Gregory & Paul’s | Amusing the Zillion

Posts Tagged ‘Gregory & Paul’s’

The End of Paul’s Daughter As We Know It–Will They Return?

Posted in Food & Drink, Redevelopment, tagged Coney Island, Gregory & Paul's, Paul's Daughter, Zamperla on November 13, 2011| 7 Comments »

Paul Georgoulakos, 82, the oldest operator on the Coney Island Boardwalk, in front of the now vacant Paul's Daughter. The store was founded as Gregory & Paul's

On Friday, Paul Georgoulakos and his help began the sad task of removing the hand-painted vernacular signage from Paul’s Daughter’s storefront, which he co-founded on the Coney Island Boardwalk in 1962 as Gregory & Paul’s. It was heartbreaking to see the cavalcade of beloved characters and foods torn from their home on the Boardwalk: Mr Shrimp, Chiefito and Chiefita (the Nice N Sweet/Fluffy Cotton Candy Kids), Shish Kebab (“Made with Love”) and other enticements. Some of the signage has been here since the restaurant’s earliest days and was meticulously restored a couple of years ago. The restaurant equipment was also cleaned, wrapped and carted off to storage.

Signage being removed from Paul's Daughter. November 11, 2011. Photo © Eric Kowalsky

We have to warn you that the set of photos taken today by Bruce Handy is very distressing to look at. Paul’s Daughter as we know it no longer exists. If redevelopment is hell, we have probably entered the tenth circle of the inferno. In Bruce’s Coney Island Photo Diary slide show, you’ll witness the facade of the Boardwalk icon gradually stripped down to ghost signage. The burger statues on the roof, which we wrote about in “Photo of the Day: Coney Island Americana Looking for New Beach” (ATZ, October 13, 2011) are expected to come down this week. Will somebody please make a video? It will be a suitable companion piece to the video of the Astroland Rocket being removed from the roof.

A new version of the iconic restaurant may or may not return to this spot, depending on how lease negotiations go with Zamperla USA. We’ll get to that in a minute and hope the possibility consoles you a little. There’s a rendering, which was shown at the AIA forum the other night–if you must see it now, scroll down. But first we’d like to pay our respects to the original Gregory & Paul’s, which became Paul’s Daughter in 2008. Here’s a photo taken in 2005 by James and Karla Murray from their celebrated book STORE FRONT- The Disappearing Face of New York. Today another legendary New York City store front has disappeared thanks to redevelopment and gentrification.

Gregory & Paul's with Astroland Rocket on the roof photographed in 2005 for the book STORE FRONT- The Disappearing Face of New York. Photo © James and Karla Murray

The beloved seaside restaurant and its signage were featured in the 1999 music video “Summer Girls,” in which the band LFO danced on the boardwalk as well as on the roof in front of the Astroland Rocket. Taken as a whole, Paul’s store is a sublime example of the midway maxim “It’s the front of the show that gets the dough!” It’s a lesson that their new neighbor Coney Cones, which has a store front that would look at ease in Manhattan or Miami, but doesn’t stand out in Coney Island, is apparently unfamiliar with. Savvy restaurateurs are not necessarily successful Boardwalk concessionaires.

In 2012, Paul’s storefront would have been fifty years old and eligible for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. (Yes, there are examples of roadside architecture on the Register.) Now that will never happen. Instead Paul’s, Ruby’s and the other Boardwalk businesses are required to renovate and pay the high cost of the rehab–reportedly half a million to a million dollars–if they want to be part of the new Coney Island. Here’s our flickr slide show of photos of Paul’s Daughter that we’ve taken over the past few years.

The removal of the signage does not necessarily spell the end of Paul’s Daughter in Coney Island, since Zamperla recently did an about-face from last year’s evictions and offered eight-year leases to Boardwalk favorites Paul’s Daughter and Ruby’s Bar. Negotiations continue with the store owners and a decision is expected after Thanksgiving, perhaps sooner, ATZ has learned. A number of clauses in the leases, which we previously described as onerous, have caused the negotiations to be extended beyond the original November 14 deadline, according to the Coney Island Rumor Mill. “It could go either way,” is the phrase we keep hearing in reference to both Paul’s and Ruby’s.

