(Coney Island Shrine - Courtesy of Tricia Vita)

Everyone is invited to meet at the Astroland Park gates on New Year's Day for an opportunity to share the loss of Coney Island, as we know it, with others in a memorial event and to add to a shrine.

Here is the letter we received from the memorial organizer.

Dear Friends,

Today a friend and I made a shrine on Astroland's Boardwalk gates. In the photos you can see our collage and a bouquet of flowers. There's also a banner, off to the right, that people can sign. Feel free to contribute photos, drawings, letters, poems, flowers and mementos.

All items should be weather proofed with plastic sheet protectors! If you cannot go to Coney, please post your virtual contributions on the thread on the Coney Island USA Message Board. Many of us will be going to Coney on New Year's Day. We will try to print out as many as possible and add them to the shrine at Astroland's gates.

I look forward to seeing many of you on New Year's Day!

All the best,
Tricia Vita

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.

Read more »

(Photo courtesy of Coney Island History Project)

...carnival barking, that is.

We love to take a bite into a little nostalgia, especially when it involves our sister neighborhood, Coney Island. How many of you can remember the days of Coney Island when it was the newborn apple of the Big Apple’s eye? Well, with all of the controversy surrounding the fate of Sheepshead Bay’s very own backyard carnival, we all could do with a little reminiscing about its history. This Saturday, August 2, as The Coney Island History Project opens up its new exhibit, you will get just that kind of opportunity. On display will be photographs of Astroland since the Albert family gave it birth. Unlike the rides at Astroland, the exhibit is free – so a megaphone will not be needed to get the crowds in and we, here, at Sheepshead Bites don’t mind putting ahold on biting so that we can start barking this one out: [begin playing ‘Over the Waves’ on the old time Wurlitzer] “Step right up...come one and come all! Coney Island is Back – and Back to the Future!”

Where: The Coney Island History Project's Exhibition Center under the Cyclone Roller Coaster, 1000 Surf Avenue, just east of 10th St.
Phone: (718) 266-0012
Web: www.coneyislandhistory.org
E-mail: info@coneyislandhistory.org

When: Saturday, August 2 - Monday, September 1
Hours: Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 1pm - 6pm
Open Labor Day (Mon, 9/1)

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.

Read more »

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.

The Daily News is aiding in the search for the savior of Jordan's Lobster Dock heir Brian Jordan after he nearly drowned in Coney Island this weekend. Apparently, around 6 p.m. on Saturday, Jordan jumped into the water off of a Coney Island pier when his speedboat, Starfish, somehow became untethered. To hear the News tell it, he sank like a ton of bricks. Until, that is, a dark-haired, white-shirted figure rescued him from the depths and then mysteriously disappeared.

(Courtesy of NY Daily News)

As feel-good as the story is, even the News couldn't avoid taking a subtle swipe at him:

It was all pretty odd for a guy who has been around water his whole life. Besides his family's waterside restaurant, Jordan lives on a houseboat docked at the Venice Marina in Sheepshead Bay; he owns a sailboat and the runaway speedboat.

At the end of the article, Jordan ponders his offered reward, asking, "How do you put a price on a life?"

Hmm... the boat that almost killed you? Or the sailboat? Maybe those super-spiffy rich-guy golf pants you've got on in the News' photo? Oh wait, you've already got something in mind?

"I'll give him a big lobster dinner," Jordan told the Daily News. "I'm beside myself with thanks."

Come on, man. Seriously?[where: 11235][where: coney island]

If you haven't yet heard of Grand Theft Auto IV, it's one of the hottest video games out right now, and features all those things gamers love - high-quality graphics, explosions, violent mayhem, sex, and on and on - all based in New York City. But some good can come of America's most graphic game. A member of the Coney Island USA message board posted a hilarious - and poignant - video of his efforts to destroy a Coney Island (Firefly Island in the game) gazebo, comparing it to the reality of those shoddy structures.

It's slow to start, but hang in there to the end... it's worth it.

[via Kinetic Carnival][where: 11235][where: coney island]