"A Walk Around The Blog" is series that profiles Brooklyn bloggers. It is a part of the news magazine program Brooklyn Review that airs on Brooklyn Independent Television.
In this episode Ben Nadler of Kinetic Carnival talks to some of the folks at Surfside Gardens in Coney Island about the future of their community garden as development plans threaten to convert their beautiful garden to low-cost housing.
The Voyages Extraordinaire website brings us the "Fatty" Arbuckle comedy short "Coney Island" (1917). If you haven't seen this one before, there are a few shots of Luna Park. You can see all three parts.After our look at the historical Coney Island amusement park, a turn-of-the-century icon of American entertainment, it is only fitting to present the 1917 comedy short Coney Island. This film stars Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and his then-partner Buster Keaton, but is as notable for both The Great Stone Face's emoting and its scenery of Coney Island.
Happy Birthday to one of the best blogs around. The Gowanus Lounge has proven to be a dynamic source of news and information covering Brooklyn - one of the most interesting places in the world. While doing so they were sure to never fall short of their keen passion for Coney Island.The time has come. We've gone live with our new GL site, gowanuslounge.com. Please reset your bookmarks or get used to typing in gowanuslounge.com and leaving out the blogspot. Most important, please, please, please reset your RSS feed. We apologize for this one-time inconvenience and really hope you'll stay with it. We think the new look is better and easier to read and give us a lot more functionality. GL will still be here, but other than reminders to move, we won't be putting up new posts here. The archives, of course, will remain, but we've also migrated them, in full, to the new site.
The city's revised plan was first announced two weeks ago in a New York Times article. It's therefore only fitting that the best criticism of the plan should be found in the Village Voice's Neil deMause article:Coney Island historian Charles Denson was shocked to hear, in a phone call the night before the Times piece ran, that the city was switching gears. "The original plan was a compromise, and I supported that completely," says Denson. "In exchange for saving the amusement area, they were allowing 5,000 condos at the outer edge. Now it's such a reversal --although it does preserve a small amusement area, it's so completely different from what they'd initially proposed that you have to wonder what's going on behind the scenes."
The corner of Stillwell and Mermaid Avenues has been dedicated as "Granville T. Woods Way" in honor of a prolific African-American inventor of the early Twentieth century. While Woods is best known for creating subway safety technology, he is most important to Coney for his contributions to the creation of roller coaster technology. A true Coney Island hero, if ever there was one.
Coney Island's newest edition celebrates their 'official' grand opening this Saturday.
Tickets For Dinner Cruise around NYC
From the Coney Island USA e-mail announcement:
As with typical Coney tradition - well before the Brooklyn blogosphere exploded onto the scene a couple of years back, there was already a Brooklyn blog right here in Coney Island. And we thought Kinetic Carnival was the first Coney Island blog.
All New And Improved Blog!
You probably didn't even know this existed, did you?
It's been years since anyone updated this, but I'm going to jump back into things now, with a series of updates about our building project. As reported in the news, we here at Coney Island USA bought our building last year and we're starting the renovations necessary to move into the storefronts on Surf Ave. It's not a huge project by the standards of most businesses, but it's a pretty big step for us and it's going to make a HUGE difference on Surf Ave. and to the Museum.
I guess one of the problems with working in a cave-like office with no windows or climate control deep in the bowels of an old building in Coney Island is that you forget how little the people outside actually know about what you're doing.
That's why this blog is such a great idea.
The project is expected to be completed by mid-May with a grand opening party. The new expansion will give the museum and Freak Bar a bigger presence on the street to draw in the crowds. Also new will be the Coney Island Lager on tap, along with a few new sideshow beers, as well as brand new merchandise for sale at the giftshop.
The regular deadline for entries is THIS FRIDAY April 25th, 2008 (postmarked). The entry fee is $25 and the late deadline June 25th, 2008 (postmarked). The extended late deadline is July 3rd, 2008 (postmarked).Entry categories: Feature, Short, Documentary Feature, Documentary Short, Experimental, Silent Film, Animation, Music Video.
The Coney Island Film Festival is open to filmmakers working in ALL GENRES, SUBJECTS AND FORMATS.
For all the info visit the Coney Island Film Festival website.
Come out and celebrate the 2008 season with us, as we kick off the summer with a big blowout at the Angel Orensanz Foundation. See mermaids, burlesque performers, and practitioners of the sideshow arts while helping support Coney Island USA, the not-for-profit that produces the Mermaid Parade, the Coney Island Circus Sideshow, Burlesque at the Beach and that operates the Coney Island Museum.
On May 21, we'll be celebrating the 4th Annual Coney Island USA Spring Gala with popcorn, cotton candy, silent auction the Mini-Mermaid Parade and some of the best and craziest performers that New York City has to offer. We'll be putting the "fun" back into fundraising!
Blogs are not a medium known for focusing on or endorsing neckties. However, it must be pointed out that this parachute jump tie - found on the photostream of flickr user 'toybreaker' - would make a great accessory for any Coney Island aficionado.
