What's Left of the Astrotower

The Astrotower's 50-year life came to a sudden, unexpected and violent end over the past week, following reports on July 2 that the one-time Coney Island attraction was swaying worryingly in the wind. Officials shut down the Wonder Wheel and Cyclone rollercoaster, and all surrounding rides, in fear that the disused landmark might topple. Obviously, Coney Island can't remain indefinitely inactive during its peak operating season. So, soon enough, workers got busy dismantling the 270-foot tower, foot by foot. 

At first, the plan seemed to be to lop off just enough so the monument wouldn't present a danger. But I guess once the workers got into a rhythm, they didn't see the point of stopping. I had planned to journey down to Coney on Thursday or Friday to witness the Tower's trimming, but couldn't find the time under Saturday morning.

What I encountered there when I arrived you can seen in the photo above. The Astrotower was completely gone, reduced to a stump fenced off by chain link. I had a tough time even finding the thing—something that was never a problem when the Tower was at its full height. The chunks of Tower were sold to a local junkyard for scrap.

What a goddamned waste. Even as City Hall and real estate developers teamed up in recent years to strip Coney off all its character, the boardwalk retained four seemingly immutable landmarks: The Cyclone, the Wonder Wheel, the Parachute Jump, and the Astor Tower. Now there are only three. When Astroland, the amusement park that gave the tower its name, was unceremoniously kicked out a few years ago, the City was given the option of adopting the tower. The owners of Astroland were willing to make a gift of it to the City. But the City didn't want it, even for nothing. Astroland closed in 2008, and the Tower just stood there, untended. The far less interesting amusement park Luna Park grew up around it.

The only place you can see the Astrotower now is in this map of the Luna Park grounds.

Pictures to Grind Your Teeth By

Astroland being dismantled. And for what? And to be replaced by what? What a waste.

Astroland Gets One-Year Reprieve

That roar of jubilation you're hearing to the south is Coney Island's reaction to the news that Astroland will be allowed to purvey its amusements for one more summer. Rumors to that effect have tantalized New Yorkers for months now. But Thor Equities, the geniuses who think Coney needs a better amusement park, made it official yesterday.

The park will reopen on March 16 and stay open until September 2008. (Thor has been rolling craps with the City and the Public for so long that my bet is the company won't be ready to build even a year from now, making further extensions a distinct possibility.)

What held up the reprieve? Well it may have had something to do with the terms Thor was seeking from Astroland owner Carol Albert. According to her, Thor was asking for $3 million in rent for 2008, a 1,650% increase of the previous rent of $180,000.

Now I know who today's real estate developers are. They're those guys who wake up every morning and say, "The most important thing in the world today is whatever it is I want."

Astroland May Return in 2007

Thor Equities—realizing that its not ready to building anything in Coney Island anytime soon, and that everyone in New York pretty much hates them—has decided to let eight Coney vendors stick around until fall 2008. Leases were handed out all around.http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

This has made Carol Hill Albert, owner of Astroland, "hopeful." Talks are "ongoing."
And mighty Thor, raising his thunderbolt, boomed "We're hopeful that an agreement will be reached," he said. All hail Thor!

According to the , "The city's long-awaited rezoning for the area, which will determine what and where Thor will be allowed to build, is expected as soon as next month." Don't count on it, Joe.

Astroland Au Revoir

Yesterday was the final day for Astroland's "adult" rides (the kiddie rides will apparently soldier on until mid-October). Try as I might, I couldn't get down there, so laden with work was I. It made me sad. But I had visited every other weekend this summer and I got my fair share of last looks.

Gowanus Lounge was on the scene for what seemed like all day and he's got some wonderful pictures here, here and especially here. If you don't choke up seeing the Zipper ride ride down Surf Avenue on the back of a flatbed truck, never to return, you haven't got a heart. The picture of Astroland owner Carol Albert, stonefaced, staring down the microphones, is also a classic. And then there's the choice shot of Joe Sitt being drawn and quartered on the boardwalk. No, wait—that was in my dream last night.

Astroland Extension Not a Done Deal

So much for Joe Sitt's sudden charm offensive.

Gowanus Lounge reports, via amNY, that Thor Equities had not offered Astroland the chance to stay put at Coney for one more summer. Or, rather, Thor has, but with strings. Sitt wants the City to grant Thor the zoning changes it wants (the ones that will let him build big old towers), or no dice. So he'll give Coney something everyone wants for one year, if he gets to build something nobody wants forever. Nice.

Astroland To Grace Coney One More Year

This will not be the last summer for Astroland at Coney Island!

The New York Post reports that Thor Equities and Astroland owner Carol Hill Albert have worked out a deal to keep the amusement park in business through 2008. The agreement was brokered by Councilman Domenic Recchia Jr. Way to go, Dom!

This could be the latest sally by Thor's Joe Sitt to improve his press. I don't know, and I don't care. It's just good news, that's all.

And more good news: the City continues to work to find a new site for Astroland near Keyspan Park, where the Cyclones play. Who knows? Maybe Astroland's not going anywhere.

That Sinking Feeling

Writing this blog, I'm used to tracking attacks on New York City's cultural legacy, and steeling myself against the often disheartening news I'm forced to report. But, I'm sorry, this week week has been a bitch.

