An odd local angle to the Michael Jackson saga unfolding on the West Coast: It turns out the Dragon Wagon Kiddie Coaster (left), located at Coney Island, was once part of Michael Jackson's private amusement park at Neverland, according to Tricia Vita, a blogger and reporter for Amusement Business magazine. [Amusing the Zillion via Gothamist]
• A month shy of its 15th anniversary, The Cub Room in Soho has closed. [GS]
• A roundup of restaurants that have opened in the past couple of days. [Eater]
• A few more details about the Standard Grill at the Standard Hotel, which will open for dinner next Monday and breakfast/lunch the week after. [GS]
• The cost of food—both at home and in restaurants—is up, so you know. [NYT]
• One more way restaurants are saving money in these lean times: They're hiring fewer servers so that "no one's being paid to just stand around." [NYT]
• One more silly eating competition coming to Coney Island soon: a bunch of human beings will square off against a bunch of elephants on July 3. [BP]
In case driving a bus wasn't your thing and you're still looking for a job, please note that Ringling Bros. & Barnum and Bailey Circus is hiring. And you don't even need to wear makeup, put on a silly wig, or taunt tigers either. A job fair is scheduled for next week and the circus is looking to fill 200 ticketing, ushers and maintenance positions for its Coney Island summer run. Applications available for download! [CIDC]
On Friday, lease negotiations broke down between the owner of Astroland, Coney Island's honky-tonk, 46-year-old amusement park, and its landlord, Thor Equities. It was abruptly announced that the scruffy Brooklyn park would shut down forever on Sunday—a month ahead of schedule. Damn, gentrification! Would it really be the last day? Who knows—the future of Coney Island in recent years has been as topsy-turvey as the Tilt-a-Whirl. There was nothing to do but board the F train and visit Astroland one last time. Step right up—into the wild and weird world where you, too, can purchase panties off the boardwalk.The subway ride was a level of hell I have not recently experienced on the MTA. An exhausted-looking man with three kids sat across from me the entire ride, alternately changing his shabbily-clad childrens' diapers and barking at them to "Shut the fuck up!" I kept hoping he would get off at the next stop, but he didn't: of course, he was going to Coney Island. When the train pulled into the Surf Avenue station, bloodcurdling screams went up from the 9 to 12-year-olds on board. "Last day!" they cried, running towards the door. Mami already needed a beer. The Astroland environment immediately transformed every child into a whirling, shrieking wraith. Everything was as it should be: a woman on the boardwalk sold jewelry and a pile of worn-looking panties off a table, four for $10. The the games, rides—which may be sold to the Middle East when all this is over—and shooting ranges were popping. There were assorted camera crews there to document the park's probable death, as well as many lone white dudes with cameras. Maybe they all had photoblogs. So, WTF was going on? I asked the man who manned the "Shoot Em Win" booth on Surf Avenue, near Astroland's gaping maw. "It's going to hurt a lot of people. It's going to hurt a lot of working people," said Mike, who has worked this booth for "a lotta years." The Daily News reported Astroland as employing 75 year-round workers and 275 seasonal ones. "Two shots, five bucks, win a stuffed animal," he told a young boy who approached the stand. The kid was dragged off by his older brother, who told him, "Don't spend that ten, boo." Mike isn't sure if Shoot Em Win will return next year—it's all up in the air. So was it really closing? I asked the Black Scorpion, a Texas gentleman who had just performed as part of the Circus Sideshow—which will not close, as Coney Island USA own the building. His act involved tying his shoelaces with his so-called "lobster hands"—he was born with only three fingers on each one. "Looks that way," he sighed. People were lining up for a "Future of Coney Island" peep show in which we peered into dioramas that depicted what Coney Island might look like post-rezoning. It was not pretty. So was Astroland gone for good? Probably. Maybe. Nobody quite knew, not even the park's employees. Your answer depends on how much of a cynic you are. Like the game where you squirt water into a ceramic clown's mouth, it's all just a crapshoot anyway. I tried to win a dirty stuffed clownfish from the Claw machine, and lost two quarters. [Photo: ElissaSCA's Flickr]
Last year was supposed to be the final year for Coney Island's Astroland Amusement Park. So I F trained it up and went to Coney Island to ride the Cyclone, which really was quite scary due to its decrepit condition. But this weekend is the official start of Astroland's Second Annual "likely final season." Nothing says spring like false nostalgia! [amNY]
Since time immemorial, or since maybe 2004, we have received missives from a person called The Earl Grey, the greatest social documentarian of our time. As frequently as possible, we print these letters as a service to society. Today, he takes us on a journey through the past, recreating the intimate details of New York life in the halcyon days of the fin de siècle 1990s.
On Saturday, the Mermaid Parade celebrated its 25th year. Nathan's hot dogs glistened lustily in the hot sun and much pasty flesh soon became burnt. The chests of a thousand Mermaids, some painted some bare, jiggled and shook as the parade made its way down the boardwalk. For many participants, the parade is the one day when they can let their freak flag fly. That counter guy from your deli? He was there, wearing blue briefs and a cape. The topless ladies came in twos and threes, painted in rich blues and bright reds, like the daughters of Carmen Miranda, Disney's Ariel and Mystique from X-Men. We sent our own personal Scuttle Nikola Tamindzic to investigate. His gallery is here and ours is right here.
Coney Island's march towards transformation into Disneyland By JFK has taken a slight detour. Developer Joseph Sitt's plans to appeal to local residents thus far unenthused by his Brobdingnagian entertainment-lifestyle complex have received a few tweaks. Now the luxury apartments initially planned by Sitt will be instead be hotels, timeshares, bookstores and theaters. This is great news for all sorts of non-Hispanic minority-types!
Coney Island's amusement park Astroland recently opened for its final season. Soon it goes the way of all things old tymey—trammeled 'neath the cloven hooves of developer Joe Sitt, who bought it up in November. But let others moan and groan (and yes, even petition) against the upcoming destruction and condofication of Astroland. Whatever preposterous excrescence will soon stand where the Cyclone once did, we know it won't be more mind-blowing than what preceded it. Midgets! Incest! Nuremburg! Welcome to Lilliputia!
Re: the above—just kidding! We know that Coney Island is truly the people's beach, and as such, is open to all comers—yuppies, hipsters, you name it. So this post on a Coney Island message board, from someone only identifying herself as "Parkslopemom," made us wary that with all this talk of Coney redevelopment floating around, it's only a matter of time before the people's beach becomes the Park Slope Riviera:
There's nothing wrong with Coney Island that a $1.5 billion redevelopment can't fix. Some of the amazingly garish renderings for this project have previously made it to press, but Curbed has those and a few new ones in larger, more colorfully offensive form. We're particularly fond of the "virtual whales and mermaids dancing 150 feet in the air through a cascading waterfall" over the defiantly sleazy Nathan's Hot Dogs. Here's hoping they bring the same level of glitz to the boardwalk's "Shoot the Freak" booth.
• Some random Conde Nastie also doesn't like us. Which is fine, as we don't much like them, either. [Radosh.net]
• Matt Drudge is obsessed with animal sex. Not, you know, that he's displacing any particular urges. [Underhyped]
• It's no fun reporting from the celebrity rope line. But at least you get some good quotes. Or not. [The Reeler]
• It didn't rain at the Siren Festival in Coney Island Saturday. [Brooklyn Vegan]
• Bloomberg digs Teachers College, Dr. Ruth. [The Politicker]