This coming week, Coney Island USA will hold it's 2nd Annual Congress of Curious Peoples. As the post-colonial name implies, the Congress is a gathering and honoring of some freak show elder statesmen.
The decision to allow property owners to maintain control over their properties in the amusement are may not be ideal, but it was inevitable that some sort of compromise was going to have to be made in order for the plan to move forward.
This year, the Brooklyn Cyclones will play seven Sunday home games at Keyspan Park here in Coney Island.
April 17, 2008
Dear friends and residents of Coney Island:
From the moment we started drafting the City’s comprehensive plans for the rezoning and redevelopment of Coney Island, we have maintained there are certain core principles that are critical to the success of any Coney Island plan:
- Long term preservation of a vibrant amusement district is paramount, and the mapping of such a district as parkland is necessary to ensure its viability
- Property owners in Coney Island have to be invested in the success of
this plan along with the City
- We must take active steps to help transform Coney Island into a year-round destination, and enclosed amusements and entertainment retail are essential to this transformation
- The plan must provide an integrated development vision for the entire neighborhood – not only the amusement core in Coney East, but also Coney North and Coney West – and create real opportunities for new housing and economic development
While the zoning framework we announced last Fall was a detailed and thoughtful realization of these core principles (and many more), we said from the outset that it was also a work in progress and that we would continue to work with Coney Island’s elected officials, community leaders, land owners and residents to ensure that the final plan was the best it could possibly be.
I am pleased, therefore, to be able to update you on some recent modest adjustments to the Coney Island zoning framework that have both strengthened our finalized plans and will help to move this critically important project toward completion. This revised framework represents an extremely strong foundation for Coney Island’s revitalization and we are excited about now moving forward with it through the public review process.
While we will be sharing much more detailed information with you and other Coney Island stakeholders soon, we wanted to share just a few brief updates on some of these modifications:
- We have increased development opportunities for enclosed amusements and year-round entertainment retail uses
- To accommodate this increased development, while still preserving a major amusement district and enabling us to develop a world class amusement park, we have decreased the size of the new mapped parkland from 15 to 9 acres
- We have created the opportunity for existing land owners – such as long time Coney Island boosters like the Vourderis family, owners of the Wonder Wheel – to develop their properties
Along with these positive changes, we have maintained our commitment to the fundamental aspects of the Coney Island plan, such as the need to create additional active, exciting, year-round entertainment-related uses in Coney East and prevent the district from becoming a generic seaside shopping mall; our steadfast belief that residential housing is not appropriate for the amusement district; and a continued effort to limit higher-density hotels and taller structures to the areas along Surf Avenue, away from the Boardwalk.
As you can see, while some details have been altered in our quest to make this plan a reality, what hasn’t changed is our commitment to our core principles and our overall vision for what Coney Island should – and shouldn’t – be as we secure its long term well-being.
We are proud that we are already receiving positive feedback from key stakeholders on our recent efforts – for example, as you will note in the attached article, Councilman Domenic Recchia, Borough President Marty Markowitz and key landowners such as Dennis Vourderis told the NY Times that they were “optimistic” and believed the City “was headed in the right direction” – and we look forward to bringing you up to date with additional information in the near future.
Sincerely,
Lynn Kelly
Over the past few months the city has been meeting with property owners and has made changes to their plan announced by Mayor Bloomberg last November, reports The New York Times.The revised plan is the result of meetings with local property owners and others since November.
But in a departure from the original plan unveiled in November by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, those owners would be able to develop the remaining parts of their property themselves as long as they followed the city’s master plan, which must still undergo an environmental review and a land-use review.
“I’m guardedly optimistic,” said Jesse Masyr, a real estate lawyer for Thor Equities, which has been at loggerheads with the Bloomberg administration. “We have to look at the size of sites we have left and what we could build.”“We’re optimistic,” Mr. Vourderis said. “We’re hoping that they’re going to let us develop our own roperties.”
The “stars may finally be realigning,” said Brooklyn’s borough president, Marty Markowitz, a longtime advocate of revitalizing Coney Island.
There are more details to the changes, but it's safe to characterize them as a major reversal in that it would cut the amusement park envisioned by the original proposal by nearly half and would allow hotels along Surf Avenue.
This discussion can be followed on the Coney Island USA message board.
City’s Coney Island Design Revised to Break Deadlock [The New York Times]
City Makes Huge Change to Its Coney Plan [The Gowanus Lounge]
Coney Island USA's Sideshow School has been getting a lot of press lately. Most of this attention has been from local print outlets, such as the Daily News. Now, the school is being featured in more surprising places, such as in a career advice blog on Reuters and here in a segment from New Tang Dynasty TV (NTDTV), "an independent, nonprofit Chinese language television station established by overseas Chinese."
In response to the last post, the first moving stairway; the escalator was actually a ride in Coney Island. 
This past Saturday's installment of 'From the Brooklyn Aerie' - a trivia column which runs regularly in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle- included an interesting account of how a Coney amusement provided a way to hustle bookies:There's a reason gamblers who bet on races could hardly believe their good fortune when the Otis Company installed one of its elevators as an attraction at Coney Island in the early 1900s. Seems with a pair of binoculars, they could look over at nearby Gravesend Racetrack, spot the winners, and place their bets on them before the bookies got the news of how the races came out.
