Coney Island’s BK Festival Raises Questions About Just What A Flea Should Be

 Posted by Arturo Tedesco at 11:02 am  Coney Island, General Interest, General News, Kvetch
Apr 052011
 

Antiquing in Brooklyn? Fughetaboutit!

The Aquaduct Fleamarket was once a local, unpretentious gathering of weekend entrepreneurs. For years vendors hawked everything from T shirts and CD’s to beauty products and, of course, the mainstay of any swap meet, flea market, garage, yard or stoop sale from California to Maine: antiques, Americana and miscellaneous bric-a-brac.

According to the NY Times, that’s exactly what the reincarnated version of the famous Ozone Park, Queens tradition will NOT be selling when it comes to the corner of Stillwell and Surf Avenues. According to organizers Tommy Brady and Tommy Walker, this one’s going to be strictly ‘upscale’ (aka characterless). Because, you know, when you’re looking for that really high end merchandise it’s either Lord & Taylor, Bloomies or a vendor stall in Coney Island. Something tells me that the ‘Two Toms’, along with local destroyer of historic buildings Joe Sitt’s version of ‘upscale’ is going to be a lot of overpriced, cheaply made plastic stuff from China and ‘beauty products’ that aren’t quite up to the level of Avon. After a couple of years of this, that Walmart over by Erskine’s not gonna sound like such a bad idea…

Local blogger Tricia Published writer and local blogger Tricia Vita over at Amusing the Zillion has done a great job providing extensive coverage of the Aquaduct Flea Market’s move to Coney. Her article, which we link to below, includes examples of previous attempts by Joe Sitt’s company Thor Equities to turn amusement space into vacant lots and depressing flea markets (check out the photos). The icing on the cake? Some words of wisdom in the comments section by BK Southie’s own Brian Hedden:

Amusing The Zillion: Thor’s Coney Island: Joe Sitt Scores Puff Piece In NY Times

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Around South Blogistan – June 7, 2010

 Posted by Brian Hedden at 7:00 am  Blogwrap
Jun 072010
 

It feels good to be back in Brooklyn. Still getting caught up. Lot’s of MTA and Bay Ridge Fifth Avenue festival stuff coming up later this week. Some Brooklyn Cyclones awesomeness coming up later in the morning.

  • The attendance of blogger Dan Cavanagh continues to be an issue at the meetings of the Gerritsen Beach Property Owners Association. No longer content with having public and private (i.e no video camera) sessions to each meeting, some members now want to change the organization’s by-laws to bar non-members entirely, including Cavanagh AND community newspaper Our News. The excuse du jour is that GerritsenBeach.net’s Internet circulation lets outsiders stick their nose into the neighborhood’s business. Here’s the thing: I thought the members of the GB community that had an axe to grind with Cavanagh were upset about stories like the mysteriously dumped wood chips and the even more mysteriously dumped rubble. Those stories would still exist without access to the GBPOA meetings, so what’s the point in banning him? Other than retribution, that is. (GerritsenBeach.net, Sheepshead Bites)
  • Speaking of community newspapers, Bay News takes a few pot shots at blogs in its 65th-anniversary issue. Blogs respond by pointing out a couple of Inconvenient Truths. (Sheepshead Bites)

ConeyRocks, June 5, 2010

Sitt has 8 -10 year plans for Coney

As I have stated many times, this is all going into the next administration. Thor is not leaving Coney. All the other blogs got the whole scenario wrong.

Me, November 18, 2009

10. Joe Sitt’s plans, if they take place, will still take some time to get off the ground – the tanking economy and commercial credit markets will see to that. So while waiting for his hotel ducks to line up, will he allow the current game operators on the Bowery to stay? Or will he force them out and demolish the land? I have no idea. Recent history suggests the latter, but my inner optimist hopes for the former.

Of course, I am hedging most of my bet on the “no, he won’t” side of “if they take place,” which is the point CR is trying to make. But I totally called the it-will-take-a-while meme. Remember that, BK Southie readers. You read it here first.

