Where Gay Meets Pretty

It is 1996 and I’m in love with Coney Island. I’m in love with its decrepit, ancient buildings, crumbling but also vibrating with color and life. Ice cream, cotton candy, corn dogs, fried clams. I’m in love with the smell of grease and seashore. The feeling of being at the edge of the world. On the margin. Way out there. Beyond. And I can’t get enough of the freaks.



I go to Sideshows by the Seashore to see their 10-in-1 show. Zenobia, played by Jennifer Miller, is the bearded lady. She wears plain clothes, pants and a shirt, no makeup, nothing theatrical. The focus is her beard, thick and woolly, a bit wild. With her long wavy hair, she looks, if not like Jesus, then one of the apostles. A hippie.

She goes through her spiel: "I am a woman with a beard,” she announces. “If I called myself The Bearded Lady, I would be claiming that I, Zenobia, was the one, the only, woman with a beard in the entire world. The Bearded Lady. Could that possibly be true? Of course not. The world is full of women who have beards. Or at least they have the potential. They have the potential to have a beard, if only they would reach out and fulfill their fabulous potential, as I myself have so obviously done. Historically speaking, speaking historically, that is, hair has been a symbol of power. It goes back to Samson and his great mane of power. That's why men don't want women having too much in too many places. You get it? Forget it. That's what I said, forget it. So people want to know how I deal with walking down the street. Cause here I am, a gal with a beard, gallivanting around New York City. You think I'm getting hassled out there? I get more than my fair share. So what do I do?”

She picks up a machete from the stack behind her.

“After a long hard day at work, I'm hot, I'm tired, all I want is a nice cold…”

“Beer!” the crowd yells.

“Machete!" Zenobia corrects them and begins juggling three glinting, sharp blades. She’s good. The crowd roars in applause.



It is 2016, exactly 20 years since it was 1996, and I return to the Sideshows by the Seashore. I’ve been back a number of times over the years, but today it’s a revival, Superfreak Weekend, and Jennifer Miller is reprising her original Zenobia act.

She’s glammed it up since 1996, wearing a purple satin gown over her jeans and motorcycle boots, her eyelids painted with purple powder. Her beard has a few gray hairs in it now. She begins her spiel, word for word, the same as it was in 1996: “If I called myself The Bearded Lady, I would be claiming that I, Zenobia, was the one, the only, woman with a beard in the entire world!”

A boy in the audience shouts out, “You have a gay name!”

He’s maybe 8 years old. His mother tells him to “stop it.” Zenobia relishes the moment—as Jennifer Miller she’s a professor of performance studies, a lecturer on gender, and director of the left-wing political theater troupe Circus Amok. “Now we can really talk,” she says, moving to the front of the stage and kneeling down. She addresses the boy directly.

“What about the name Zenobia strikes you as gay?”

“It’s a gay name!” the boy shouts. His mother tells him again to "stop it." They go around like this, the boy repeating himself, clearly in the throes of a gender mind-fuck. The needle on his cognitive record keeps skipping. After 20 years, the bearded lady act still has the power to unsettle.

Zenobia continues to talk to the boy and the audience. We laugh at a joke. The energy moves. She asks the boy again what’s gay about her name. Quietly now, he says, “Well, it’s kinda gay. And it’s kinda pretty.”

“A-ha! Now that’s what we call queer,” Zenobia says, getting to her feet. “The place where gay meets pretty!” And the show goes on. She completes her spiel and juggles her machetes. She’s still good. The audience roars. She gets ready to do it again.



I walk out to the boardwalk, past the many bright-colored banners for Thor Equities: “Space Available,” “Stores for Lease,” “Retail Space Available,” one after another, tied to chain-link fences around bulldozed lots, strapped to shuttered building facades and empty storefronts. Much has changed in 20 years.

Giuliani illegally tore down the old Thunderbolt rollercoaster. The Stillwell Avenue subway station got a major makeover. Thor's Joe Sitt bought up acres and acres, and then kicked out the carnies. Astroland shuttered. Bloomberg rezoned the whole place, drastically reducing the space for amusement. The decrepit, ancient buildings I loved were torn down. And the chains came in: Applebee's Dunkin Donuts Wahlburgers Johnny Rockets Bank of America Subway.

I tell myself Coney is still Coney. You can still get a corn dog and a plate of fried clams. The Cyclone still gives people whiplash. Local families still come to have fun. The crowd is diverse, multi-cultural, working class. You can’t argue with that. But there is something vital missing. Coney has lost its edge, the character it boasted for over a century. Everything feels brighter, shinier, cleaner. More controlled. Less alive.



