New Burlesque,” which won best documentary feature.