With five days to go to the scheduled opening, we’re kinda wondering… it’s gonna be ready on time, riiiiight? Photo credit: Brian Hedden

Site news: Stephanie11229 is the newest member of the BK Southie writing team. You can probably expect Stephanie to write about the swath of land from Sheepshead Bay to Coney Island. She joins myself and Nick Silver as the current regulars here. Be sure to check out her first post and say hi!

I have a hunch that Luna Park will be dominating the South Brooklyn headlines this week, and into the next.

• More on the hoisting of the Luna Park entrance sign. You know, it looks like it needs more than five days of work to me, but pretty much every we talk to that’s close to the situation says the park will be ready for this Saturday morning. I don’t seen any signs of doubt on the Coney Island Message Board (the usual prognosticator of doubt), and the company line is a Saturday opening, a brief closure next week for some extra finishing touches, and everything in place by mid-June. (Amusing The Zillion, Coney Island USA, Brooklyn Paper)
• More on the return of the John Strong sideshow – the first north-of-Surf amusement in six years – and the two competing sideshows. (Amusing The Zillion)
• The Mayor’s commitment to Coney Island has not diminished, even in the face of massive layoffs in other areas of City government, noticeably the Department of Education. Note – I’m not sure yet if the $130 million Coney budget cited in the article also includes the $64 million amphitheater planned at Asser-Levy Seaside Park, which may play host to heavy metal concerts. (NY Observer via Bay Ridge Journal, Brooklyn Paper)
• I don’t imagine one slips in a Yamaha percussion set through a chain link fence on the sly, meaning Coney Island squatlord Horace Bullard granted actual permission to Metric to film the last 30 seconds of their latest music video in front of the Playland building on the old Thunderbolt site. Bullard, who has held the land (and done nothing with it) since the 1980s, put the site on the real estate market last month. (YouTube, Brownstoner)

Not all of the news is happening in Coney this week:

• El Greco diner on Emmons Avenue gets some attention from ABC News in their latest entry into the reality TV genre – staging confrontations between waitstaff and gay customers to gauge the reaction of the diner’s actual clientele. (Story from Sheepshead Bites, video from ABC)
• TIM-MAY!!! We hardly knew you, or your donuts. If only Tina Fey had promised to sodomize your donuts instead of that Peter Pan guy, you’d have received the community support you needed. (GerritsenBeach.net, Greenpointers)
• In the future, 4th Avenue through Sunset Park and Bay Ridge will look like the first draft of a Pixar movie. (Sunset Parkour)
• Parks and wetlands activity at White Island, Seba Avenue Park, and the Back Weeds of Gerritsen Beach. (GerritsenBeach.net)
• How not to drive, rollover edition. (GerritsenBeach.net)