Coney Island

Coney Island of the Mind Game? Sources Say City Wants Astroland Back

Merry Coney Closing Christmas from Thor Equities!

Astroland Rocket Removed

They took the iconic rocket ship off the top of Gregory & Phil's at Coney Island's Astroland. Captain Nemo and Pablo Jonesy of the Coney Island Message Board took photos. The rocket premiered in 1962 as a ride, Astroland's first, that simulated space flight, but became a decoration in the early 7 ... More >>

Coney Fans Offer New Plans

image (cc) Mark Kehoe A petting zoo for cloned animals? A giant apple orchard? A freak show with yuppies in a cage? Some futuristic-looking NeoGothic towers? When a group of people gathered in Our Lady of Solace Church on Mermaid Avenue last night to discuss the future of Coney Island, the lines ... More >>

Talking With Donny Vomit

The Man and the Beer Label (photo by Laurie Leber)The news coming out of Coney Island these days is enough to drive one to drink, so we suppose it's lucky there's a new lager in Shmaltz Brewing Company's line of Coney Island sideshow-inspired brews. The latest is the Coney Island Human Blockhead, a ... More >>

Nathan's Staying at Coney Island, At Least

Well, that's a relief: Nathan's tells the New York Times that it intends to maintain its flagship hot-dog stand on Surf Avenue in Coney Island. There was some question of it when people noticed a city environmental impact statement that said Nathan's Famous, which has occupied the corner for 93 ye ... More >>

City Saving Astroland Rocket (in Space-Saving Vacuum Bag)

There hasn't been much good news coming out of Coney Island of late, unless you count the news that Nathan's is staying put even if its building doesn't. So this morning's announcement by the city of a major press conference on "Coney Island redevelopment" at noon, featuring everyone from deputy ma ... More >>

Man Dragged From Queens to Coney by Minivan

A guy got hit by a Chevy minivan in Corona this morning, and was dragged all the way to Coney Island before being discovered -- a 17-mile trip, reports the Times' City Blog. "The pedestrian, apparently a male," they add, "is dead." The driver, who like the victim is at this writing unidentified, not ... More >>

Totonno's Burns!

Saturday morning around 8 a.m. a fire of indeterminant origin broke out at Totonno Pizzeria Napolitano of Coney Island, the city's greatest pizzeria, and one of the oldest. The fire burned for two hours before it could be extinguished, according to WNBC news. No news yet as to whether the p ... More >>

Incredibly Cheap Eats--Chapli Kebab

Madina Restaurant is on the Pakinstani stretch of Coney Island Avenue in Kensington (bordering Ditmas Park), Brooklyn. The sign on its awning is admirably inclusive (Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi food!), but it mainly focuses on hearty Punjabi-Pakistani dishes. But my favorite item at Madina is ... More >>

BEAR NAKED LADIES

Come on in, the water is just fine

JOYRIDE

Enjoy the end of the world at Coney Island

Totonno's Returns!

  Pizza blog Slice reports that beloved Coney Island pizzeria Totonno's will be returning in early June, following a March 14 fire that closed the place. Apparently, delays were caused by the application for work permits. Fork in the Road can't wait for it to reopen.

Siren Festival 2009 Announced: Built To Spill, Monotonix, Micachu and the Shapes, The Raveonettes and More

Built To Spill It's a 90-degree day in April and there is nothing we'd rather be doing than thinking about rollercoasters and beaches and sun and Coney Island hijinks and rubbing butts with half-naked strangers who should really be wearing more than that, come on now. So we're downright ebullient ... More >>

Greatest Show on Earth, Animal Abuse Come to Coney Island

Tickets for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus' "Coney Island Boom a Ring," scheduled for Coney Island this summer, go on sale today. (Warning: link plays horrible music.) A Ringling exec tells the New York Times, "this opening night in June will be a celebration of Coney Island." "J ... More >>

Coney Island Update: Preservationists Protest, Sitt Professes Love for Astrotower

This week the Save Coney Island crew gave a City Hall press conference to protest the proposed shrinkage of Coney's 60 acres of amusement to 12. ("When properly programmed, 12 acres is a sufficient space," says the New York City Economic Development Corporation.) They brought the usual suspects, in ... More >>

Siren Festival 2009: Q&A With Grand Duchy's Violet Clark

"I like games where you can throw things and break things." This is purposefully washed out, though we have no idea why. Violet Clark comprises half of the force behind Grand Duchy, a collaboration between her and her husband Frank Black. With Clark taking a majority of the vocals, you'd never kno ... More >>