Last month, The Wildlife Conservation Society named Jon Forrest Dohlin as the new director of the New York Aquarium. Last week, Kinetic Carnival had the pleasure of meeting with Dohlin.
Stuff From The Park - a blog which collects 'images and other items from Disneyland, theme parks and other amusement parks' - has provided some information on The Bobsled, a ride which graced Coney Island from the '40s through the '70s:The coaster was purchased from the World's Fair and moved to Coney Island in 1940. The track, if you want to call it that, is a half pipe and the cars run down the half pipe, banking on the curves and gaining speed. The cars are in a train similar to other roller coasters. The Bobsled was shuttered in 1974 and subsequently demolished in 1975.
From the Coney Island History Project website:
Get ready for the spaghetti ice cream to be the next big thing in Coney Island. The new offspring to the Coney Island Surf & Turf Grill is the Surf Cafe and it's going to be simply irresistible!
SURF CAFE IS THE NEWEST ADDITION TO CONEY ISLAND!
Last month, The Wildlife Conservation Society named Jon Forrest Dohlin - a ten-year WCS veteran with a background in biology and architecture- as the new director of the New York Aquarium. Last week, Kinetic Carnival had the pleasure of meeting with Dohlin (and his three turtles, all named Bob).
Coney Island's own Todd Robbins publishes "The Modern Con Man: How to Get Something for Nothing", a stoy of perhaps the ballsiest con man in the history of New York. Grifting his way by selling New York City landmarks to gullable suckers. Pubished by Bloomsbury this book is a, "tongue-in-cheek lifestyle book (as well as including a bunch of true stories and history, and yes, even a mention of Coney Island in its "Continental Grift" section" says co-writer Gadi Harel.
Reports that developer Joe Sitt and Thor Equities would be setting up carnival rides in Coney Island, located on the empty lots that Thor had cleared last year have surfaced.OSHA cited the company for alleged safety and health violations at two Pennsylvania carnival sites, with proposed fines totaling $62,000, including one incident in which an employee fell from the top of a ride.
Over the past couple days, there have been a couple of Coney Island human interest stories in the Daily News. Frankly, it's great to see a paper like the daily news focusing on the positive side of Coney Island.
The second story was Wednesday's installment of 'Big Town Big Dreams,' a series which features different immigrant New Yorkers who have achieved their 'dream in our great city.' In this case, the featured New Yorker was Jimmy Bissan, a Yemeni immigrant and Coney Island business owner. The article focused on the ways in which the now successful Bissan gives back to the Coney Island community.
In many ways, the blogs of today are the heirs of the underground press of the 1960s and 70s. Accordingly, as a blog about Coney Island, we are pleased to share the Brooklyn Daily Eagle's report that Paul Krassner (the "father of the underground press)" derives much of his characteristic zaniness and irreverence from his childhood experiences in Coney Island:
New York Nooks brings us a nice slideshow of this year's opening day at Astroland. Though most believe this is, for sure, Astroland's last year - some folks who own businesses down here in Coney Island have heard a different buzz: That Astroland may be back for yet another year. Reason being that a closed Astroland may spell some hardship for other Coney businesses. And with plans of what's to really become of Coney Island up in the air - It's in everyone's best interest to keep Astroland open for as long as it can be.Will Astroland be open again in the years to come?
“Unless there’s an interim plan to establish Astroland here for another three to five years,” said Carol Hill Albert, Astroland’s current lessee and former co-owner, “I don’t see how we can.”
The plan to implement congestion pricing in New York City has been officially declared dead. This is unfortunate for both New York City in general, and Coney Island in particular. Southern Brooklyn does have a pretty strong car culture, and the plan would have involved charging people who drive over the bridges from Brooklyn into Manhattan. However, the majority of people who live in Coney Island rely on public transportation. One of the major features of the congestion pricing bill was that funds raised would go into a lock box account which would fund specific MTA projects. As City Councilman Domenic Recchia pointed out, this would be great news for Coney Island, as the proposed MTA projects included several plans that would benefit Coney Island residents, particularly express service from Coney to Manhattan on the F train.
The Associated Press has reported that a carousel built by the legendary W. F. Mangels Carousel Works of Coney Island is going up for auction later this month.
Yesterday, an NYPD squad car racing to the scene of a crime crashed into a light pole at the intersection of Surf Ave. & 25th St., injuring the two cops inside. The New York Daily News provided details:Both cops were listed in stable condition with mostly bruises and lacerations from broken glass, authorities said. The driver of the car was believed to have suffered some broken ribs.
Sources said the cops were racing to assist housing cops nearby who had radioed for help to control a melee on Mermaid Ave.
As they were whipping down Surf Ave. about 6:30 p.m., the officers swerved to avoid hitting another car, sending their own out-of-control vehicle into the air.
Image from The Gowanus Lounge / courtesy of Captain Nemo
