Round and Round it Goes No More...

I think we’ve all have gone through a “what if” session with people, and within our own brains, about what we would do if we won the lottery. I now have a new one.

Coney Island’s Astroland shut done last Sun-day as planned (my blog about it is somewhere down there). This is somewhat of a calamity, I think, in that the new owners of the land, having grandiose plans for a combination of luxury high rises and retail space do not have the necessary legal variances to proceed with these plans since the entire area is currently zoned for “entertainment” purposes. They purchased the land and several adjacent parcels (I heard $100 million) with the presumption that their request for rezoning would fly through city hall without problems. This, of course, is not to be…there are too many irons in too many fires to make it easy. Anyway, rather than leasing the land back to the present operators for another season, allowing Astroland to stay open until new construction could actually begin, they chose to shut it down. Consequently, while the grist for the rezoning mill grinds exceedingly slowly through a red-tape nightmare, the current structures and surrounding grounds will quickly deteriorate into fire hazards and crime-ridden crack-hovels (maybe a slight exaggeration). Coney Island is, after all, right next to a very large body of water called the Atlantic Ocean, whose erosive properties of sand, salt, howling wind and seagull shit will immediate-ly start chipping away at anything not properly maintained.

Well anyway, you’re wrong, my lottery winnings are not destined to set things right with Astroland; I don’t really give much of a hoot what eventually happens out there; other than the fact that the process is totally screwed up.

What I want to do is buy the carousel. Or rather, I want to answer the call for a “cor-porate sponsor for the restoration and relocation of it.” It would only cost $1.3 million, a mere fraction of my lottery winnings, and the city of New York is willing to discuss in what public space it would be located and they would take care of its upkeep, presumably forever. But in addition to the $1.3 million I would set up a trust fund so that it would always be a freebie.

This carousel is not your run-of-the-mill merry-go-round. It has 50 horses (and two chariots), all made of hand carved and hand painted wood; not one of those aberrations with other kinds of animals made of fiberglass. Carousels should be horses, after all, majestic steeds rearing and roaring endlessly, scaring and thrilling those among us who like that sort of thing.

I rode this carousel for the first time in 1959 when it was truly a thing of beauty. You’ve heard the expression “grabbing the brass ring?” It comes from carousels like this one. A complicated little contraption is set up at its edge with a mechanical arm extended toward the riders. The arm contains a dispenser with one ring at a time pro-truding out. I’m not sure what the rings were made of, maybe bronze (probably iron), but they were pretty heavy. As your ever-ascending-and-descending steed whizzed past you grabbed the ring and then, as you rounded the curve, you tried to throw it through the bulls eye of a large target painted on a sturdy, canvas backdrop. This made the ride that much merrier because it was not all that easy to do and a large number of the rings ended up scattered throughout the pavilion as people butterfingered their way around the rotation. And it was a personal triumph to toss it successfully through the bulls eye. In addition, during your ride (but not always) a shiny brass ring would appear in the armature. If you were lucky enough to ride by on your rearing stallion at the right time and were successful at grabbing it; you got a free ride! WooHOO! I don’t recall if I ever caught the brass ring but I sure spent a lot of quarters trying.

When next I hit the big city in 1970 the carousell (sic) was still there but under a really tight secu-rity system (the value of original wooden carousel horses has skyroc-keted) with walls and metal grates to peer through. The ring grab-and-throw feature was gone (like everything else that insurance companies frown upon). The carousel itself had not been maintained very well although it was still something to behold and, through the years, I took nostalgic rides, continuously impressed by the artistry involved in its creation. But also continuously depressed by the deteriorating ghetto surrounding it, including Astroland across the street.

Last summer I went to the NY Aquarium, which is located near the Coney Island boardwalk, and tried to search out the carousel but I was too late; it had already been dismantled and put in storage. I understand it is actually still operable but quite a bit of restoration will be required to give it back to the public. $1.3 million doesn’t seem like too much to ask, does it? I can do that once my lottery winnings clear the bank; where’s my checkbook?