Mr. Sitt Begins His Coney Island Blue Period

So, we were wandering around Coney Island yesterday afternoon in the fog that was rolling in off the water and giving it the feeling of the Sunset District in San Francisco in July, when we looked up and saw that developer Joe Sitt has finally painted a tiny portion of his plywood fence blue. It's in front of one of the more atrocious tagged up spots his firm, Thor Equities, has created. It was a recent paint job. A can of blue paint was still sitting on the sidewalk. (Well, we assume it was recent. It could be that the can had been sitting there for days after workers thoughtfully left it behind.) So, we were wrong: Thor can, in fact, afford $20 worth of paint as part of a $2 billion project. Does this mean they're, uh, going to paint multiple city blocks worth of fencing in Coney Island blue? We thought one of their consultants was going to do something artsy with the fences in order to put a happy face on what some people consider deliberately created blight intended to apply pressure for faster action the zoning changes the developer wants. Possibly. In the meantime, GL suggests having someone check out these depressing, tacky eyesores every couple of days to paint over the tagging so that Thor doesn't help recreate a Warriors feel in Coney. (Yes, we understand it was worse in the 70s and 80s and into the 90s, but things had improved dramatically until Thor came along and started knocking things down and putting up fences, possibly years before they ever building anything.)

Also, we noticed that some of the signage had been removed from the stand pictured above. Earlier, we had written wondering if anyone was going to preserve Coney's signage or if Mr. Sitt was simply going to have his work crews rip it out and toss it in dumpsters. We don't know the answer. Only that the signage is gone.