Coney Island Nathan's Looking Good

I visited the Nathan's Famous flagship store in Coney Island a few weeks back, determined to hate it. The iconic restaurant had been closed since being hit by Hurricane Sandy, and was further decimated by a fire in May. I expected the resulting renovation to be slick and anodyne, like much of the new and soon-to-come Coney.

I was surprised by how much I liked what I saw. Let's be honest: What makes the Coney Island Nathan's great—aside from the hot dogs and fries themselves—is the iconic neon exterior. That's always been the case, and it is happily still intact. The interior of recent decades was always a study in cramped ugliness. Zero charm. The new Nathan's has been redesigned with an eye toward spaciousness and efficiency. For the first time in long memory, I didn't feel dirty and claustrophobic upon entering. There was plenty of space for the throngs and many cashier lines. I waited five minutes for my food, instead of the usual twenty.

There's also a new raw bar. A marked improvement. 

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.

Lost City Asks "Who Goes to Totonno's?"

It seems I've spent a lot of time in recent years waiting patiently for Totonno's to reopen following various disasters, and then making a trip to the Coney Island pizzeria to make certain nothing had changed. I hope no more catastrophes befall the culinary institution. I don't know if the owners could withstand another financial setback after the recent fire and flood. Here's my latest "Who Goes There?" column from Eater:

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An Overlooked Survivor of Coney Island

Ravaged Coney Island doesn't have many landmark businesses left standing. You can count them on a couple hands. I thought I knew them all. Then I walked by Friscia Pharmacy on Mermaid Avenue.

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Scrubbed Clean of at Least One Layer of History

The iconic Coney Island boardwalk concession Paul's Daughter, formerly known as Gregory and Paul's, and in the same family hands since 1962, was forced to close last fall when the boardwalk's new landlord, the Italy-based Zamperla USA, rejected their business plans. You can read the heartbreaking story here.

Here's the building today, scrubbed free of all its once-wonderful character, save the familiar figures on the roof holding aloft a burger and a brew. (You can see the business in its glory days in the picture far below.)

Now that the Paul's Daughter signage is gone, though, you can see that the building has a mercantile history that went beyond 1962. Among the words in the remaining, overlapping painted signage are "Ball" (maybe "Ballroom"), Prizes," "Variety," "Discount" and "Gallery," as well as some other words I can't make out. Layers of history.

Coney Island Rathskeller Uncovered

For whatever reason, rathskellers—the breed of German, subterranean beer cellars—have always been a source of fascination to me. Perhaps it's because they're a bygone form of watering hole, once common in cities across America, now scarce. Perhaps because they speak to the German part of me (my mother was partly of German heritage). Perhaps because I like old bars of all sorts. Perhaps because I love saying the word "rathskeller." Probably a combination of all these things.

I have visited ancient, and beautiful, rathskellers in Germany, Chapel Hill and Louisville. But I didn't think any still existed in New York. Today's news from the Coney Island-focused blog Amusing the Zillion doesn't prove they do. But it does show that remnants of one rathskeller are still around.

ATZ reports that the menu from a long-closed rathskeller, which once existed under the boardwalk in the 1940s and '50s, has been found on a basement wall of the Brooklyn Beach Shop. The menu lists prices for food, soda and beer. Ten cents would get you a brewski back then. Apparently, rathskellers were common enough in Coney back then that there were such things as "rathskeller acts."

If you'd like to see the picture, you can go check out the blog. Or this one. Or just enjoy this photo of the old rathskeller in the basement of the Seelbach Hotel in Louisville. (above) Or this one, of the Dakota Inn Rathskeller in Detroit.

A Story to Break Your Heart

From Grub Street. File Under: The Long, Sad, Death of Coney Island:

Summer officially ended yesterday, and soon the unofficial season at Coney Island will end as well. When it does, seven mom-and-pops on the boardwalk will shut forever — including Paul’s Daughter, the one my family owns.

Central Amusement International, which the city hired to manage its property at Coney Island, wants what company president Valerio Ferrari calls a "more refined, cleaner" feel for the boardwalk. And the shops the company is shuttering "don’t fit into [CAI’s] vision."

There have been "Last Summers" before, including 2009, when my father watched as the Astroland rocket was torn off his shop's roof. But this past summer, Central Amusement asked the mom-and-pops to submit nine-year business plans in order to see if we could make our shop fit into Ferrari’s vision. My sister, Tina, submitted ours and offered to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to modernize our shop. It didn't matter; I believe the decision to evict had been made long before the plans were submitted. After being a part of Coney Island for the last six decades, we now have to close the store next month. My father says losing the store is "like a death in the family."

