Here's something to warm you in the dead of winter: a video (QuickTime, 9.9 MB) I shot Saturday, June 24, 1995, of a turn on my favorite Ferris wheel anywhere, Coney Island's Wonder Wheel. It was a rainy day and before I took the reviewing stand to serve as Mermaid Parade M.C. (my sixth year on the job), my friend Gina Bellando and I took a ride in a swinging car (in addition to the customary stationary cars, the Wonder Wheel has swinging cars which move along a track as the wheel rotates).
Coney Island, as you may have heard, is on the verge of a drastic makeover. A developer - Joe Sitt of Thor Equities - snatched up property on either side of Deno's Wonder Wheel Park (including Astroland Park, which will close after Summer 2007) and has plans for a $1.5 billion "entertainment and amusement district". Luxury seaside condos and a hotel will also rise where many of the structures seen in my video now stand. Some argue these changes are long coming, that Coney is a decaying, unfulfilled promise. Others feel the uniqueness of the place - it's the only truly urban amusement park I know of - will be forever lost. And you? Are the coming inevitable changes good for Coney Island? Or will you never again step foot in that "Playground by the Ocean"?
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Well, one *could* say that Rye Playland is only a short train & bus ride away, but Coney Island has a character all its own.
If Develop We Must, how about the Edgemere area in Queens? It used to be a luxury resort area, and is totally empty at the moment. It even has subway access...
http://www.forgotten-ny.com/NEIGHBORHOODS/edgemere/edgemere.html
Posted by: Richard | January 19, 2007 at 07:32 AM
I love going to Coney as it is now. My friends and I go during the winter a lot when its pretty much empty, its amazing. If it's windy, when you're walking through the park from the subway towards the boardwalk, the wind creates this howl as it weaves through all the creaky metal structure there. When I think of them rebuilding, I think of Biff in Back to the Future 2.
Posted by: Rob | January 19, 2007 at 09:28 AM
My wife and I went to Coney on our first anniversary ('94). What was it, $5 to ride the Cyclone and $3 to go again? Inspired by the Ramones, I guess…
It's really sad how things like this happen, yet inevitable.
Posted by: Brian C. | January 19, 2007 at 09:58 AM
the swinging cars on the wonder wheel are scarier than the cyclone...
Posted by: michael c | January 19, 2007 at 10:04 AM
...and the late Richard Pryor circling in an inflatable Wonder Wheel in in 1982's "The Toy" is scarier than the swinging cars and cyclone combined.
Posted by: Jude | January 19, 2007 at 10:40 AM
will the crusty barkers stay? will the loud/too fast/rickety rides with Djs pumping hip hop top hits stay? will everything become a chain? even coney? *SOB*!
Posted by: gee | January 19, 2007 at 12:33 PM
the coolest things on coney island were the octopi [3 ft and 5 foot] and giant spider crabs [8 foot and 11 foot !?!] at the old new york aquarium.
when they re-did the aquarium, they got rid of them. i used to trip and stay in that room for hours. all 4 would engage in meaningful eye contact. especially the octopi. the crabs looked like: ''if i werent in this tank, you'd be dead, my friend''. the octopi were very ..um.. seductive, as if they were hypnotists, changing colors and swirling and keeping the gaze. wow.
my point is: they will ruin it all. they turned a great aquarium into a tourist trap dump. i miss the sleaziness of Manhattan. preserve the sleaze where you can.
Posted by: lee | January 19, 2007 at 01:57 PM
i'd like to know. check out William S. Burroughs essay on the octopus.
Posted by: anyone know where they still have giant octopi in tanks in the northeast? | January 19, 2007 at 02:00 PM
I know, I know. I've been in denial about what is going to happen to Coney Island for months now. Times Square is gone. Williamsburg is gone. The East Village is gone. The Lower East Side is gone. And now Coney Island. Is there no place so sleazy, so marginalized, so creepy that the developers will turn away in horror? Would a leper colony have kept the trendies away from Williamsburg? I would have started one if I thought it would have done any good.
The Mermaid Parade is one of the great New York events. (I bet a Coney Island Business Improvement District can only make it better, not!) Totonno's Pizza was the greatest pizzeria in NYC. And now it is all being homogenized into "Luxury Condo Lifestyle Land". I want to puke.
Posted by: Listener Sharon | January 19, 2007 at 02:48 PM
It's just the nature of the class system. Everything needs to be taken over and catered to the rich.
Posted by: Blaine Thompson Raines | January 19, 2007 at 07:11 PM
Like Listener Sharon, I'm in denial, too, about Coney's future. I guess if there's any potential schadenfreude to be had, it'll be five or so years from now when Thor learns (too late, alas), that no whitebread middle-American family or yuppie swine wants to come all the way the hell out to Coney, luxury hotels or no luxury hotels. It'll fail and fail miserably, but the ruins won't be remotely as interesting as the place is now.
Is Coney Island our generation's version of the old Pennsylvania Station? Will its demise spark anyone into preserving the historic parts of NYC, even (or especially) the sleazier parts? We've already lost Times Square and the Meatpacking District. No more Show World, no more Hellfire, and soon, no more Shoot The Freak.
Sigh... I'm going back to Vermont.
Posted by: Miss Princess Wendy | January 21, 2007 at 05:11 PM
I think the reality of the situation is that the thousands of people who go to CI will probably enjoy the new Spongebob theme park and it will only be us few in the minority who will lament it. Sad to say but there aren't too many freaks in CI compared to the masses who go and ride the rides and play the games.
Posted by: coffeepotman | January 21, 2007 at 05:13 PM
farewell
so long
goodbye forever
Posted by: cheerios | January 23, 2007 at 11:45 AM