  • Taconic Investments – Coney Island’s OTHER major landowner – outlined plans to NY1 for 2,500 new luxury condos within five years. (NY1 via ConeyRocks)
  • Landscaping at Leif Ericson Park. Finally. (Bay Ridge Blog)
  • Demolition for 93rd Street crack houses. (Beehive Hairdresser)
  • Mill Basin children fell into Jamaica Bay when the deck underneath their family’s above-ground pool collapsed. A swimming pool built over water. I’m not the only one who’s seeing this, right?
  • Memorial Day in Gerritsen Beach (parade | block party). (GerritsenBeach.net)

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Around South Blogistan – May 10, 2010

 Posted by Brian Hedden at 7:00 am  Blogwrap
May 102010
 

Hey – a reader mentioned the other day that they didn’t like the name “Blogistan.” It sounds too Communist or something. Even though I got away from it for a little while, it’s the name I gave to this news roundup the first time that I did it a year and two days ago. Any thoughts from the rest of the virtual peanut gallery?

  • First came the batting cages, then came Astroland. Now Joe Sitt is planning to tear down the last historic – though not landmarked – buildings in his Coney Island portfolio. One of the buildings in question is an eyesore on the outside but exquisite on the inside. Of course, it’s being prepped for demolition as we speak. I have no doubt that the strip mall that Thor has proposed in their places will be every bit the smashing success that was Festival By The Sea, from beginning to end. (Amusing The Zillion, Kinetic Carnival, BK Southie)
  • Nick already told you about the Wednesday night fire at the Coney Island Arcade. The fire – which totaled the games and claimed the life of Targette, one of the Arcade cats – is being linked to roofing work that was being done earlier in the day. (Amusing The Zillion)
  • New York State politics: three men and The Penguin in a room, with a side of personal vendetta. (Sheepshead Bites, Bay Ridge Journal)
  • Did you hear the one about the city that let high-rise residential development go forth unchecked and then laid off 6,400 teachers? Do you really need to have played SimCity to know how that one is going to play out? Hint: keeping those cops will come in handy. (Sheepshead Bites, Gothamist)
  • The perfect pizza pie and the perfect Italian hero in Bensonhurst. As if either would be found anywhere else. (Jeffrey Tastes via OTBKB)

Reminder: you can get BK Southie updates delivered to your e-mail inbox every day at 1pm! Sign up HERE!

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Around South Blogistan – Mar. 8, 2010

 Posted by Brian Hedden at 7:00 am  Blogwrap
Mar 082010
 

NEW! Add BK Southie on Facebook!

  • Hannah Springer, a Bay Ridge resident that was the subject of a recent Brooklyn Paper article about raw milk consumption, is really really NOT happy with that paper’s coverage. (The Healthy Family Chronicles)
  • Acid doesn’t hurt people. Delusional psychopathic dog-haters who walk around with jars of acid hurt people. (Sheepshead Bites)
  • Stillwell Avenue, pre-Joe Sitt. It still annoys me that the first things he tore down were the spots I was most looking forward to visiting in 2007 during my post-Connecticut-exile return to Brooklyn. (Amusing The Zillion)
  • At first, I didn’t believe it. But if Key Food went through the trouble of publicizing their stocked shelves through the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, then I suppose they really mean to open the 69th Street and Third Avenue location. This Week. (Bay Ridge Blog, Brooklyn Daily Eagle)
  • I had no idea that the reigning Miss Brooklyn lives in Manhattan Beach and loves thrift stores. I do remember the Brooklyn Paper complaining that the 2008 winner lived in Manhattan (without the Beach). I don’t remember them plugging 2009 winner Keelie Sheridan at all. Maybe they’re not sure where Manhattan Beach is? Or maybe they know exactly where it is, which is probably outside their distribution area. (Sheepshead Bites)
  • This 1924 aerial view of Gerritsen Beach looks like Google Maps in some sort of Hot Tub Time Machine. (GerritsenBeach.net)
  • Lola Star is officially back in her Boardwalk cribs. On a related note, her blog makes me extremely confused as to whether I should be spelling her name with one ‘r’ or two. (Lola Star’s Diary)
  • The volunteer Gerritsen Beach Fire Department is looking for additional support from the community, at least more than 25% of it. I’ll fess up, I had no idea that GB even had a volunteer fire department. (GerritsenBeach.net)
  • A large condo development on Avenue Z is on the fast track to nowhere. (Sheepshead Bites)

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12 Things I See In Coney Island’s Crystal Ball

 Posted by Brian Hedden at 6:30 am  Coney Island
Nov 182009
 

Zoltar

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28198273@N05/ / CC BY-ND 2.0)