On the graffiti-covered gates of the Eldorado Arcade, signs read: “GRAFFITI FOR FILM SHOOT - PLEASE DO NOT PAINT OVER - NBC UNIVERSAL.” The graffiti doesn’t look anything like real graffiti, made by someone who perhaps has never seen real graffiti.

I walk down to Williams Candy, a sweet little spot that’s been here for about 80 years, and buy a small paper bag full of malted milk balls. I’m the only customer. They’re all going to IT’SUGAR, the massive chain. Next door, the tables at one of the last honky-tonk clam shacks are empty, while families cram into Applebee’s and Wahlburgers.



People don’t want surprises anymore, so there are no surprises left at Coney Island. Except for that scene back at the Sideshow. That is what Coney Island has always been about, shaking people out of their everyday lives, shocking and thrilling them with experiences of the unusual.

In his Coney Island history book Amusing the Million, John Kasson writes that Coney encouraged “the grotesque.” The freaks symbolized “the exaggerated and excessive character of Coney Island as a whole,” unusual bodies that “displayed themselves openly as exceptions to the rules of the conventional world.” The whole place was an escape from conventionality. But at today's Coney Island, the sideshow is the one space left where gay meets pretty.

Baby Dee

I went out to Coney Island on New Year's Day and it was good to see all the oddballs again. I used to love to go out there, but I don't anymore, though New Year's Day was an exception. It made me think about all the colorful characters we used to see in the East Village, before the life was sucked out of the neighborhood, and I was thinking especially of Baby Dee. Here's something I wrote sometime back in the 1990s:

One hot afternoon I took the train out to Coney Island to see the Sideshows by the Seashore. I got off at Brighton Beach and walked out under the shadowy roar of the El, bought a hot knish at Mrs. Stahl’s, and then followed the boardwalk to Coney, past the old Russians playing chess, and one lone trumpeter blowing his song to the sea over the stretch of sun-bright sand.

Coney was jumping with the summertime crowds, a giddy throng of sweaty bodies, half-naked, sticky with ice-cream drippings and cotton candy, tipsy on cheap beer. I passed the Cyclone, that ancient, rickety wooden coaster, and walked by the Wonder Wheel, Dante’s Inferno, and the Tilt-A-Whirl, heading straight for the Coney Island Circus Sideshow. I wanted to see the freaks.

Outside the sideshow, the banners rippled in the wind, painted with images of performers both old and new. There was the Human Pincushion and the Lobster Boy, the Bearded Lady and the Half-Man/Half-Woman.

Inside the crumbling theatre, the Escape Artist was onstage, wriggling his way out of a straight-jacket. Then came the Glass Eater, who chewed and swallowed an entire light bulb. Then Enchantra, the snake charmer, who did a sexy dance with her albino python. And then Xenobia, the Bearded Lady, played by Jennifer Miller, the lesbian-feminist performance artist. She had a long, thick beard and mustache and long hair. While juggling several gleaming machetes, Xenobia tried her best to raise our consciousness. She said, “Hair is a symbol of power and that’s why men don’t want women to have too much in too many places.”


Michael Wilson, via Sideshow World

After the show, I stopped to talk with an old-timer who ran the sideshow museum across the street. His name was Eddie Sudan and he sucked on a soggy cigar and wore a gold-brocaded vest with a red velvet fez perched on top of his head. Standing before the banners for the Eubangi Beauties and the Giraffe-Neck Women of Burma, he told me about the illustrated man, Michael Wilson, “tattooed from the top of his head to the souls of his feet.”

Eddie said, “Mike told me once, some days, everything's beautiful. You step out into the sun, grab a handful of sand, walk into the surf, everything's beautiful. Other days, it's Hell, with everyone staring at you all the time and you know you can't hide everything." Eddie paused a moment, looking out towards the boardwalk and the ocean beyond.

"What's in your head?” Eddie asked then, of no one in particular. “What makes a person do that to themselves?"

“There was another great act,” he went on. “Baby Dee, the harp-playing hermaphrodite. They were a classically trained musician. They would get on stage and play the harp, while the contortionist would go through her contortions. It was a beautiful show, one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen."

I wished I could see Baby Dee, but Eddie told me that she had left the show at Coney Island and headed out west to California.