My dad, Chief as he's known on the Island, has been out there for 63 years, almost since the day he arrived in the United States from Greece. Chief started at a milk bar under the BMT depot when he was 21 years old. There, he met Gregory Bitetzakis, a fellow Greek. The two would go on to become partners for half a century. They worked for another Greek, known by everyone as Pineapple, until 1962, when they opened their first Gregory & Paul's on the boardwalk at West 8th.

They eventually opened three more. They lost one in 1968, when Nelson Rockefeller bought the land and donated it to the Aquarium. A fire destroyed another in 1980. Gregory closed the second-to-last location when he retired in 2009.

As a kid, I loved visiting the shop. I'd get a grape drink from the dispensers and thick crinkle-cut fries as they came out of the fryer, something I still do.

As teenagers, my sister and I worked on holidays. I have never spent the Fourth of July anywhere else. When the weather was good, the crowds were so deep you couldn't see the boardwalk or the ocean, just lines of hot hungry people, for hours on end.

In 2009, after the rocket had been taken down, Chief decided to give up his last remaining store. My sister offered to take it over; she's the one who renamed it Paul's Daughter.

It's always seemed to me that both my father and the store would go on forever — there has always been a store, and my father's always been there. I have no memories of him anywhere else when I was a kid (other than two blurry images of him on line at Radio City's Christmas show).

But now, we must pack up the store and vacate no later than November 4, even though our hearts are still in Coney Island — and business is still great. "Maybe I'll start over on the Bowery," Chief says, referring to the alley in Coney Island, not the now-hot stretch in Manhattan. Whatever happens, the store will continue for me, with the rocket on its roof, Chief behind the grill, and lines of people stretching out to the sand.

New York's Oldest Bialy Bakery to Close

The Forward reports that Coney Island Bialys and Bagels, which purports to be the oldest bialy store in New York, will close its doors after 91 years in business.

Quite frankly, this news surprised me. I had always assumed that Kossar's on the Lower East Side was the city's oldest bialy store. But Coney Island Bialys says it began in 1920, and Kossar's opened in 1927. (Of courese, Kossar's still claims to be the oldest. Such is the way in New York City.)

Owner Stephen Ross blames the recession for the closure.

According to their website, "Coney Island Bialy Bakers Co., Inc. was started in 1920 by Grandpa Morris Rosenzweig. Grandpa Morris and his brothers immigrated to the United States from Bialystock, Poland, and brought with them their knowledge of a local soft yeast bread known as Bialystoker Kuchens. Kuchen is the German word for cake. The original business was started in a basement in Coney Island, and that is where the Coney Island Bialy Bakery was born. In 1954, Morris moved the bakery to 2359 Coney Island Avenue, Brooklyn, NY and opened the first retail bialy bakery." I would guess this is where Kossar's would make their claim, discounting the pushcart years as immaterial.

The business has been run by the same family for four generations.

Mayor Who Doesn't Understand Coney Island Hires Italian Who Doesn't Understand Coney Island

Anyone who understands this City better than Michael Bloomberg—and that's just about everybody with a New York address—could instantly comprehend why hiring an Italian company to reinvent Coney Island was a boneheaded idea. You don't bring in a foreigner, with no intrinsic feeling for the nature Coney Island—an iconic, ur-American place if there ever was one—to fix it. It's just common sense. You get a New Yorker. Someone with horsesense and a heart. (Of course, this is the same City Hall that hired a Spanish company to design our newsstands and bus shelters.)

If anybody needed proof that the company, which goes by the nauseating name of Central Amusement International, was going to get it wrong, the New York Times has very helpfully provided solid proof. CAI is going to shut down Ruby's Bar & Grill and six other Coney boardwalk attractions this summer. Why?

"We will never make Disney here," said Valerio Ferrari, the president of CAI, seeming to indicate that Disney is a desirable goal. "But it will be something more...refined, cleaner. A little more year-round, if it’s possible, with sit-down restaurants and sports bars."

Refined. Cleaner. Sit-down restaurants. Sports bars.

Need I say more? He grasps the essence of Coney Island just about as well as cats grasp the game of fetch. What places in the the United States have a clean collection of sit-down restaurants and sports bars? Oh, right—every place!! What places have bars like Ruby's? None. Ruby's is one of a kind. So are the other businesses. They're Coney boardwalk businesses. They're irreplaceable. A sports bar isn't. Applebee's isn't. 

Ferrari said he would keep Nathan's Hot Dogs. Genius! What a great mind at work. (Actually, I bet the City strong-armed him into that one.)

And there's more. "We don’t have the same vision," Ferrari said of the vendors he was shutting down. "They like the way it is, and we don’t." That's clear enough. Of course, his assumption is that his vision is the correct one. He's mistaken. 

A Night With the Cyclones

Few things beat a Brooklyn Cyclones game on a fair June night, as far as untarnished New York summer joys go. I look forward to my first game of the season every year.

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Says Who?

