Who Will Preserve Coney's Ads and Art?
With most everything between the Cyclone, Surf Avenue and Stillwell Avenue likely to succumb to the Thor Equities wrecking crews in the next 18 months, give or take, the loss of the advertecture that is unique to Coney Island is very real. Will the signage end up for sale on eBay or simply tossed in a dumpster and trucked off by a certain demolition company that does a great deal of work around Brooklyn? Is there a way to, at least, save some of the signage for a museum? Is some entity already at work on it? Are they going to end up on a wall in the food court in developer Joe Sitt's shopping mall or in frames in the lobby of a hotel? While we wouldn't compare what is in Coney now to the treasures that were lost 40 and 50 or more years ago, there is still much that is unique and worth saving. We've included a few samples here from our photo collection. There are hundreds of such images around in Coney Island from a school of American seaside-boardwalk advertecture that is slowly starting to disappear.
Labels: coney island
posted by rsguskind at 8:45 AM
6 Comments:
Wait, I thought you were all anti-business. Now you want to save advertisements?
You'd be the first person in line to protest a Gap opening up on 5th Ave in Park Slope. But if Bruce Ratner wanted to tear it down, you'd be the first person in line to protest and scream "Save the Gap!"
You bring up a hugely important point here. As a community we should all get together and try to do what we can to aid in salvaging most of this so that they can be preserved somewhere, anywhere!
You bring up a hugely important point here. As a community we should all get together and aid in salvaging most of these items so that they can be preserved somewhere, anywhere!
i think it would be very simple to just replicate what has been destroyed
There is a semi-homeless man named Wallace who has painted many of the signs in Coney Island. He walks around Coney Island with his portable studio, a shopping cart full of canvases and paint. You will frequently see him sitting at the picnic table outside the grill house, using his big belly as an easel to prop up the canvases as he paints. Whenever he sees me he serenades me with the song "somewhere over the rainbow." This redevelopment raises many issues about "What is Coney Island?" THAT, to me, is Coney Island. Wallace's artwork, and all of the artists who contribute to the colorful landscape in Coney Island should, definitely, be preserved.
There is a museum in Coney Island. If you see anything abandoned, grab it and take it to the museum.
As for saving the GAP, the point is that there is a history of SMALL, individually run business that needs to be saved. Being anti-corporate is not the same as being anti-buseiness.
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