Baby Dee, playing the classic "half and half" at Coney

Soon after my visit to Coney Island, like a strange and enchanting apparition, Baby Dee appeared. She came riding through the East Village pedaling a giant tricycle, a golden harp in tow. She wore a tutu and angel wings and played the accordion. She stopped in front of me and sang a song. I thanked her and dropped a dollar in her bowl.

An old Ukrainian man came over and slapped her on the knee, playfully, and called up to her, "Why are you doing this? You shouldn't be up there, you are too beautiful!" Then he looked at me and said in a conspiratorial kind of way, "When I look at a leg like that, oh boy, you know what I think!" We said goodbye to Baby Dee and she pedaled away singing, disappearing around the corner, like a ghost.

The Ukrainian man had a friend with him who was giving him a hard time. He said, “That was a man you old fool!”

The Ukrainian turned to me for help, "Tell me, that was not a man. Was that a man or a woman?"

"It was a man," his friend muttered.

The Ukrainian turned to me again. "You're smart," he said. "Tell me. Please. If it's a man, it's okay. If it's a woman, it's okay."

"She's both," I told him.

“How can that be?” he asked, searching my eyes for the answer.

I shrugged my shoulders and, as I turned to walk away, added, "She’s wonderful, isn't she?"

The old man’s face brightened, and he called after me, "Yes! She is wonderful! I wanted her to stay, but she went away!"



Baby Dee is still doing her thing--just not here.

Coney Candy Comparison

Today, when you arrive at Coney Island and emerge from the train station, instead of the grand old Henderson Building, the first thing you see is the global chain candy store IT'SUGAR, topped with a billboard from which mega-developer Thor Equities (misspelled "Equites") welcomes you, as if Coney Island belonged to them. Which, actually, it does.
 


When IT'SUGAR opened this spring, The Brooklyn Paper reported that their CEO declared that customers would choose his shop over nearby old-timer Williams Candy because of IT'SUGAR's "sleek, trendy vibe and jumbo, novelty-size boxes" of big-brand candies like Nerds and Snickers.

So how do the two compare?

Local, family-run Williams Candy has been here for some 75 years. When you walk into their comfortable old shop, you are welcomed by the most wonderful aroma, a powerful mix of chocolate, roasted nuts, popcorn, and candy apples--which they make onsite by hand. The place is warm and inviting.

IT'SUGAR was founded in Florida in 2006, now with 68 locations. When you walk in to their Coney store, you don't smell anything. Maybe because it's mostly sealed inside plastic. Or maybe because your other senses are being assaulted by pounding pop music and a confusing array of colors, brands, and images, including several posters of sexy girls sucking lollipops and wearing Catholic-school miniskirts.
 


IT'SUGAR's CEO told Brooklyn Paper, “Our candy stores are not your typical ‘old fashioned and stale’ stores but more of a hip and cool place where customers can find so many exclusive, unique and fun products."

What are these more unusual products you won't find at Williams Candy? Well, there's the gummy Party Python, a giant snake shown cradled and suckled by three hot girls in hooker heels.



If that's too big to swallow, try the smaller, but no less potent, World's Largest Gummy Worm.



IT'SUGAR also has their own line of novelty mints, each in a creative tin. On the one for their "You Know You Want It" mints--not to be confused with their BITCH mints and FML (Fuck My Life) mints--they provide a listing of IT'SUGAR's "sweet philosophy" of life. The tin reads, "We believe in: conspicuous consumption, addiction to sugar, overindulgence, asking for forgiveness instead of permission, bending rules, being a little brighter than the rest," and more along those lines.

But IT'SUGAR is not just about candy. You can also find notepads for making HEY ASSHOLE notes, WTF notes, SHIT lists, and BITCH CITATIONS. You can buy clothing, too, like the girl's "flirty" tank top that says "Wanna Lick." 

I found it all rather overwhelming, and had to run away fast, fleeing to the warm, quiet bosom of Williams Candy, where a person can think and breathe.



None of the treats at Williams Candy tell you to be a greedy, sociopathic consumer. There are no pictures of teenage girls fellating the candies. There's no loud, repetitive pop music to jackhammer your brain.

At Williams, the treats are peaceful and modest. The candy apples, freshly dipped and be-sprinkled, sit patiently on their trays and wait to be chosen. They don't scream at you. They don't try to be "unique." They just exist--and they exist beautifully, with an old-fashioned sense of style.

There's nothing "stale" about that.


See more on Williams Candy

Now watch this little movie about Williams Candy:


Peter Agrapides, Owner of Coney Island's Williams Candy (v1) from The Brooklyn Ink on Vimeo.