You mean the Bloomberg administration and Thor Equities put back all they've destroyed over the past five years?

One Shore Lives, One Shore Dies

The day after reporting that the 100-year-old Shore Hotel had been demolished by Joe Sitt comes news that The Shore Theater has been awarded Landmark status. You lose one, you win one, you break even. Sort of. I kinda feel like the commission doesn't really care about any of these buildings. They just toss us a bone every now and then to keep us from yelping too loudly.

Coney Island's Shore Hotel Destroyed

Good-for-nothing, enemy-of-the-people developer Joe Sitt has been at it again, destroying what's good about Coney Island one building at a time. The son of a bitch smashed the Shore Hotel and the Henderson Building to bits the other day.

The old wooden-frame Shore building was built back in 1903.

Boy, do the City Fathers hate Coney Island.

(Photo courtesy of Amusing the Zillion.)

Little-Known Coney Island Landmark Has Date With Wrecking Ball

Amusing the Zillion reports that an obscure Coney Island landmark will soon be flattened by the City to make way for its new plans. I didn't know about this building, but it's pretty interesting:

The old Feltman’s kitchen building on the Astroland site is among the structures set to be demolished to make way for new amusements on the City-owned parcel. This humble building is the last remnant of the fabulous block-long restaurant and entertainment empire owned by Charles Feltman, the inventor of the hot dog.

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What Your Mayor Is Up To

Pretending to be like Obama, so Democrats will like him.

Pretending to be a Republican so conservatives like him. [The Daily News]

Killing Harlem with his rezoning schemes. [NY Post]

Killing Willets Point with his rezoning schemes, not to mention abuse of eminent domain and the police department. [Daily News via Queens Crap]

Killing Coney Island with his city planning schemes and dickering over price. [NY Observer]

Killing trees with his vanity art projects. [Gothamist]

Paying out money to spread trash about his rivals. [NY Times]

DUMP this lying, scheming, autocratic megalomaniac in 2008. He's a toxin. He's a cancer. He's the new one-man political Mafia. He's not your friend. He's nobody's friend.

Some Stuff That's Interesting

Andrew Berman gets some things off his chest. [The Villager]

Coney Island scourge Joe Sitt is working his charm again, this time frightening clowns away. [Curbed]

Chumley's has a new predicted opening date—fall 2009! We sorta believe this one a little more than the previous nine predictions. [The Villager]

Why couldn't they have just let the roof cave in? [NY Post]

A nice film of the interior of the RKO Keith in Flushing. [Queens Crap]

Details magazine thinks Park Slope's O'Connor's is a dive (correct), as well at Times Square's Jimmy's Corner (wrong). Dives are on the decrepit side and are home to sad boozehounds. Jimmy's is simply a nice, well-kept, modest bar. It's old and unfancy, not down and out. [Details]

Queens is Pinko. [Restless]

There was a road called Bloomingdale. [Harlem Bespoke]

Some nice photos from near the Hudson. [Greenwich Village Daily Photo]

Abraham and Straus, "Brooklyn's Greatest Retail Store," remembered. [Forgotten New York]

Some Stuff That's Interesting

Developers defile Sheepshead Bay landmark Lundy's.

Coney Island developer/destroyer Joe Sitt puts on his old disingenuous act. Again.

Lehman Brothers sure left the building quickly.

Jamaica's Chapel of the Sisters is restored.

Landlords are crazy and evil. Some moreso.

Some Stuff That's Interesting

Restauratuer Danny Meyer, the king of Union Square, not wanted in Union Square.

Robert DeNiro, who loves NYC oh so much (if we are to believe the American Express ads), to defile it with ridiculous-looking skyscraper.

Marion's, neat retro-swank joint on the Bowery, has closed for renovations—we hope.

Nathan's hot dogs are now more expensive. Like everything else in the City.

Bloomberg unwittingly criticizes himself.

Developers Deb Scotto and Billy Stein are against the Carroll Gardens Place Text Amendment, which would redefine (or, rather, properly define) some neighborhood street as "narrow" (which they are), not "wide" (which they're not), and thus curb nasty development. Hm. That more proof the amendment's a good idea, in my opinion.

Small condos will not ruin Minerva's view of Lady Liberty. (NO condos wouldn't impair it at all.)

Hey, Brooklynites! Make $90 grand a year? Feel pretty good about it? In two years, you'll be considered poor.

Some Hotels in Coney Island I Won't Be Staying At

Some Stuff That's Interesting

A roller rink opens in Coney Island in a former Childs restaurant. Gee, Childs has been in the news a lot for a defunct chow chain.

The Landmarks Commission seems seems to think tearing landmarks down may be appropriate.

More evidence that the Department of Building's ineptitude and corruption leads to deaths.

An old-style newsstand survived on the Upper East Side despite an assassination attempt from the self-appointed eyesore police.