Photo: Brian Hedden

Only six more days to get on the “nice” list.

• What does the future hold for Coney Island’s Boardwalk businesses? There’s a lot of insight (and pretty pictures) to be had in this Q&A between prospective amusement park operators and the City. (Amusing The Zillion)
• And speaking of which, the City and Thor closed the sale of the land the new amusement park will be sitting on. (Kinetic Carnival)
• There were two fatal hit-and-run accidents on Fourth Avenue – one in Bay Ridge, the other in Sunset Park. Generally speaking, I support the death penalty for such drivers. (Sunset Park Chronicled)
• I also support the death penalty for vandals. (GerritsenBeach.net)
• Who hates the DOT? Or rather, whose turn is it? DOT plans on and around Coney Island Avenue draw fire. (Sheepshead Bites)
• A Charter Revision Committee is expected to be formed soon, and a Community Board member in Coney Island fears that the CB’s may be on the cutting block.  (Boro Politics, via Bay Ridge Journal)
• The Manhattan Beach private security patrol may disband after the new year. (Sheepshead Bites)
• Everything you wanted to know about Adelphi Academy but were afraid their lawyers would try to make you stop. (Bay Ridge Journal)
• A Bay Ridge money manager accused of dressing as Bernie Madoff for Halloween three decades earned himself an indictment last week. (Bayridgistan)
• Coney Island Hospital recruits blood donors through Facebook. Is there anything that Facebook doesn’t do? (Sheepshead Bites)

(Coney Island photo: Brian Hedden. New Moon publicity still: Summit Entertainment… probably)

Today is the final day that the City is accepting proposals for their newly-aquired Coney Island property. Expectations are high, and the roster of interested parties reads like an All-Star team for amusement parks. And I am one of them. I got my proposal in, just in the nick of time. See below for the highlights of the newest jewel-by-the-sea:

Brooklynland amusement park.

Best. Name. Ever.

And then I added “land” and “amusement park” to the end of it. I kinda ad-libbed that one.

Rides and Attractions

(Photo: rockband.com)

FutureArcade – No broke-ass Skee-Ball machines or table-top Ms. Pac-Man units here. This will be the showcase for bleeding-edge video game technology, including Rock Band: For Reals. This is no place for plastic PlayStation guitars. You’ll be playing with a real rock band. Who would you rather be, The Beatles or The Rolling Stones?

There are two immediate openings in The Beatles Rock Band.

(photo: Brian Hedden)

The Biggest, Baddest, Inflatable Rides You’ve Ever Seen – This is what Brooklyn Parks Commissioner Julius Spiegel promised to bring to Coney Island last summer. This giant waterslide (brought in by Joe Sitt in 2007) is certainly one of those three.

There will be many movie tie-ins as well:

Team Jacob: The Ride (pictured above) – The squeals coming from this ride won’t be from fright – they’ll be from animatronic Taylor Lautner ripping off his shirt. Again. And, again.

Trust me. This schtick won’t get tiresome as fast as you think.

Admit it – if you were your teenage daughter, you’d tap that. (So will your wife, once Lautner reaches the legal tapping age.)

Alien Funhouse – A twist on the maze with the funny-shaped mirrors, this funhouse will kill you if you don’t make it out in 10 minutes, that is assuming it doesn’t eat you first. But if that damn cat runs off, send someone else to go after it.

Remember that badass gyroscopic axis trainer in Spacecamp? Yeah – totally going to have one of those. Will definitely need to pay someone full time to stand by with a mop, though.

SportsLand – A participatory park embracing Coney Island’s prestigious sports heritage, as home to the professional trifecta of baseball, beach volleyball, and hot-dog eating, including:

• The Cyclones Experience – Live out your dreams of becoming a low-level minor league baseball player in the permanent shadow of Number 27. Take batting practice from an 18-year-old rocket launcher with control issues, go on a simulated bus ride to a road game in Jamestown, NY, and race down the baseline in a giant hot dog suit.
• Tiger Woods Mini Golf Country Club – Where the objective is to beat Tiger’s score on the back 9.
• Extreme Paintball: It’s like Shoot The Freak, but with new a twist. Insead of shooting paintballs AT the aforementoined freak, patrons will BE the freak – minus the protective gear. They must cross an obstacle course under withering vinyl-based fire from ex-military sharpshooters. Play until you win, or can’t take the pain anymore.

P.S. Just for the record, in real life, I love broke-ass Skee-Ball machines.

(All photos: Brian Hedden)

Down 17th and 18th Avenues, from 60th Street to 84th Street, I’ve only been able to find one tree stand. Unlucky for me, it closes at 6pm on weekdays, and I didn’t find this out until 7pm on Monday night.

I don’t think it’s worth venturing further north than 60th – something tells me the Orthodox Jews of Borough Park are not going to have a target-rich environment as far as Christmas trees are concerned. I wonder if I had bothered to poke my head down to 86th Street if I would have struck pay dirt, but I was already many blocks from home.

No biggie – at least I came across this row of houses on 84th Street at 18th Avenue.

A gentle reminder that there are not many tree-shopping days left this holiday season.