Zipper at IFC

If you haven't yet seen the movie Zipper: Coney Island's Last Wild Ride, you absolutely must. I won't take no for an answer. And you're about to get your chance--the movie will be playing at IFC Center in the Village for a one-week engagement starting August 9.

Zipper tells the harrowing true tale of corporate and political greed as Bloomberg, real-estate developers, and other vampires battle for control over one of the city's last authentic places.

I asked the film's producer/director, Amy Nicholson, a few questions:

Q: What do you think was Coney Island's importance to the people of New York, and to the meaning of the city? Do you think it still holds the same importance today, after its gutting?

A: For more than a hundred years Coney Island has been near and dear to the hearts of New Yorkers and people from around the county and the world, in spite of her many ups and downs over time. Coney had become hugely important sometime around the mid 2000s because by that time New Yorkers had seen so much of the city changing at a breakneck pace. Brooklyn itself had become a brand! So Coney Island was this magical place with great aesthetics, all kinds of people and, yes, a little grit. It was really free of the stiffness that came with the a-bank-on-every-corner New York.

Coney Island’s history can’t be erased, and it will always have a special place in the hearts of many, but you can really feel the difference now. The new stuff is very nice, but it has no soul. And a lot of the guys who were down there running rides or working games are gone. They were part of Coney Island’s history and they gave it a lot of its character. One of the biggest losses for me personally was the signage created by Steve Powers and Creative Time back in 2002/2003--so much of it gone, thrown into dumpsters.

Q: What did we lose when we lost Coney Island to Bloomberg, Sitt, Zamperla, and the national chains?

A: I guess that depends on your perspective. If you work in commercial real estate, you probably think it’s great. If you work in the city’s finance department you’re happy that the new Coney Island has the potential to generate a fortune in tax revenue. If you already think that much of the city looks exactly like much of the rest of the country in terms of strip malls and the same 15-20 chain stores and restaurants then you’re definitely going to feel a great sense of loss when you get off the train at Stillwell Avenue and see the new Applebee’s, etc.

It’s getting harder and harder to find authentic places--anywhere in the country, not just New York. Places that are cozy, old, reeking with history, filled with stories, patina, gritty, fun, and welcoming. It takes a long time and a lot of serendipity for a place to develop those qualities. Think about your favorite bar, newsstand, home, roadside attraction, community garden, restaurant, carnival, diner, corner store, or neighborhood. If they disappear, what replaces them and how does it make you feel? I think Eddie (owner of the Zipper) said it best at the end of the film: “No matter what you put there, it’ll never be the same.”

Q: What made you decide to shoot on film?

A: Film is analogue like Coney Island. We were looking for a certain feeling and we felt like we could capture it best on film. Looking back, I should have my head examined! But I am so glad we did it. The project will always seem timeless which is exactly what we wanted.

Q: How did you get Joe Sitt for the movie? Wasn't he aware of how bad he would look?

A: It took a really long time. I called and met with his publicist. I think Sitt wanted to tell his side of the story and I actually don’t think he looks so bad. I mean, he’s a developer and this is what they do. The press made him look terrible during the throes of the rezoning, and we had to include that coverage in order to accurately tell the story. He actually made good counterpoints to some of the City’s rhetoric. I certainly don’t care for his taste in entertainment, that’s for sure. But I did not set out to make him the villain. Capitalism is the villain for me. And politics-as-usual. Oh, and it did take me a very long time to actually get a signed release form!

Q: What's happened in Coney since the film ended? What's left that makes a visit still worth it--and not totally heartbreaking?

A: With the exception of Deno’s and a few other games and rides, pretty much acre for acre most of the old rides and attractions (along with their owner/operators) have been replaced by new rides and attractions all managed by Central Amusements International/Zamperla. The devastation brought on by Sandy made it painfully clear to all parties that much of the large-scale development of big-box retail, hotels, theme restaurants, etc., is going to have to wait until some genius can figure out how to change the weather.

Go and sit on the beach and watch the people. They are fantastic. Starting with the trip out there on the train on a Saturday morning, there are always some excited kids with floaties all ready to go. The closer the train gets to the last stop, the more mental they become. So, to them, Coney is as great as it ever was.

Go to the Eldorado for the best music ever and those great disco lights. Williams Candy is my favorite place in the whole world. The Coney Island USA Freak Show is totally worth it. Wonder Wheel and Spook-a-rama are great. The History Project always has something good going on and right now they have the old Cyclops. Take quarters to put in Miss Coney Island next door, and for Grandma’s Predictions under the Wheel. I can’t do the Cyclone anymore, but I could stand there and watch it all day.

