Brooklyn’s Activists Act to Save Coney Island

With plans to tear down Coney Island in the works once again, photographer and curator Andrew Garn decided to do his part to try to save the historic Brooklyn attraction. After five months of planning and meeting artists, some of whom Garn found on Craigslist.com, the summer group show “All Roads Lead to Coney Island” opened last Friday at A. M. Richard Fine Arts Gallery on Berry Street.

The show features drawings, paintings, photographs and mixed media pieces by a wide range of artists that includes big names like Barbara Mensch, Todd Boebel and Richard Eagan alongside less famous—yet equally talented—artists such as Arthur Robbins and Ann Murphy.

“I went democratic with picking the artists,” said Garn. “Because [Coney Island] is such a democratic New York place.”

Garn exhibited older works, like a print of Diane Arbus’s photograph “Two Girls in Matching Bathingsuits” from 1967, with pieces like Emily Feinstein’s “The Bathers,” a sculpture of a rack with old fashioned bathing suits from 2009, to capture how artists saw Coney Island over the years.

Some of the works take on a humorous tone. Ann Murphy’s “Hotdog” is a watercolor painting of a pants-less man in a “Nathan’s Famous” t-shirt and hat and a hot-dog sticking out of where his privates should be. Several photographs from 1977 show members of the Polar Bear Club stretching in leopard-print trunks. There is a painting of scary faces by muralist Mark Kehoe, and a funhouse mirror. Richard Egan’s romantic mixed media piece shows the silhouette of the Cyclone under a crescent moon. Garn even included himself in the exhibit with some of his photographs of Coney Island Circus Sideshow founder Dick Zigun and a film that he spliced together from existing footage of Coney Island.

One wall of the gallery is dedicated to historical images of the “People’s Playground,” from its glory days in the early 20th century to the 1911 fire that burned down most of the park to its recent state of construction and pending redevelopment. The memorabilia includes renditions of the lit-up towers of Luna and Steeplechase parks (burned down in 1911), a photograph of tents set up in 1911 surrounding the burned down amusement park—one of which was owned by Garn’s uncle—and a still shot from the 1914 film “Josie’s Coney Island Nightmare.”

“Over the years Coney Island’s grandeur has faded a little bit, but it is still there,” said Garn. “It’s such a New York place, such a carnival.”

Remarkably enough, on Sunday afternoon, a volunteer from Save Coney Island, a grassroots organization that promotes the preservation and revitalization of Coney Island, was collecting signatures for a petition in McCarren Park, completely unaware of the exhibit at A.M. Richard.

He hopes to get 100,000 signatures, which he will then present to the Department of City Planning at the rezoning meeting slated to take place sometime in mid-June. If the petition is approved, the city will start revitalizing Coney Island, instead of letting developers put high-rise residential developments with stores on the contested waterfront strip.

“My family used to own that ride [Thunderbolt, which was torn down in 2000]. Coney Island is in my blood,” said the volunteer. “I would like to see Coney Island restored to its former glory, to again be the envy of the world.”