The two Mom and Pops were offered leases after a Miami restaurateur pulled out of a $5 million dollar deal to redevelop the Boardwalk. According to the New York Post story by Rich Calder, Coney Cones co-owner Michele Merlo said business at his new store had been “very disappointing” because of the bad weather and told other Boardwalk vendors “they can’t make money off Zamperla’s existing lease offer.”

Will Paul's Daughter Be Back? Architectural rendering for the new Paul's Daughter shown at November 11 Coney Island Panel at AIA. Photo via Amusing the Zillion

At Friday night’s panel on the Future of the Coney Island Amusement Area at the AIA, we were surprised when Zamperla’s Valerio Ferrari showed slides of the business owners’ renderings for their proposed stores, despite the fact that leases have yet to be signed with some of them. We hope this is a sign that Zamperla is motivated to negotiate a fair lease deal with the Mom and Pop businesses. As we wrote last month:

Each of the Boardwalk Mom and Pops has been paying $100,000 per year rent, plus a $10,000 surcharge initiated this year to help keep the Boardwalk restrooms open later and for sanitation and fireworks. Believe it or not, $100,000 is also the base rent that CAI/Zamperla USA pays annually to the City. In addition, they also pay a small percentage of the gross receipts. For example, ten percent of gross receipts over $7 million. According to the NYC Economic Development Corporation’s lease with CAI (which ATZ obtained last year through the Freedom of Information Act), the City will receive 15% of the fixed rent paid by any subtenant. Zamperla gets to keep the other 85%. We think they have a pretty sweet deal with the City and should pass the sugar.

We were pleasantly surprised by the renderings for Ruby’s and Paul’s Daughter. The Boardwalk will not after all be rethemed as an orange-and-blue advertisement for Luna Park as previous drawings have suggested. Paul’s Daughters’ rendering for their proposed store shows the spruced up Burger People on the roof and what appears to be new hand-painted signage along the bottom. Stay tuned for our report on the AIA panel and the renderings of the other Boardwalk businesses.

From Zamperla's Slide Show at AIA Panel: An early rendering of 'Phase III: Improving the Coney Island Boardwalk' shows Luna Park's themeing applied to Coney Cones and Paul's Daughter. Photo via Amusingthezillion.com

Photo of the Day: Coney Island Americana Looking for New Beach

Posted in Photo of the Day, Redevelopment, tagged A & W Root Beer Family, Americana, Coney Island Boardwalk, Countdown to Corporatization, Gregory & Paul's, Paul's Daughter, roadside architecture on October 13, 2011| 2 Comments »

Looking for a New Beach: Papa Burger Atop Paul' s Daughter, Coney Island Boardwalk. October 8, 2011

Last week, a new sign was seen on the roof of Paul’s Daughter, a 49-year-old Coney Island Mom and Pop being booted off the City-owned Boardwalk at the end of the month. Papa Burger, a winsome fiberglass figure, is sporting a sign that says “Looking for a New Beach.”

“I am looking for a new location,” Tina Georgoulakos, the owner of Paul’s Daughter, told ATZ. “Our first preference is to stay on the Boardwalk in Coney Island, if we can’t have that, then we are looking for another beach.”

What are her plans for Mama and Papa Burger? The reason we ask is numerous people, including fans of roadside signage, have sent emails expressing concern about the fate of the figures, which have been part of the Coney Island skyline for decades. They wanted to make sure these rare pieces of roadside Americana were preserved. Last fall, when the businesses first received “Surrender the Premises” notices, among the people we heard from was Debra Jane Seltzer, a devotee of roadside architecture who has catalogued the whereabouts of the Burger figures known as the “A & W Root Beer Family” on her wonderful website RoadsideArchitecture.com.

“The A&W Burger Family may not be the biggest giants out there but they are arguably the cutest,” writes Seltzer on the “Land of Giants” section of her site. “In 1963, A&W introduced four choices of hamburgers and their corresponding Burger Family members: Papa Burger, Mama Burger, Baby Burger, and Teen Burger.” When A & W introduced another mascot called “the Great Root Bear” in 1974, some stores began selling off the burger figures, which have ended up at places as various as Magic Forest in Lake George, New York, and the backyard of a private residence in Portland, Oregon. Others are in storage or have been greatly altered, according to Seltzer’s research.