Q: What do you think is the future for this one-time wonderland?

A: Sadly, no one can simply throw it in reverse because the minute the city decided to rezone it and Sitt decided to swoop in and start buying up property, it was over. That land is now worth whatever can be built on it, and whatever the next landowner is willing to pay. And both sides agree that at the cost of land, amusements is a non-starter. There’s no more protective zoning for amusements, and although the city leased the parkland they created to Zamperla, it’s a fixed amount of land and it’s one operator. The infrastructure has to be addressed before anything too big can be built anywhere outside of the parkland, but no future administration can undo what has been done unless they use eminent domain.

1970s Stock Footage

Reader Philip Shelley turns us on to a great find--from the NBC/Universal Film Archives, originally shot for NBC News, it's a whole bunch of 1970s stock footage of the city.



Click here to watch Part One--it includes Times Square, a quiet part of town compared to today. The silent, shuffling crowds go by, only the sound of their feet making noise. The streets are more subdued, and they're also sexier with their 1,001 Danish Delights, porn houses that offer a "box lunch," sidewalk barkers drumming up customers for the "anything goes" psychedelic burlesque.



The footage moves along. Sixth Avenue is desolate. No crowds. The whole city seems a bit hushed. Until you get to total pandemonium at what looks like Bethesda fountain in Central Park--people riding bikes and rowing boats in the water. You'll also find rare scenes in the old Children's Zoo.



Click here to watch Part Two , which goes from Harlem to Brownsville to the South Bronx, desolate scenes of children playing in the wreckage, footage of buildings in flames.

At 43 minutes in, we go to Coney Island, the beach packed like it never is today, bodies overlapping on the sand. And there's the forgotten Tornado rollercoaster, eventually lit on fire and demolished in 1978.

 

Finally we see city buses covered in graffiti, subways messily tagged, not with the exuberant artworks that would come in the 80s. Weary riders, bereft without uninvented electronic devices, have no choice but to think and feel as they plunge below the streets of this other, lost city.

Even the Nights

If yesterday's post on the downfall of Coney Island at the hands of Applebee's got you down, cleanse your palate with this little ditty from Air Supply.



It's 1982's "Even the Nights Are Better" and it's all filmed in Coney Island. There's Gregory & Paul's...



...There's Spookarama and Dante's Inferno, too. And a whole lot of white suit action.



Watch here:

Applebee's & The Mermaid Parade

This past weekend, the Applebee's of Coney Island had its grand opening, unveiling a giant shark tank filled with amusement park miniatures, including a neon Wonder Wheel and Cyclone.

The tank was made by Las Vegas' Acrylic Tank Manufacturing company, stars of a reality television show called Tanked, in which two guys make large, elaborate fish tanks, e.g., a 57,000 gallon aquarium for a Dallas megachurch and a "man-cave aquarium" for an NFL player.


photo: Coney Applebee's Facebook page

Next weekend, the international chain restaurant, that honey-glazed, Fiesta lime-flavored emblem of the suburban dining experience, will throw a Mermaid Parade Party in collaboration with Coney Island USA. Tickets to the party are $45 and they'll give you entry to Applebee's "comfortable air-conditioned dining room" for drinks and an all-you-can-eat buffet in the "ambiance of the hottest new restaurant" in Coney Island.

What is wrong with this picture?



Coney Island, wild child of the city's fringe, is suffocating in national chains. Applebee's has plenty of company, including Johnny Rockets, Red Mango, Dunkin Donuts, and Subway, with Hooters and Outback Steak House on the developers' wish list.

As Amusing the Zillion said six months ago, the park "famous for its quirky authenticity" is "about to look and taste more like Anyplace USA."

Zane Tankel, CEO of Apple-Metro, Inc., the Applebee's franchisee for New York City, sees it another way. He told the Daily News, “Coney Island’s time has come. It’s the renaissance of the neighborhood."

What kind of a renaissance is this?

The image on Applebee's Mermaid Parade Party ticket provides a clue--a photo of gals (and guys) who look nothing like the scrappy, freaky, iconoclastic artists that epitomize Coney's mermaids and men. The young women in the foreground are air-brushed stock-photo princesses better suited to a Disneyland float than a little red wagon pulled by a bearded drag queen on a three-speed bike.