PETA Video Shows Circus Elephants Beaten, Whipped

Here's that PETA video everyone's talking about in which Ringling Brothers personnel beat their circus elephants with bull hooks and whips. It looks bad. Maybe the circus folk have an explanation. They better hurry and bring it -- the circus has several more shows at Coney Island this summer, and ... More >>

Interview: Dick Zigun, Mayor of Coney Island, on What's Good and Not So Good About the City's Coney Plans

Photo (c) Robert Schaffer. Dick Zigun is the artistic director of Coney Island USA. His Sideshows by the Seashore not only features the last "10 in One" sideshow, but showcases burlesque, houses a museum, and plays hosts to many events, including the Coney Island Film Festival, and is the headqua ... More >>

Week in Review: Let Us Soak in Positive Forces

New Year's Eve...no idea, basically. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne.​In the week we learned that Animal Collective's manager is apparently endowed with a baby leg, in the one dark place where that would be a meaningful statement, we did our best to otherwise cleanse the ol' SOTC soul, apologizing to ... More >>

Actual Honest-to-God New Rides Coming to Coney in May, New Coasters in 2011

Photo by Neil deMause​In what's becoming a bit of a Coney Island tradition, City Hall officials shlepped out to Brooklyn in a slushstorm today to make the long-rumored announcement that the Italian firm Zamperla has been tapped to open a new amusement park in Coney to replace the dearly depart ... More >>

Astroland Dead, Did Not Fall at Hands of The Warriors

​Everyone who claims to have legitimately enjoyed Coney Island's Astroland while nervously worrying for their safety on rides which were eventually going to off someone can now relax, they no longer have to pretend to enjoy it for its kitch New York Value. It's dead. Supposedly.

Happy Summer: Coney Island's Luna Park Is Open for Business

​New Yorkers have a bunch of ways of telling that it's summer. Power grids being overloaded is one way. Everyone you can't stand leaving the five boroughs is another. But the first surefire indicator that it's summer -- beyond sweating in places you forgot you had the ability to sweat in, of c ... More >>

Pix from Coney Island Taste Peruvian Restaurant in Brooklyn

​A Study in Yellow: Papas ala Huancaina, a mountain dish that resulted when Indians and Consquistadors put their culinary might together. Sing a song of Coney Island Avenue, that arrow-straight thoroughfare that connects Brooklyn's Parade Grounds with Brighton Beach on Coney Island, sojournin ... More >>

Siren Festival: The Missed Connections

​It is pretty much our job to try to help here if at all possible. Anybody? (Related: this was the only one of only nine Siren-themed Missed Connections over the weekend. Let us hereby congratulate all the bright young things we saw walking around Coney Island on Saturday for being so impossib ... More >>

MEMORIES . . .

Here's looking at you, Coney Island

Aretha Cancels Concerts, Will Miss The Food

​The Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, had to cancel her free Coney Island concerts next week because of "fractured ribs and a pain in the abdomen." Our hearts are with her, but it's obvious that the woman hasn't become that unglued by this cancellation, seeing as she's still thinking about the ... More >>

Striped-Jumpsuit Prisoners No Longer Acceptable Setup/Cleanup Crew For Coney Island Shows

​Here is one problem, at least, the Jelly Pool Parties don't have: They didn't just lose their cheap supply of chain-gang labor. Per The Brooklyn Paper comes news that whatever trash you left behind at last week's B-52s show at Coney Island was picked up by a prison inmate. Striped jumpsuit an ... More >>

Everyone Is Leaving Coney Island

​Next summer may be a lonely one at Coney Island -- nine of the boardwalk's businesses, including the owners of longtime establishments like Ruby's bar, Coney Island Souvenirs, Gyro Corner, Beer Garden, and Shoot the Freak, have lost their leases and are moving out.

Sign a Petition to Save Ruby's

Ruby's Bar & Grill​ Ruby's Bar & Grill may have gotten the shiv from the barbarians at Zamperla, but it's not going down without a fight. Per Amusing the Zillion, the bar, which has sat on the Coney Island boardwalk since 1934, is holding a party-cum-rally this Saturday, beginning at 12:30 p.m ... More >>

The Debate Rages On: Jiggers v. Free-Pour; Eddie Huang's All-You-Can-Drink Four Loko Jam Nixed

​Hundreds of patrons gathered for one last drink at Ruby's Bar in Coney Island on Saturday to protest a landlord's decision to shut down the Depression-era dive. [NY Post] The latest wine by Bordeaux's Château Latour is actually a Burgundy, which is rather surprising considering the two regi ... More >>

The Short, Sad History of the Corn Dog

​What's the mustard hiding? Read on to find out. When I was a little kid in Minnesota and went to the state fair, one of the main gastronomic attractions were corn dogs, and my brothers and I would beg to have one the minute we hit the fairgrounds on Snelling Avenue in St. Paul. Except they ... More >>

The Coney Island Boardwalk Army Meets Tonight to Fight the Concrete Menace of Change with...Recycling.