Burger Girl at Paul's Daughter, Coney Island. November 13, 2010. Photo © me-myself-i/Tricia Vita via flickr

“I found the man that made them,” Tina says. “It took all day. His name is Steve Dashew.” There’s a touch of excitement in her voice. In an interview with Roadside America, the former president of International Fiberglass and creator of the Muffler Men and other figures said, “My favorite of all of them was a ‘burger family’: Mama Burger, Papa Burger, Baby Burger, a little larger than life-sized.” Tina contacted him to find out how much the Burger people weighed, so she’d know if a crane would be required to remove them from the roof. It turns out Papa Burger is 10 feet tall, 6 feet wide, and weighs 250 pounds. “I’m going to wrap them with ropes and lower them down,” Tina said. “I am taking every single thing with me. Anything that has meaning is coming with me.”

Another soon-to-vanish piece of Coney Island Americana is the vernacular signage of Paul’s Daughter, including Mister Shrimp and other favorites, which we will detail in another post. “I had considered an auction of certain things but I’m not sure what they are,” says Tina. “It will all depend on whether we move the business somewhere else and I don’t have the answer to that as of yet. If I can’t use them, then I will be auctioning them off.”

Formerly known as Gregory & Paul’s, the beloved seaside restaurant and its signage is featured in the book “Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York” (see photo here). It was also the scene of the 1999 music video “Summer Girls,” in which the band LFO danced on the roof in front of the Astroland Rocket. “It was a sad day when the Rocket left,” says Tina. “The Burger statues really miss it. We do too!” Why doesn’t the City keep Paul’s Daughter, the Burger Family and return the Rocket to its rightful place on the roof?

The restaurant is being evicted from the Boardwalk property to make way for a gentrified, corporatized Coney Island. The City-owned property is expected to be taken over by a concession run by France’s Sodexo, the world’s 21st largest corporation. Sodexo was chosen by the Italian company that runs Luna Park to be their partner for “On-Site Service Solutions.”

Through November 4th, ATZ is posting a favorite photo (or two) a day to say goodbye to the Boardwalk Mom and Pops who must “Surrender the Premises” at the end of the month. Click the tag “Countdown to Corporatization” to see all of the posts.

Photo of the Day: “The Chief” of the Coney Island Boardwalk

Posted in Food & Drink, Photo of the Day, Redevelopment, tagged Coney Island Boardwalk, Countdown to Corporatization, Gregory & Paul's, Paul Georgoulakos, Paul's Daughter, Sodexo on October 8, 2011| 7 Comments »

When we stopped by Paul’s Daughter last Monday, “The Chief” called out “light, no sugar” to a helper and offered us coffee and cookies. Paul Georgoulakos, 82, is the oldest operator on the Coney Island Boardwalk and beloved by all except the Bloomberg administration, which purchased the property occupied by his restaurant from Thor Equities, and Zamperla’s Luna Park, which leases it from the City. As Paul’s daughter Tina told ATZ earlier this year: “I wanted so much to be a part of the New Coney Island but they didn’t even offer me a tiny little spot on the Boardwalk.”

The Boardwalk restaurant formerly known as Gregory & Paul’s, a masterpiece of vernacular signage established in 1962, is being kicked out to make way for a soulless cafeteria run by Sodexo. The French multinational is the world’s largest food services management company and the world’s 21st largest corporation. In Coney Island, Sodexo also operates the new Cyclone Cafe on Surf Avenue, though you won’t find their name on the marquee. Apparently Luna Park’s “partner for one-site service solutions” likes to keep a low profile in the People’s Playground.

The City’s revitalization plan calls for year-round restaurants in Coney Island’s amusement zone. On Monday, Paul’s Daughter as well as Ruby’s Bar, Gyro Corner and the Suh family’s souvenir shop, whose days on the Boardwalk are also coming to an end, were open as usual. Sodexo’s Cyclone Cafe was shut tight as a drum.

With 27 days left until seven Mom & Pops are kicked off the Coney Island Boardwalk, ATZ will be saying goodbye to old friends with a favorite photo a day. The seven businesses must vacate the premises by November 4th. The one-year reprieve is over. If you have a photo, new or old, that you’d like to contribute, please post a link below or send to hello[AT]triciavita[dot}com