Not me. I was just looking for the Jumble in the Daily News one day when I came across a photo of a sad guy standing in front of a Zipper. This insane carnival contraption was my favorite as a kid. Now the operator and his beloved ride were leaving Coney Island forever. My heart sank.
I set out to capture the analogue happiness of things like the Zipper and places like Coney Island before they were gone and forgotten. Kind of like that children’s story about Frederick the Mouse, who gathered sunrays and colors for the winter. I didn’t really understand why the Zipper, along with a lot of other quirky, loveable businesses, was being forced out. That really started to bother me.
At first I saw what everybody saw—another shrewd developer wanting to build luxury condos where no one wanted them. Then I learned of the city’s plan to rezone and repurpose parts of the unused amusement district for housing and retail to the benefit of the long-forgotten neighborhood. That seemed fair. Only after I interviewed all the players—including the developer and city officials—did I understand how complicated the process was. Somewhere along the way, it devolved into a big monopoly game being played out by a couple of billionaires. Then I started to pay closer attention.
We New Yorkers have just lived through the biggest redrawing of our zoning maps since the early 1960s. Nearly 40% of the five boroughs was rezoned during the Bloomberg years. It was a brilliant economic development strategy: why wait for the real estate industry to ask for a variance when you can just give them new zoning and incentives and keep the city booming? It worked like a charm! Downtown Brooklyn, Harlem, Williamsburg, Chelsea, the West Side rail yards—all rezoned, all completely transformed.
Are these massive rezonings really simple win-win situations? Something seems to get lost along the way.
How can we hold on to the last few cozy mom & pop places (and at least a little bit of the grit) that people love about New York? Where are the artists? Where can you get dollar coffee in Greek paper cups? Where’s the neighborhood dive bar? These are quality-of-life issues you can never put a price on. The public approval process allows for you to rage against the loss of your hospitals, grocery stores, bodegas, and laundromats—and you can boycott the banks and chain stores that replace them—but by the time it gets to that point, it’s too late.
That’s how I ended up making a film about land use.
Yes, there are brand-new rides in Coney Island now, all operated by a city-appointed concessionaire. Not a single unit of the promised housing has materialized, nor have the year-round jobs. And in the process, the colorful fabric that made Coney Island so special changed forever.
From now on, I’m paying attention.