And while the Mermaid Parade was originally meant, in part, to pay tribute to Coney's old Mardi Gras parades, the colors and beads on this poster seem just a little too Mardi Gras and not enough Mermaid. Maybe the poster was re-purposed from a Fat Tuesday Riblets Feast. Can a multi-national corporation truly get the Mermaid Parade, or the spirit of Coney Island?

I asked Zipper director Amy Nicholson her thoughts. She told me, "The Mermaid Parade embodies the spirit of Coney Island: wild, chaotic, creative, unfettered and free-spirited--words that I am sure do not appear in Applebee's brand guidelines. I wonder what will happen when pictures surface of topless women (or a guy with a shark on his penis) with their logo in the background."

(For more on that, check out Laurie Essig's essay on how the source of the Mermaid Parade's popularity is "bared breasts and the age-old question of whether or not the mermaid has a vagina.")


supertouchart: Big Dick Merman

We know that Bloomberg likes his luxury city to be clean and in uniform--everything gritty and chaotic, from newsstands to whole neighborhoods, has to be systematically rezoned and renovated to fall in line with his vision. Since Coney Island had the misfortune to get on Bloomberg's radar, it's been under siege by developers who aim to profit by cleaning it up and making it palatable for mainstream audiences (for the whole tragic story, you must see Zipper).

Applebee's is now selling the Mermaid Parade as a family-focused event: "The Mermaid Parade is all about family! Enjoy the largest art parade of the nation and join us at America's favorite family friendly restaurant." Families and kids have always attended the parade, but the event is not, and never was, "all about family." I'd say it's all about art, yes, along with: transgression, activism, crossdressing, freakiness, and tits. Lots of tits.

(We also know what "family" is code for in this country.)


Applebee's Facebook

From the beginning, the mermaid activists and their friends fought back against the developers and city planners. At the 2008 Mermaid Parade, in the window of Coney Island USA, the Queen Mermaid held a hunger strike to rescue Coney from the "gentrifying apocalypse of retail entertainment hell." In 2009, Miss Cyclone and the mermaids protested City Hall, demanding that Coney not become "Anywhere, USA."

But the wheels of politics and development kept on turning. Many of the fighters lost their steam as the bulldozers of Big Business knocked Coney nearly flat.

And then came Sandy.


2008: "The Empire is trying to...turn it into a shopping mall"

The hurricane wiped out the Mermaid Parade's headquarters. Parade founder Dick Zigun launched a Kickstarter campaign to save the event, which has become costly due to the high price of managing massive crowds. Coney Island USA wrote on their Kickstarter page, "A free parade is expensive. As the crowds have grown to 750,000 people over the past years, we've had to contend with more regulations and restrictions that have sharply increased the cost of the event."

As Coney has become cleaner and safer, like much of the city, it isn't just the intrepid freaks and scruffy locals who go out there--it's tourists and the new New Yorkers. Those bigger crowds mean the parade needs more money to keep going. Who has lots of money? The corporations that have made Coney Island more enticing to those new crowds--national and multinational chains that are desperate to appear "local" and "hip."

It's a vicious cycle.


supertouchart

I got in touch with the Mermaid Parade organizers at Coney Island USA. Their development director, Tim Pendrell, told me that a percentage of Applebee's sales during the party will go to the parade. He said, "They also donated the terrace overlooking the parade route as a reward for our Kickstarter campaign to save the parade. They've actually been the most supportive company to our Kickstarter campaign."

I asked Dick Zigun if he thinks it's problematic to have a multi-national, suburban-style chain sponsoring the urban artists' parade.

He told me: "It is so simplistic and inaccurate to proclaim the new Coney Island Applebee's generic and a standard suburban franchise. It is run by a local businessman who heavily themed it Coney Island, including a unique, expensive, large fish tank with sharks swimming around a submerged Wonderwheel, Cyclone, and Parachute Jump."

He continued, "From the first parade in 1983, sponsored by Nathan's, the Mermaid Parade has always worked with corporate sponsorship as long as they do not interfere with Artistic Policy. Astroland, Geek Squad, Dunkin Donuts, etc., and many, many beer companies have contributed to many of our 30 past parades. I not only protect the integrity of the parade's founding principles, I also have to pay for it. Pay the bills or disappear."


fishtank photo: Coney Applebee's Facebook page

Owned by IHOP, Applebee's comes from Missouri, originally Kansas, and has over 2,000 locations across America and internationally. But they like to look local. As they say on one site, "Marketed as 'America's Favorite Neighbor®,' each Applebee's reflects the neighborhood in which it is located. The decor further conveys this theme with photographs and memorabilia highlighting hometown heroes, local schools and area history."

