This came in via email:

Dear Friends,

On Sept 7, the closing day of Coney Island's historic Astroland Park, I was part of a grassroots effort by the Save Coney Island group which distributed 10,000 flyers to visitors. City Hall must have gotten a gazillion emails and calls on 311. A couple of days later, the Associated Press was reporting Mayor Bloomberg is FINALLY stepping in to save Coney!!! "It would be a great shame if the amusements, which have been around for so many years and defined Coney Island and this city as much as anything ... it would be a shame if we lost those," Bloomberg said on Tuesday.

Tonight we're launching an urgent last ditch effort to save Coney Island and Astroland for another year! We need everyone's help. We have three or four days at the most. I was skeptical at first, but reliable sources assure me Mayor Bloomberg is indeed actively trying to help rescue historic Astroland Park. Bloomberg has opened the door to negotiations for a lease extension with Joe Sitt of Thor Equities, the real estate speculator who is holding Coney Island hostage and refuses to negotiate.

It's as if the Mayor has his foot in the door and Sitt is trying to push it closed. Now we need a huge push from the people of New York and the world to open the door all the way.

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The latest issue of Bay Currents features a front-page article by yours truly covering the June 24 Coney Island Development Corp. scoping hearing. The full text of the article is below:

If there’s any one word to describe the development of Coney Island, it’s confusion.

Private developers, city agencies, development advocates, union groups, artists, councilmen, community board members, amusement operators, public housing advocates, mayors – real and phony – and a white-suited anti-consumerism reverend all vying for the spotlight… what are we even talking about anymore?

Everyone seems to have his or her own plan. The main private developer, Thor Equities, has one. The city agency Coney Island Development Corporation (CIDC) has one, and had another one before that. A myriad of groups are pushing their own proposals that cover their interests – affordable housing, proper infrastructure, job and career training, revitalization strategies to “save” outdoor amusements.

This confusion was palpable at the June 24 hearing at Lincoln High School on the latest CIDC proposal. The agency – charged with overseeing a new development plan for the neighborhood – has worked on a proposal since 2003, with over 200 meetings and more than 1,000 people providing insight and opinion. But that plan was scrapped in April, when the city used CIDC’s name to announce an adjusted proposal without consulting the agency’s directors. The newest proposal appears to give Thor Equities a lot of what it had wanted, allowing them, for example, to build towering 30-story hotels on land that the previous plan zoned for smaller retail.

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Reverend Billy, one of my favorite characters in contemporary activism, came out to this morning's Save Coney Island Demonstration, and helped rally the troops for the cause. The reverend is a dramatic anti-commercialism minister, who adopts the style of televangelism to preach against product-worship and the excesses of capitalism. Check out the video of him from today's event:

If you dig his style, or just like a good docu-comedy, check out his flick What Would Jesus Buy?, in which he and the Church of Stop Shopping teach viewers to Buy Less, Give More. Produced by Morgan Spurlock, the film follows the reverend and his choir as they invade malls, face-off with blank-eyed consumers, and conduct an exorcism on Wal-Mart headquarters.