Coney Island made a rollicking splash into summer, debuting its first new roller coaster in 87 years, returning a beloved rocket ride to the fun fold, and chillin’ with costumed crustaceans at the Mermaid Parade — with First Kids Dante and Chiara as king and queen! Month in Review recaps these and other top reports from our papers in June.
Aaaaaaaaargh!: The Thunderbolt rumbled into the People’s Playground like a magnificent brute, delighting thrill-seekers who shrieked their lungs out as Sodom-by-the-Sea’s first new roller coaster since the Cyclone whipped them about like rag dolls through a pitiless tangle of drops, twists, turns, and loops at speeds of 65 miles for two heart-pounding minutes. The new Thunderbolt — a rebooted version of its iconic namesake, which croaked in 2000 — is faster, steeper, and more twisted than the Cyclone, which opened in 1927.
Rocket-on: The Astroland Rocket Ship — one of the first and only surviving early amusement park space simulators — zoomed back into Coney Island’s atmosphere after six years in orbit at the Staten Island Homeport, delighting Wonder Wheel Park owners who plan to restore the craft in preparation for the funzone’s annual history day on Aug. 9. The rocket, originally called the Star Flyer, debuted in 1962 at Astroland Park as one of the first of the imaginary space voyage simulators constructed during the Space Race. It showed simulator films of rocket rides while the chassis rocked its viewers to “outer space” for three minutes.
Coney on the half-shell: Scantily clad sirens danced with costumed swashbucklers, pirouetting pirates pressed flesh with kooky marine monarchs, and all of them hobnobbed with the First Family as the 32nd-annual Mermaid Parade surged into the People’s Playground like a colorful tsunami. A mayoral entourage led the fun — Mayor Bill DeBlasio and wife Chirlane McCray sashayed down the Boardwalk as a pirate and mermaid, and their kids Dante and Chiara donned blue faces and foamy regalia as King Neptune and Queen Mermaid.
Joe’s woes: Former District Attorney Charles “Joe” Hynes experienced a role-reversal as a scathing city report accused him of allegedly looting the public piggybank and violating election laws in his failed re-election bid last year. The borough’s ex-top lawman may have paid a political hack more than $1.1 million in public funds between 2003 and 2013, including almost $220,000 in cash seized from criminals, to boost his campaign, while improperly seeking political advice from a sitting judge, authorities claimed. Hynes was the borough’s top lawman for 23 years before current District Attorney Ken Thompson unseated him in the November elections.
Poop scoop: All that glittered wasn’t gold on Bushwick sidewalks, where www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/37/23/dtg-dog-poop-art-war-2014-06-06-bk_37_23.html “>gilding pooch plop with gold spray paint became the new street craft for an artist who dug deep into his creative bowels to unleash a debate on the relativity of attraction. “It is a commentary,” he said. “I am saying, ‘We are all attracted to shiny things, but nine times out of 10, it is all s— underneath.’ ” The fartform prompted our readers to eliminate some insightful logs in our comments section!
Duck, duck, goose: The “Ugly Duckling” fairy tale came to life in Prospect Park after a pair of ducks took a stray gosling under their wing. The big-hearted mallards, known as Lily and Marvin to park regulars, formed a bond with the abandoned baby goose in an avian adoption yarn straight out of a Grimm Brothers storybook. But the fuzzy orphan may be a sad casualty of state-sanctioned geese harassment, said animal rights advocates. On another note, they applauded the passage of a new Assembly bill that saves Brooklyn’s mute swans from a state-sanctioned massacre for now. Assemblyman Steve Cymbrowitz’s (D–Sheepshead Bay) legislation now awaits Gov. Cuomo’s signature. Stay tuned.
MVP venue: Barclays Center is a slam dunk for hosting the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Mayor DeBlasio claimed in a letter to the selection committee. The city’s top point guard dribbled off the borough’s score sheet and boasted that the home of the Brooklyn Nets was the ideal court for a powwow to pick the party’s next presidential contender. Our earlier reporting showed Barclays had a competitive edge, and other contending venues were mere bench warmers.
Steel cadaver: The bright red Kentile Floors sign has loomed over Gowanus for more than 60 years, almost shaking hands with riders on the F and G trains, but the soaring advertisement for a defunct tile factory — one of the last remnants of Brooklyn’s industrial glory days — was on its last legs as developers squared off against nostalgia buffs over its fate. One consolation? The sign’s owner promised to keep its iconic, giraffe-high typography intact while dismantling the emblem at Ninth Street and Second Avenue, where the former Kentile Floors plant churned out deadly asbestos tiles for nearly a century before closing in 1992.
Flush off: Gravesend Bay is not a city garbage dump, claimed activists rallying at Shore Parkway and Bay 41st Street against a trash depot planned for the site. A who’s who of local electeds and environmentalists argued that a garbage terminal, where residential rubbish would be packed and loaded onto barges, would endanger communities along the bay while clogging streets with polluting trash trucks.
Never forget: A Field of Flags at John Paul Jones Park in Bay Ridge was seeded with 307 Stars and Stripes — one for each New Yorker to die in Iraq and Afghanistan — in a red, white, and blue tribute by U.S. Hockey Players Support Our Troops. The Brooklyn charity sells patches to raise money for families who have lost loved ones to the wars.
Diesel desert: Bike-friendly Cobble Hill could become a gasoline wasteland now that a developer has gobbled up the last filling station in the land-starved area. The nearly $8 million sale of the lot at Atlantic Avenue and Henry Street is a blow to motorists who may have to juice up miles away in Gowanus or Clinton Hill. But the vanishing act is on-trend with the rest of the city, where service stations are losing ground to top-dollar apartments, storefronts, and offices.