The new Applebee's might be Coney themed, but it's not Coney. Of course, this is what's happening to the whole city--large corporations and smaller entrepreneurs alike are co-opting the city's authentic spaces and replacing them with a theme of authenticity.

When Bruce Ratner helped bring a lurid, flashy, New York-themed Applebee's to 42nd Street in Times Square in 2000, many of us gasped in horror. In his book The Devil's Playground, author James Traub put the chain restaurant in the category of "mass-produced dreck." Ratner defended it.

"Applebee's," said the real-estate developer, "they're what America is today." Ratner was right.

Zane Tankel owns both the Times Square and the Coney Island Applebee's. In fact, he runs every Applebee's in the city, at least 40 locations. Last year, he told Fox News that, because of Obamacare, he might not build more restaurants or hire more workers, and he would consider cutting workers' hours due to the high cost of paying their health insurance. Tankel's Apple-Metro revenue was over $137.2 million in 2011 according to Forbes.

One of the sharks in Applebee's tank was named after Mr. Tankel, and he's a killer. Reports the Daily News: "A Blacktip shark named Zane had to be removed Friday from the restaurant’s 5,000-gallon aquarium after devouring three Lookdown fish in a shocking killing spree. That very same day, a Whitetip shark died after colliding with a three-foot Wonder Wheel replica in the tank, leaving employees shaken by the mayhem."


typical American Applebee's

Reverend Billy from the Church of Stop Shopping is a former King Neptune of the Mermaid Parade. I asked his thoughts about Applebee's involvement there. I'll leave you with the colorful words he offered:

"Applebee's in the Mermaid Parade? Oh, Applebee's must have changed from the soft, safe, middle-class chain diner. They must be naked in there, full of smells and seductions, barkers at the bullhorn and mysterious skinny guys pulling the lever on the Cyclone smoking Chesterfield no filters while hawking tourist women's legs.

Applebee's must have changed. It must have accepted chance, danger, and the End of the World. It must love working families who only have ten bucks to spend. Applebee's in the Mermaid Parade. It must love scaly, slithering women who make people forget about money.

This is really interesting. Applebee's in the Mermaid Parade. This is really fascinating. The food there isn't still lousy and expensive? I won't find out. I'll rob the cash register and shout Freakalujah!"


photo: Evan Sante

Coney Ride '87

On a hot summer day in 1987, join Michael Musto and friends for a graffiti-splattered subway ride from (unrecognizable) Union Square to (recently demolished) Coney Island. It's another gem from filmmaker Nelson Sullivan.



When artist Albert Crudo gets on in Bensonhurst he tells of "these horrible girls" on the platform who commented on his gender presentation: "It's a guy! It's a guy!" Musto passes the time by defacing images of 1950s Hollywood starlets.

Today they'd be hipsters. But it's not today. It's the '80s.

And, look, it's the Loew's Oriental movie palace--shuttered in 1995 and turned into a Marshall's.



When they finally arrive at their destination, the glimpse of Coney's ghosts might break your heart.

World in Wax

It's a lazy, end-of-summer, holiday week, and that means...reruns! I'll be revisiting some of my personal favorite posts here this week.

Today, go back to Coney Island's World in Wax Musee. Costa Mantis' full-color photos of this ghoulish treasure of lost Coney Island cannot be missed. You'll see Hickman the Fox dismembering little Marion Parker in a bathtub! Husband-killing seductress Ruth Snyder of Double Indemnity infamy! And Lina Madina, the baby who gave birth to a baby.

They're here, they're real, they're not alive!


photograph: Costa Mantis, 1981

Williams Candy Shoppe

One bit of authenticity that still exists at Coney Island, that hasn't yet been destroyed by politicians and developers, that won't soon be replaced by a suburban mall pretzel kiosk or an up-market sports pub designed to murder the human soul, is the Williams Candy Shoppe.



For about 75 years it's been going strong and now it's the last old-fashioned candy shop in Coney Island.

It got that distinction when Philip's Candy Shop was shuttered by the city in 2001 after 70 years of business. Philip's was the first thing you saw as you exited the subway at Stillwell and emerged to Coney, passing windows full of frozen chocolate-covered bananas and giant lollipops. It was a thrill, a kind of visual and olfactory appetizer for what was to come. Now, if I recall correctly (but who'd bother to remember?), the first thing you see is a Dunkin Donuts.


