Rally Sunday to Save Astroland

The Zipper is packed up and on a flatbed truck. The Zipper and The Spider are both heading for an amusement park in Honduras, according to the New York Post.

The call to arms has gone out on the Coney Island Message Board: Rally for Astroland. Noon. Sunday. Surf Avenue Entrance to Astroland.

See you on Sunday, Sept. 9, at high noon at the Surf Avenue entrance of Astroland, to demonstrate our support for Astroland. Bring yourself, your friends and family. Don’t forget to make signs! If you don’t have materials, come early (11am) and create your own sign. I'll have foamboard and markers on hand. Wear colorful clothes- this is not a wake or a funeral! We will march through Astroland to celebrate our attachment to the park and express our desire that it reopen for the 2008 season! Remember how the B & B Carousell was saved on the eve of the auction? We're hoping for another last minute reprieve.

What does the future hold for Coney Island? A Wal-Mart?

Neil deMause had an interesting analysis of the situation in Runnin' Scared last week that lays out the three courses developer Joe Sitt could take to end his stalemate with the city. This is the option that has a lot of people worried:

Take a bulldozer to the buildings he owns along Surf Avenue—which include the Grashorn Building, Coney's only surviving 19th-century structure, and the Henderson Building, where Harpo Marx made his stage debut—and gamble that either this mayor or the next will cave on the rezoning once faced with vacant lots.