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Posts Tagged ‘carnival game’

Coney Island High Striker Queen Is Back in New Location

Posted in Amusement Game, tagged Bowery, carnival game, Fishbowl Game, game of skill, High Striker on May 20, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Coney Island’s High Striker Queen. Photo © Tricia Vita

“I’m happy to be back,” says Monica, Coney Island’s High Striker Queen, who has a new spot on the Bowery under the famed Wonder Wheel’s Thrills sign. And we’re happy to be reporting the good news. In photos taken earlier this week, Monica and her partner Jeff were overseeing construction of their new Fishbowl Game. It will officially open this weekend along with a Kiddie High Striker and Basketball Game.

As ATZ reported in March, three weeks before Coney’s March 26th Opening Day, Monica was told by a rep of 12th Street Amusements that she could not set up this year. “I’m heartbroken,” she had told us. “If I can’t find another place, I’m going to leave Coney Island for the last time.” The space on the Bowery became available for lease after longtime indie operator Jimmy Carchiolo aka Jimmy Balloons, passed away in April.

New indie games under construction on Coney Island’s Bowery. Photo © Tricia Vita

Coney Island’s High Striker Queen was the first victim of the City’s scheme to use eminent domain to acquire six privately owned lots for “the revitalization of Coney Island.” One of the lots is the location where Monica and her partner Jeff ran their popular Mom & Pop “hit the hammer, ring the bell” game for the past four seasons.

A few weeks ago, 12th Street Amusements set up their own game in Monica’s former location, which means that when the lot is finally acquired by the City to make way for Wonder Wheel Way, they would be the ones entitled to compensation.

Help Wanted: Skin the Wire & Feed the Clown Game Operator in Coney Island

Posted in jobs, tagged carnival game, Coney Island, game of skill, job, job opening, Skin the Wire, summer job on March 16, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Feed the Clown Game, West 12th Street in Coney Island. Photo © Tricia Vita

Skin the Wire, Feed the Clown, Roll-A-Coaster! Game of skill operators are needed for the 2016 season at these independent games on West 12th Street off the Coney Island Boardwalk. As a former carny kid who grew up working games on the midway, ATZ highly recommends this unique and formative job experience. And next time they call you in to play the games at San Gennaro or the state fair, you’ll be a full-fledged carny and can reply “I’m with it!”

Qualification::
–Games require manual dexterity
–Proficiency in addition. One game requires adding numbers
–Personable, outgoing and good with people
–Ability to describe and explain the games and merchandise to customers

The games open ~~March 20~~ March 25 and are open weekends and school holidays in the spring and fall, as well as some evenings in May. The daily schedule kicks in Memorial Day Weekend and runs through Labor Day Weekend. Hours and scheduling are flexible. The rate of pay starts at $10 per hour and goes up as the operator masters each of the three games.

Apply in person or leave a reply below and ATZ will forward it to the game’s owner.

skin the wire and Feed the Clown Games on West 12th Street, Coney Island. Photo © Tricia Vita via flickr

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Autumn Reading: Step Right Up! Classic American Target and Arcade Forms

Posted in art, Artifacts, Books, Reading & Writing, tagged antique shooting gallery, C.W. Parker, carnival game, Richard Tucker, shooting gallery target, Step Right Up!, Valerie Tucker, William F Mangels on December 17, 2014| 1 Comment »

After Hurricane Sandy, Coney Island got lucky when a rare vintage 1940’s Mangels shooting gallery from Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park was brought out of storage, restored, and installed at Coney Island USA’s Surf Avenue storefront. As far as we know, it’s the only one of its kind in operation that is open to the public. Since many shooting galleries were sold for scrap iron during World Wars I and II, you’re more likely to come across cast-iron and sheet-metal targets in the shape of birds and beasts, cowboys and Indians, and soldiers and torpedo boats in folk art collections than as a game in an amusement park.

Richard and Valerie Tucker’s passion for collecting figural cast iron began in the`early 1980s with the acquisition of a row of doves from a William F. Mangels’ gallery manufactured in Coney Island. Thirty years later, they own hundreds of shooting gallery targets from a variety of manufacturers. Step Right Up! Classic American Target and Arcade Forms is a sumptuous coffee table art book with more than 225 color images of American and European targets along with a sampling of carnival banners, signs and game pieces. As the first and only book on the subject, the volume is valuable to collectors and of special interest to fans of carnival art and antiques.

In addition to Mangels, the 144-page book has chapters on C.W. Parker of Kansas, William Wurfflein of Philadelphia, the John T. Dickman Company of Los Angeles and Chicago manufacturers Evans, Hoffmann, Mueller, and Smith, as well as miscellaneous targets and a few European targets. Essays by specialists on the manufacturers supplement illustrations from the Tuckers’ archive of catalogs, trade cards and other ephemera which are a great resource since the majority of targets have no trade marks.

Step Right Up! Richard and Valerie Tucker

Card Suits by WF Mangels. Private Collection. Photo: Kimberly Gavin/Kimberly Gavin Photography

One of our favorite target makers is C.W. Parker, who started out as a shooting gallery operator and soon got into the business of supplying traveling carnivals with a wide variety of attractions. Parker had a showman’s flair for borrowing design ideas from his fellow manufacturers and fashioning them into commercially successful shooting galleries and carousels.

No complete Parker galleries are known to exist or even to have been photographed, says Bob Goldsack, a Parker historian who wrote the book’s chapter on the self-proclaimed “Carnival King.” Parker’s highly detailed and mechanized targets included owls and eagles with flapping wings, whippets chasing rabbits, and the now politically incorrect circus animals, Indians, and Lincolnesque figure holding a sign that says “Hit Me” in a gallery advertised as “A New Political Shooting Gallery.”

A lecture and book signing by the authors will be held at the American Folk Art Museum, 2 Lincoln Square, Columbus Ave at 66th St, in Manhattan, on December 18 at 6pm. Admission is free of charge.

Step Right Up! Classic American Target and Arcade Forms by Richard and Valerie Tucker. Schiffer Publishing, 2014. Hardcover, $45