Philip's Candy Shop

The Williams Candy Shoppe is not so centrally located. It's sort of tucked away, on the far side of Nathan's. Maybe Bloomberg and his henchmen haven't noticed it?



We know what's coming--more of the same ugliness, the same architecture of death. Everybody wants their bite of Coney Island.



But until that day comes, stop in at Williams Candy Shoppe. Quite simply, it's beautiful. You don't see things like this anymore--the visual delight of candy apples and coconut-covered marshmallows, of spiral lollipops and radioactive-orange Circus Peanuts all tumbled together--and you never know when you'll be seeing it for the last time.

Listen to the candy shop's owner tell his story here.

Playland Letters

Coney Island's old Playland is losing its letters. One by one as the years go by.


Summer 2010

They're mid-century neon letters. One has to wonder if they're being taken by ordinary vandals or by Coney Island history buffs terrified that this, too, is about to vanish.


Summer 2011

In Forgotten New York, Kevin Walsh tells us that Playland began in 1930 as Silver's Penny Arcade. It was run as Playland from 1957 until it closed in 1981. Horace Bullard bought it and left it to rot. The ruin's guardian was a man named Andy Badalamenti. He recently passed away. A small tribute to him hangs on the fence outside Playland.



For a peek inside the ruins of Playland, see photos by Lindsay Wengler and Nathan Kensinger.

Ruby's

My last drink at Ruby's on the boardwalk at Coney Island.



I don't have much to say about it.



It's been here, "a Brooklyn treasure," since 1934.



After this summer, it will crumble under a corporate tsunami, along with the rest of the boardwalk.



How can I ever go out there again?

Glimpse the Future Coney

Assuming Hurricane Irene didn't suck Zamperla out to sea, there's not much time left to say goodbye to Coney Island as we've long known it.

We all know the devastation that is coming after this summer. The company that Bloomberg has handed this city treasure over to has a vision to make the place "refined, cleaner...with sit-down restaurants and sports bars." And so everything on the boardwalk, except Nathan's and Lola Star, will be bulldozed. They want to turn it into a place where you can "sit in nice comfortable chairs and have a nice cappuccino or ice coffee."

Sitting down is key. So is niceness. "Nice" is an epidemic that's killing the city. What will "nice" look like at Coney? It's already arrived.



We've got a good idea of what's to come thanks to the new Luna Park's Cyclone Cafe. It looks like it was born from a plastics extruder, a cookie-cutter design with none of the joyful messiness of Coney's traditional snack bars with their hand-written signs and paintings of food--vivid corn dogs, clams, and funnel cakes.

What do they serve at the Cyclone Cafe? Salads. Farmer's Market salads. Who goes to Coney Island for a salad? I don't go out there for "healthy dining." I go free of such burdens. I go for fried and salty evils. For glorious amusement-park junk. And certainly not for an "Over the Top Salad Experience."



And guess what else you can get at the Cyclone Cafe. Starbucks coffee. That's right--the Cyclone Cafe "proudly" brews it, just for you. Isn't that nice?



The same people have also brought Coney's Cones to the boardwalk. As you can see, this means more salads, along with panini and gourmet coffee. "Gourmet"? Don't they know the new code word for nice is "artisanal"?



To make room for the Cyclone Cafe, that paragon of lifelessness, we lost two treasures--Gregory & Paul's snack bar and the Bonanza Shooting Gallery.


2008, silversalty's flickr

The Gregory & Paul's was sold and its contents auctioned off in 2009. It was a delightful cacophony of hand-painted signs and artifacts from its over 40 years in business.

Still remaining on the boardwalk, but not for long, is Paul's Daughter, formerly the other Gregory & Paul's. Zamperla is giving them the boot, too. They've been there since 1962. Said Paul's daughter to Amusing the Zillion, "I wanted so much to be a part of the New Coney Island but they didn’t even offer me a tiny little spot on the Boardwalk." Instead, the spot is going to a multinational corporation.


2006, ConeyHOP's flickr

I don't know how long the Bonanza Shooting Gallery was here, but I'd guess since the 1960s. I absolutely loved it. It was typically my first destination when arriving at Coney Island.

What happened to all the great stuff they had in the shooting gallery? The saloon piano player who tickled the ivories when you shot him the ass, the bear that stood up and roared, the chickens that clucked in their cage? We can hope it was recycled, sold off to another amusement park, and that someone, somewhere is still enjoying it--now that we can't anymore.

But, hey, at least we've got some nice salads.