​Many people -- especially Brooklynites -- are of the opinion that Coney Island is going to gentrified culture-dead hell, as a bunch of classic Coney businesses are being given the boot by its new owners. Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz knows, and kinda cares. But what of the actual ... More >>

City May Relocate Ruby's Bar and Grill to Surf Avenue

Ruby's Bar and Grill​In the latest chapter of the sorry saga unfolding on what remains of Coney Island, the Post reports that the city is considering moving the so-called Coney 8 -- eight longtime boardwalk businesses that include Ruby's Bar and Grill -- one block away from the boardwalk, to S ... More >>

Ruby's Will Hold 'HUGE' New Year's Day Protest

​Although the future of Ruby's Bar & Grill is in peril, the Coney Island bar isn't abandoning its place on the boardwalk without a fight.

Evicted Coney Island Businesses Say City Is Lying, They Never Asked for a Buyout

via Ruby's Coney Island​Yesterday the New York Post reported that the businesses being evicted from the Coney Island boardwalk (including longtime institutions like Shoot the Freak and Ruby's Bar) had "drawn a line in the Coney Island sand" and were demanding a buyout of $2 million to leave t ... More >>

Subway Rider Mutiny Involves Taking Over N Train for Warmth

​New York subway riders will not be stopped! Well, technically, they will be stopped. But when they are stopped on a D train at Coney Island because it's freakin' blizzards outside, they will COMMANDEER another train regardless of what the MTA and NYPD say! (This is good, because we really don ... More >>

Coney Island in Winter: Our Own Antarctica

​Things may be looking grim for Coney Island's future. Old haunts like Ruby's have poured their last beer, and although Central Amusements International and Sodexo plan to make the neighborhood into a 'year-round' destination, it's worth mentioning it's a pretty magical one right now. Take a ... More >>

Coney Island Boardwalk Truce: Businesses to Stay for Summer?

Not for another year!​The hotly contested beachfront businesses on the Coney Island boardwalk look set remain and keep that decades-old charm, if that is what you call it, for one more year. Attorney Marc Aronson, who represents the eight boardwalk businesses in the eviction case against thei ... More >>

The Coney Island Eight Will Get One-Summer Reprieve

​Following a several-month-long eviction fight, members of the so-called Coney Island Eight have agreed to a deal that would let them stay on the boardwalk for one last summer before Zamperla and Sodexo step in to ruin everything.

Brave Dogs Masquerade in the Rain For Owners' Amusement

via Katie Sokoler/Gothamist ​ These selfless canines braved the crappy weather yesterday to please their weirdo owners who had entered them in a costume contest on Coney Island. This little guy is the Phantom of the Opera. [Gothamist] [@_rosiegray]

TINY BUBBLES

A soapy battle in Coney Island

The Great Coney Island Toilet Paper-Rationing Crisis Is Over

Wikipedia​Coney Island was not all fun and hot dog eating contests this holiday weekend. In fact, there was a silent, misty menace seeping through the crowds (cue Jaws soundtrack): a lack of toilet paper. In an "exposé" Monday, the Post explained that Parks Department employees were "ratio ... More >>

Nudists Want a Little, Naked Piece of Coney Island

​Hasn't Coney Island seen enough of sorrow, tribulation, and nakedness? Perhaps not. The American Association for Nude Recreation would like Coney Island to have a designated nude beach for reasons including Coney Island's accessibility via mass transit as well as the opportunity to "attract m ... More >>

Coney Island Elegy

​The bald and rotund hamburger guy welcomed generations of boardwalk strollers to Astroland, itself in danger of extinction. Coney Island as we know it is clearly on the way out, as real estate interests given the green light by the Bloomberg administration prepare to turn the place into th ... More >>

Mutton Eggs. Ever Tried 'Em?

​Wait a minute. Do geriatric sheep lay eggs? A few nights ago, some friends were sitting around Kavkaz, a restaurant on Coney Island Avenue specializing in the food of the Caucasus (that's a region in the former Soviet Union, not an electoral process), when we spied an unusual dish on the me ... More >>

Kavkaz: Nuts to You

A Brooklyn restaurant leaves herds of sheep testicle-free