DiFara's has been closed by the DOH again. The Parks Commissioner is menacing the Red Hook Ballfields food vendors. Kurowycky Meats shut down for good. And Katz's continues to listen to offers from a bevy of salivating developers. Add this to the continued fact that Astroland will be gone with summer's last breath, and Chumley's remains shuttered, and it's too much. I feel myself being sucked into the vortex of our crumbling cultural infrastructure. Is there to be no relief?

Every decision made in the town today is made with money foremost in mind. Now, don't call me naive. I know it was ever so in New York City. We're the city of Peter Minuet and Wall Street. But, I think, rarely has it been carried to the current heartless, blinkered extremes. The five boroughs are just a Monopoly board for the millionaires, a place to pile their building blocks one on top of each other.

Will the toothless Times, Post and Daily News do nothing but objectively report each landmark as it topples? With no one raise the red flag? Will Bloomberg continue to see every god-awful-ugly-inappropriate, make-it-yourself condo tower as a sign of the rightness of his economic plan for the City? Will the Landmarks Commission ever retrieve its backbone from that pawn shop on Fourth Avenue?

If Robert Moses came back from the dead and was reappointed building czar, you can bet he would get his highway through Soho, his Brooklyn-Battery bridge marring the view of the harbor, his thruway dividing Brooklyn Heights—all the horrible ideas of his that were stopped in their tracks by right-thinking, civic-minded citizens like Jane Jacobs. He'd get it all and City Hall would sit back and say, "Ah, progress!"

Astroland Blasts Off For the Last Time

Coney Island opened for business on Sunday, April 1, beginning the final summer that Astroland will grace the boardwalk, the property having been sold to Joe Sitt and Thor Equities, save the landmarked Cyclone, which will still be operated by the Albert family. Sitt wants to reinvent the park, making it all slick and nice and Six-Flagy—truly anti-Coney attributes.



The day was chilly and overcast, with rain threatening throughout. Still, there was a crowd of a few hundred on the boardwalk. Miss Coney Island was on hand, a sunny young blonde woman with some impressive Slavic cheekbones, and wearing a full-length fur coat to ward off the cold.



Marty Markowitz, of course, showed up to cut the ribbon at the park, as well as at nearby Deno's. He's an ebullient, boosterish fellow and it's hard not to like him. Still, I've never seen a man who so exuded the buffonish aura of the machine pol.



A raffish, ramshackle parade of misfits, with some frankly sexual majorettes, sauntered through the Astroland grounds. Nathan's was noisy and bustling. And an old sinner who ran a balloon dart game effortlessly conned me and my son out of eight dollars when we planned to spend just two. Nice to know Coney hasn't yet lost all of its seedy, grifter charm.

Truth be told, I spent most of my time not in Astroland but at Deno's Wonder Wheel Park, since that park's kiddie rides and games are more suited to my son. There, a portly, gray-haired old guy in a blue windbreaker and sunglasses latched onto me and gave me an earful of what was going on in Coney, and what was going to happen in the future. He was born and bred in Coney and seemed to be an insider of sorts, given the way to passed in and out of Deno's before it was officially open. He said, as a kid, he mastered all the boardwalk games. He passed his skills on to his daughter, teaching her how to throw, shoot, bowl and whatever during the off-season so that she's clean up in summer. She became so good, most of the vendors banned her from their games.

Anyway, he told me Sitt's continual claims that he can't make money on a new amusement park without building some condo towers to back it up was, in a word, bullshit. The proof? The Vourderis family that runs Deno's. "Do they make a living?!" he replied to my apparently stupid question. "A great living!" He seemed sure that Thor's dream of a wall of condos is dead, and not just because the City doesn't want to give Thor the zoning change to build them. "Are you going to spend a half a million on an apartment that sits over an amusement park that operates well into the night, every night?" Good question, I had to admit. My Man on the Boardwalk even seemed doubtful that Thor would build the lavish amusement park they're promising. Rather, they'll flip the properties and skedaddle. Don't know how accurate any of these assertations are, but he seemed to know his stuff. And it made me glad to hear it.

Also, I was interviewed by a Japanese television station about the closing of Astroland. I kept telling them they were standing in Deno's, not Astroland, but they didn't seem to get it.

Take the Astrotower, You Ingrates!

I thought Coney Island has become a big development priority for the city. But apparently, not enough for them to fork over some do-re-mi to save the great old Astrotower, relic of old Coney which, yes, towers above the boardwalk.

And guess how much City Hall would have to pay to keep the icon? Nothing!

Here's how it goes: Carol Hill Albert sold Astroland Park to Thor Equities. She wants to donate the Astrotower to the city. But the city is taking its sweet time looking this gift horse in the mouth. So Albert is considering a buyer's offer to move the 275-foot-high thing to an unnamed amusement park in the Southland.

"The city taking ownership of the Astrotower is an interesting idea that warrants exploration, but we would first need to better understand the associated costs," said idiot child Joshua Sirefman, interim president of the EDC and the chairman of its Coney Island Development Corp., according to The New York Post. This, even though Albert has said she'll share relocation costs. Maybe if she bought Sirefman a lollypop it might seal the deal.

The Astrotower was built in 1963 and, amazingly, still works. Next year is Astroland's last at Coney. So take a ride up to the top and get a gander. It might not be there in 2008.

Oh, by the way, in case you're panicking: Albert did not sell the Cyclone as part of the Thor deal. It stays put, and Albert will run it.