1. Splitting Coney Island’s central district in two – a City portion and a Sitt portion – is good for you and me. One of the problems I see with Atlantic Yards – a Bloomberg “Legacy” project with no accomplishments to date – is that a corporate developer has oversight over both his boondogle and the affordable housing which was billed as a benefit to the City. Well, now that the economy has tanked, guess which part of his plan is on indefinite hold, and guess how much public assistance he has to forfeit. If Sitt had been left in charge of the whole of Coney Island, I have no doubt that the social benefit (in this case, a new, quality amusement park) would have been tossed by the wayside in favor of a never-ending run of rent-a-carnivals and fleas-by-the-sea. Now he can focus on combing his patch of sand for every last penny and wooden nickel, and the Bloomberg Administration can concentrate on actually following through on one of their Legacy projects.

2. The Bloomberg Administration’s record with Legacy projects is a bit on the dim side (Olympics, West Side Stadium, Tolls For Transit Take 1, etc), yet I’m oddly optimistic that they’re going to get the job done at Coney Island. Here’s something from the RFP fact sheet I found particularity telling – they’re not looking for a rent-a-carnival to bide time until the big guns move in. They want someone to move in by next summer, and continue to improve their amusement park with phased development. If they can get contractual guarantees – something they apparently failed to do with the affordable housing attached to the Atlantic Yards project – they’ll be in excellent shape to get their first win since the Million Trees.

3. The City is out to prove the Doesn’t Matter side of the Size debate. Count me among those, like the activist group Save Coney Island, who believe there should be more carnival/amusement park space than the 12.5 acres that the City has proposed. But this land sale has sealed it – they’re clearly letting Sitt run with his plans on his side of the demarcation line. If Sitt fails, there may be another chance to review this in the future, but the lines are set for the foreseeable future.

Continue reading »

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Where’s Brian?

 Posted by Brian Hedden at 6:30 am  Blogwrap
Jul 232009
 

where-is-brian-copy

OK, OK. I’ve been a bad blogger lately. I’m doing it right, in my opinion, if I’m putting up an entry once every weekday or every two weekdays. Not once every two weeks. What can I say. Sometimes life gets in the way.

It isn’t like I’m not up to anything worth writing home about, either. Like my awesome day at Coney Island beach this past Sunday. Oh, the pictures I could have shown you! On a related note, please remind me the next time you see me, I need to pick up AA batteries. Oopses.

Well kids… in the meantime… whilst I get my act together… check out a couple of the stories that I’ve been reading up on.

  • More city committees line up behind the Bloomberg Administraion’s rezoning plan for Coney Island. Joe Sitt doesn’t like it. (Brooklyn Paper)

“I’m the guy who controls this — it’s my sandbox,” Sitt told the New York Post, our sister publication.

But Sitt softened his previous opposition to Bloomberg’s plans and said he could “share my sandbox with my friend Mayor Mike.”

It’s a tacit admission of his maturity level when he starts talking in the terms of a spoiled six-year-old.

  • The authors of Brooklyn Vegan went to the Siren Festival and took lots of pictures. Here, here, here, and here.

The band I would have liked to have seen is The Raveonettes.

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Festival By The Sea Poster: A Reaction

 Posted by Brian Hedden at 4:58 am  Coney Island
May 142009
 

copy-of-dsc04068

This ad for Joe Sitt’s Coney Island flea market was on the N-train on my way home last night. It pulls my SRSLY WTF levers on so many levels.

  • After decades of decline and shrinkage and ill-fated land grabs – the most recent grab by Sitt himself – this is pretty much the size of today’s amusement district.
  • There are a lot of rides and amusements in this poster promoting a glorified flea market that occupies the four tents on the left. What’s the angle here? Are they implying that the Wonder Wheel and the Cyclone and Nathan’s et al. are all part of the so-called Festival By The Sea? Or are they acknowledging the interdependency that exists between business owners on the Rabbit’s Isle – the one Sitt steamrolled in an effort to strongarm the city into the zoning changes he wanted?
  • The Astrotower? Really? Is that even there anymore? After demolishing the batting cages and the go-carts and clearing away the Astroland rocket… was he really gonna stop at the Astrotower?

Update: The Astrotower is indeed still standing.

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