I really like the way this photo turned out.

A couple more shots from Santa’s 82nd Street Workshop.

May 2009: Carl Kruger, State Senator from the gerrymandered district that includes parts of Brighton Beach, Midwood, and Bergen Beach, and poster child for all that is good and wholesome in the New York State Legislature, releases a statement immediately following the passage of the MTA bailout:

Sen. Kruger and his colleagues, Sen. Pedro Espada, Jr. and Sen. Ruben Diaz, Sr., were early and vocal opponents of the original MTA rescue plan introduced by Richard Ravitch that sought to impose tolls on the East and Harlem River crossings. Their opposition effectively scuttled the toll idea. Sen. Kruger also advocated from the beginning that the public authority should be mandated to undergo an independent forensic audit “rather than continuing to operate in a fiscally irresponsible manner and under the cloak of mystery.” (Carl Kruger / NYS Senate press release, emphasis mine)

December 2009: Carl Kruger – did I mention that he’s the Chairman of the Finance Committee? – regarding the revelation that an accounting error by the fiscally irresponsible and cloaked state government will provide the MTA with $200,000,000 less than promised – potentially triggering MTA Doomsday II as it is combined with a $143,000,000 slash in funding under the emergency budget passed last week:

“Our ability to budget is only as good as our ability to forecast. We were dependent upon data supplied by the Office of Management and Budget with the understanding that it was verified by the MTA’s own fiscal staff.” (NY Observer, via Second Avenue Sagas, empasis mine)

Translation: I am a Division I-A hypocrite whose primary political skill is the ability to project my flaws onto political opponents.

(photo credit: Brian Hedden)

My corner of Bensonhurst doesn’t get all gussied up for Christmas quite the way Dyker Heights or Mill Basin does… but every now and again, this is what you see.

(photo credit: Brian Hedden)

• A pizzeria in Gerritsen Beach is holding a raffle, with the winner receiving free pizza for life. That’s one pizza, every week, for the rest of your natural life. Sweet Jesus, do they deliver to Bensonhurst? (GerritsenBeach.net)
• Sunset Park blog Best View In Brooklyn is signing off after two years. Blogs come, blogs go, but I really loved this one and I’ll miss BViB in my daily reads.
• MarineParker.net has been kicking around for almost a year now, but it has really ramped up its amazing local coverage in the last two months. Like this spot on the future Fortress of Lumbertude next to Kings Plaza. If you aren’t reading it yet, you should start now.
• I’m confused by this piece in an industry rag about the market for retail stores in New York City boroughs not named Manhattan:

Retail Times: You’ve mentioned that some national tenants have been looking in the boroughs. Can you give any names?

Abrams: It’s a lot of discount-oriented, value-priced retailers whose sales are strong in this market and who are looking to expand. I think you have retailers like Target and Kohl’s and Walmart, which has looked in the boroughs in the past. There are a lot of food uses. You have Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s also understanding that there is a huge opportunity in the boroughs. You have a lot of fast food operators—Subway, Checkers, a hamburger fast food chain that has stores nationally.

…

Fishbach: I think with street level retail, you have more opportunities with the local retailers… There are fewer big-box retailers, so you have less of a choice in potential tenants, due to the size of the space and obviously many big box operators are either not expanding or no longer in business.

I’m confused. Are the box stores moving in, or not? That question seems to have generated two contradictory responses. The blog-eye view suggests “are moving in” – an apparent Walgreens is set to move into Sheepshead Bay, while Marine Park will be losing the McGuiness Irish Gift Shop after 20+ years, and Bay Ridge is losing a hairdresser that’s been in place since the Sixties. (MarineParker.net, GerritsenBeach.net, The Luna Park Gazette)

I’m not sure if that’s representative evidnece, or merely coincidental. The people in this interview are acting like they know what they’re talking about when they clearly do not – I don’t want to make the same mistake.

• The City’s Coney Island RFP has attracted over 50 companies interested in making their own pitch for the Rabbit’s Isle. (Daily News)

(all photo: Brian Hedden)

Tree stands have popped up all across the borough. This one is somewhere in Bay Ridge, probably on 4th Avenue, probably in the mid- to high-60s.

I don’t remember exactly – I was actually quite drunk at time, and in retrospect was quite lucky to take this photo without the hyper-realistic Beer Goggles blur.

I have often lamented the passing of Stella’s Diner on 18th Avenue. Because without it, there are no diners in my corner of Bensonhurst. I love neighborhood diners, and the absence of one in my neighborhood really hurts. I never put too much thought into why there are no diners here, though, but at least now I have a hypothesis to offer to the scientific community.

Bensonhurst is a neighborhood that has no bars to speak of. Without bars, there are no people stumbling around drunk at 1am, looking for eggs, home fries, and silver dollar pancakes before they head for home. And without this built-in market of 1am breakfast customers, the economic viability of any potential diner is considerably diminished.

In case you were wondering why Bensonhurst has no bars, I already came up with a theory for that: I hypothesize that Italians drink with their families, and Irish drink to get away from them, and that’s why Bay Ridge has all of the Irish pubs.

