Tag Archives: Coney Island

Brightening Up the Boardwalk

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4.27.2004 Gretchen Mol in Coney Island filming a TV movie, “The Ballad of Bettie Page.”

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Now these are the sort of attractions that make me want to constantly rediscover Coney Island; they’d even be more thrilling than my annual ride on the Cyclone.

Brooklyn New York Baby Boomers and Everyone Who Loves Brooklyn

Like Bumping Your Ass Off, Man

Also revving up for Coney Island‘s Opening Day: Eldorado Auto Skooter now operated by our friend Gordon Lee.  In the Coney Island History Project‘s Oral History Archive, you can listen to an interview with Sheila Buxbaum Fitlin, whose family started the Eldorado and first came to Coney in the 1930′s: http://goo.gl/ypW2B 

This video from last season is by amusement park “cygnus122″

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New Wave Fugitive

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There are three ways of looking at “Little Fugitive,” which starts a five-day run at the Museum of Fine Arts on Wednesday. The 1953 film was jointly written and directed by the novelist Raymond Abrashkin (under the name Ray Ashley) and the married couple Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin. Engel also shot it, and Orkin helped edit it. It’s the story of a 7-year-old boy, Joey (Richie Andrusco), who ends up by himself at New York’s Coney Island amusement park.

{read more} How the French New Wave got its start at Coney Island

Shoot ‘Em Up Comfort Zone

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Do you remember playing this antique shooting gallery that was next to our Spook-A-Rama for many years? It was made right here in Coney Island at WF Mangels factory. We’ve taken it out of storage and are letting Coney Island USA install it in their building on Surf Ave where Denny’s Ice Cream used to be! Thanks to Charles Denson of the Coney Island History Project for his 1975 photo–Coney Island History Project.

In the days before shoot ‘em up video games, and when away from an actual shooting range or combat zone, these were usually the locales for those of us anxious to shoot off some steam. Schools, office buildings, movie theatres, etc, were concerned with other forms of business; their functions being far less multidimensional.

However, Charles Whitman‘s groundbreaking virtuosity at the University of Texas in 1966 should have given us pause to see a bad moon rising through the blood-drenched novelty of it all. But I digress.

 

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Restoring The Shore

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Despite being closed for 39 years, Coney Island’s Shore Theatre has never been forgotten. The theatre was one among numerous Brooklyn movie houses that died as a result of variegated technology and diminished audiences in the 1960s/ 1970s: high-tech televisions and multi-screen theatres replacing the stately with the dynamic.

Opened in 1925, the Shore Theatre was designed (reminiscent of an Italian Renaissance palazzo) by theatre architects Reilly & Hall and built by the Chanin Construction Company. An unusual construction for Brooklyn, the building combined a movie theatre with a six-story office complex; a design more typical of Manhattan’s Theatre District. The 2,387-seat Shore Theatre was stately in a day and age when “taking in a movie” was serious business; in fact, it meant going to the theatre in its most lavish and sophisticated sense.

The Shore was originally named the Loew’s Coney Island Theatre when Marcus Loew, theatre chain magnate, began operating the theatre soon after it opened; it was renamed the Shore Theatre in 1964. “The Sporting Venus,” a silent, was the first film screened at the Shore together with live performances by Siamese twins Violet and Daisy Hilton. On August 11, 1949, according to one source, Al Jolson performed there. By the 1970s, the theatre came a long way from the like of feature films, Siamese twins and Jolson when it was reduced to showing X-rated films until finally closing down  in 1973.

The defunct building is currently owned by longtime Coney Island entrepreneur  Horace Bullard who owns the tottering Kansas Fried Chicken eatery. The Shore Theatre has recently been nominated for landmark designation; but, in spite of pleas and cajoling from Coney Island locals and historians to sell, Bullard stubbornly continues to hold on to his vacant property…awaiting the best of all possible offers, I would suspect.

Now that Coney Island is finally being revived (hopefully), the plan is to turn the Shore Theatre into a performing arts center featuring live concerts, circuses, and various other forms of entertainment; another effort to make the island an all-year- round destination. In short, to allow the Shore Theatre to live again in a Coney Island that’s experiencing a second life.

Check out Cinema Treasures for more detailed information on the Shore Theatre as well as the Gothamist for a related article containing some exterior/ interior shots of the theatre in better days.

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Winter's First Snow in Coney Island by Bruce Handy

Reblogged from Amusing the Zillion:

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It's about time it snowed! In past years, ATZ has posted Bruce Handy's first snow of the season photos in December and once in October during the weather event known as Snowtober. "I was on the beach near the water earlier about 5, when I felt the wind shift, all the seagulls took off, the snow front had arrived," says the Coney Island resident and photographer, who took this series of photos on Friday night.

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When it snows there, Coney Island seems to acquire a look of reverberating yet suspended excitement.  

Coney’s Olde Worlde Gala

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Join Coney Island USA as we invade Manhattan at the oldest nightclub of New York, Webster Hall, and celebrate the Coney Island USA Spring Gala. The Spring Gala is the premiere fundraising event for Coney Island USA. This benefit draws a host of celebrities, trendsetters, and superstars of the Burlesque and Sideshow movement. The 2013 Spring Gala is The Burlesque Manifesto and will honor the role Coney Island USA played in beginning the neo-burlesque movement that is now a global sensation. The Burlesque Manifesto is an article written by Coney Island USA Founder and Executive Artistic Director Dick Zigun some 30 years ago. It is widely considered the beginning of the massive burlesque renaissance. Coney Island USA Spring Gala 2013 at Webster Hall, March 9, 2013.

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Henry Miller once described Coney Island most provocatively and, some would say, most accurately: “Everything is sordid, shoddy, thin as pasteboard. A Coney Island of the mind….Everything is sliding and crumbling, everything glitters, totters, teeters, titters.” (Black Spring, 1936) But I’m convinced that Miller, mercurial intellect that he was, would also appreciate the thrilling sordidness, the intriguing shoddiness, of this pasteboard-thin brilliant illusion.

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Images: Coney Island USA

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