I’m not Irish, but I drink to get away from my family anyway.

P.S. What’s with black-taxi companies requiring an address to pick up fares, and refusing customers who only give them street corners? Hello, it’s 2am, I’m drunk, I’m inside of a diner and didn’t grab the address when I came in… I just want to get home and I don’t have the mental capacity to fabricate an address. As it is, my gf and I ended up hailing a black-cab – yeah, like THAT’S totally legal – that was parked next to this tree stand. So someone else got my taxi fare. Take that, black-taxi dispatcher.

As someone who has watched the Bay Ridge real estate market finally start sliding back to being only marginally astronomically over-priced, I nearly choked when I saw the Gingerbread House at 8220 Narrows Avenue go on sale for $12 million.  I can just hear my broker saying “See, I told you the recession is over and home prices are on the rise.”  Yeah right. But for just for fun, I pulled out my trusty mortgage calculator and found out I could own this place if I could just afford the $51,535 per month mortgage payment.

8220 Narrows Avenue. Otherwise known as the "Gingerbread House"

While I agree that Bay Ridge is a nice place to live, if I had $12 million to spend I think I *might* live somewhere else.  An article in the New York Post reports that a $12 million sale would set a Brooklyn record for a single-family home. It also would bring an astronomical return for owner Jerry Fishman. According to city records, Fishman bought the house in 1985 with a $440,000 mortgage. Assuming a typical 20% down payment, the sale price was $550,000. A $12 million sale would yield a profit of $11,450,000. The Post also reports that Fishman is an alumnus of Fort Hamilton High School (which is right across the street from the house) and that he used to gaze at the Gingerbread House as a student and dream of owning it.

I, for one, find the place rather creepy. It doesn’t exactly look welcoming to Trick-or-Treaters unless you want to end up baked into a pie! It doesn’t help that Fishman keeps several large, menacing dogs on the property, that come bounding out to the low walls surrounding the property to bark and bare teeth at anyone who deigns to walk on that side of the street. Not exactly neighborly…

[Editor's note: Everyone please welcome Rita, the newest author for BK Southie! Rita will be writing predominately about Bay Ridge.]

The x37 express bus from Bay Ridge to midtown Manhattan represents your typical morning slog to the office – you pay dearly ($5.50!) for cushioned but cramped express bus seats, annoying cell phone users, and the daily ritual of seeing the same faces boarding the bus at the same stops every day. It gets so that you know the stops by the passengers who board there: here comes the lady with all the bags who takes up two seats, here’s the guy who never has enough on his metro card, here’s the old geezer who scowls at everyone, and look there’s Elvis.  I must be early today, I haven’t seen him in ages. Yes Elvis. Not my downstairs neighbor who happens to be named Elvis, but the King himself, or at least his look-alike.  He doesn’t wear a white body suit, or drawl “thank you very much” to the bus driver, but he’s got the high pompadour and the long, bushy side burns and looks like he should be in Vegas, not Brooklyn.  I wonder if being Elvis is his actual job, or if it’s just a hobby?  Surely he must have a regular job if he’s up this early.  Did he go to his job interview like that?  But my thoughts at that hour are fleeting and I slide back into my usual morning stupor until we reach the crowded 69^th & Colonial stop where Mick Jagger climbs aboard. The chords to Start Me Up play in my head as he lurches down the aisle, bleary eyed and tired. From his shaggy hair to his skinny legs to his well-worn features that suggest good times gone on too long, this guy is a Jagger clone. I wonder if he ever sits next to Elvis and compares notes.  Or could it be that he doesn’t know that he looks like Mick Jagger?  Am I the only one who notices?  Nobody else on the bus gives him a second look, but that’s New Yorkers for you.

I wonder if there is something about Bay Ridge that attracts celebrity impersonators. Are they home grown or do they move here of their own accord? Is there a local chamber of commerce group? Not surprisingly, I’ve heard that there’s a local John Travolta impersonator who proudly proclaims he’s a Bay Ridge native on his web site, but I haven’t met him yet. I’m sure that one day our carts will crash at Foodtown. And then there’s the cast of the Soprano’s hanging out at the cigar shop on 92^nd and Third Avenue, but they’re not really celebrity impersonators – it’s more likely that central casting copied them, not the other way around.

But before I could chalk it all up to coincidence, it happened again.  I walked into a local hair salon looking to book an appointment and found myself face to face with the Material Girl! From the gap-toothed smile to the blond hair parted down the middle, the receptionist was a dead ringer for Madonna.  It took my brain a few addled moments to realize that I was staring. “You really look like Madonna” was all I managed.  She shrugged “Yeah I get that all the time.”  I guess there’s just something about Bay Ridge….

The $3 bagel-and-sausage sandwiches (coffee included) at Dale Bagels are not only good, are not only a good bargain, but they also heal people. Last Wednesday was shaping up to be a sick day for me – I had a sore throat, congestion, and slept in the neighborhood of a whole hour the night before. Yet after one of the aforementioned sandwiches (sans coffee) I felt not-sick and well-rested.