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Ride The Citibank Wonder Wheel!

At first the idea sounded great. One of a tiny handful of decent initiatives the mayor's put forward since taking office.

Bloomberg announced in late September that he was forming a panel to look into ways to keep Coney Island open year-round. Until now, Coney, like any carnival, has depended on six months worth of business to keep the proprietors along the Boardwalk afloat for the rest of the year. A rainy, miserable summer like this last one can be?and was?financially devastating. Finding ways to keep it open year-round would not only help overcome rainy summers, it would also help out the surrounding neighborhood, which is in pretty bad shape itself.

Then we realized what the formation of a "Coney Island Development Corporation" (many of whose members are real estate developers) really meant.

Marty Markowitz says he wants an amphitheater, a heated water park, a recreation complex, a ferry connection to Midtown and "a Boardwalk lined with even more restaurants, clubs and cafes with music, great food and dancing."

But why stop there? Maybe they'll throw in some nice boutiques while they're at it, and a spa or two. And billboards! Lots and lots of billboards! In short, the plan once again, as it always seems to be, is to make Coney more upscale and tourist-friendly. Bring in a few major corporate sponsors (like KeySpan and their baseball stadium), give the place the ol' spit and polish, tear down a few eyesores, jack up the rents so Ruby's and the Sideshow and the chintz shops and the fried- clam stands can't afford it anymore. And those rides? They seem so old, don't they? People nowadays don't want to go on old rides. They want new, fun, fast and exciting rides!

A few years ago, Disney showed some interest in essentially buying Coney Island out and making it their own. It didn't happen then, but how much you wanna bet that the first thing the Coney Island Development Corporation does is put in a call to try and jump-start those talks again?

You know, Coney Island has been there for about a century. There've been good years and bad, a few lean stretches here and there, and sure, it's not as fabulous as it once was. But Coney has always survived on that six-month schedule, and it will continue to survive that way. In fact, the Boardwalk probably has a better chance of surviving just the way it is now than it would if the city decided to fill it with sushi bars, trendy nightclubs and Disney shops. The development corp. needs to keep in mind why people go to Coney in the first place.

 

Used Furniture Anyone?

By Oct. 15, the City Council may be set to vote on the Street Furniture Bill that would hand a 20-year contract to a large media company to standardize (and advertise on) the city's bus stations, newsstands, toilets and information booths. If passed, the bill could endanger the livelihoods of New York's remaining street vendors by forcing them to pay for renovations without seeing a dime of the ad profits.

Once upon a time, there were 1500 newsstands in the city. Early to open and late to close, they became a familiar and well-loved part of a universe in which they were often the only real tenants. Most were strangled by larcenous stone-age distribution monopolies, irate building owners, incoherent and uncaring public policies and, of course, tv news. They were all issued death sentences during the last, failed contracting process. Only a First Amendment victory in federal court stopped the imminent loss of all sidewalk-newsdealers licenses.

Ads on bus shelters first appeared in 1974, in the depth of crunching fiscal distress. While the billboard industry claims that their structures project a sense of modernity, the low level of services endured by transit users and neighborhoods ill-served by this 30-year-old, stale, outdated concept, must stop. Bad design and lack of amenities make shelters a daily insult to the one million bus riders. No entirely profit-driven industry should be handed the role of conceptualizing, designing and looking after our vital public space assets for the next two decades.

By far the most comprehensive counter-proposal to the Street Furniture Bill has been drafted by the organization Independent Newsdealer Knowledge-cooperative (INK). For a history behind the bill and a full discussion of what's at stake, see their site at [www.localexpression.com](http://www.localexpression.com/).

 

The Final Word

To be honest, we've grown a little bored with writing about the smoking ban. We know it sucks, you know it sucks, the bar owners know it sucks. And until there are any major new developments, this'll be all we're gonna say about it for a while. Below is a list of the (very) few places that have received exemptions from the city.

Getting an exemption is a tricky business. An establishment must prove that it is more bar than restaurant, that at least 10 percent of the bar's income comes from the sale or rental of tobacco-related products and that both of these criteria have been true for almost two years.

To the best of our knowledge, the following establishments have met the criteria, and will still allow you to light up:

? Kush, 183 Orchard St. (Stanton St.), 212-677-7328. A Moroccan-themed hookah joint.

? Karma Lounge, 51 1st Ave. (betw. 3rd & 4th Sts.), 212-677-3160. Another hookah joint.

? Club Macanudo, 26 E. 63rd St. (betw. Park & Madison Aves.), 212-752-8200. A snooty, upscale cigar bar.

? VFW Post 107, 2414 Gerritsen Ave. (Whitney Ave.), Bklyn, 718-769-6094. For the truly courageous.

 

Zagat Music

Finally, a music guide for people who don't like music!

Picture this: a well-dressed couple in their thirties are chain-store shopping, walking up and down the aisles. The man, resplendent in khakis tied taut under his post-frat beer belly with a leather woven belt, turns to his turtleneck-wearing wife and says, "The world of music is yours, my dear."

She thumbs through a slim silver book, stops on a page and says, "Well, according to Zagat, NWA's Straight Outta Compton album is a 'quintessential gangsta rap album' with 'high octane production' that 'caught the music world in a drive-by.' Sounds delightful!"

This scene, coming to a Virgin Megastore near you, courtesy the Zagat Survey Music Guide, wherein the 1000 "top albums of all time" are reviewed in nibble-sized quotes from over 10,600 avid music fans. That thousand wasn't a large enough vessel to accommodate Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, the Spice Girls or any of your precious little indie rock bands, however. You will find four Grateful Dead albums and five Springsteens, and punks will take heart that Bad Brains, Black Flag and the Stooges are worthy of Zagat-ization.

We can only imagine how they would've presented GG Allin. A "fearless original" who "shat upon musical convention," perhaps?

 

 

Taking in a new roommate is always a tricky business. Either they leave dirty dishes in the sink, or don't pay their share of the rent, or they try to strangle you. It's usually one of the three?or two of the three, in the case of Victor Dombrowa, a 27-year-old unemployed bar employee who moved here from Brazil in the mid-90s.

Dombrowa's body was found stuffed in the closet of his apartment in Brooklyn's Kensington section shortly before noon on September 25th. He was covered in blankets, and one foot was left sticking out the door. That may sound commonplace, but the events leading up to the discovery of his body are extremely odd. Or if not "odd," exactly, they were at the very least quite public.

"Vickie," as he was known (perhaps for his cross-dressing ways), had recently been laid off from his job at the Gemini Lounge. In order to cover the rent, he began looking for a roommate. In mid-September, 25-year-old Mickey Cass?whom Dombrowa had met at the Gemini?moved in, and the trouble started almost immediately.

Early on the morning of the 25th, a loud argument over the rent broke out between the two men.

Accounts differ somewhat, but piecing the details together, the story seems to go something like this. At one point during the increasingly violent argument, Dombrowa climbed out onto the second-floor apartment's fire escape clutching a black bag, and got the attention of an unnamed man working in a garage across the street. When the man approached, Dombrowa asked him to watch the bag for him, saying it was full of money, explaining that his roommate wouldn't let him leave the apartment. He also asked the man to call the cops, should he think of it. It was unclear whether the man took the bag, but he did call 911. Then several neighbors reported seeing another man?presumably Cass?grab Dombrowa from behind in a choke hold, drag him back inside, and slam the window shut.

The cops arrived around 8, at which point Dombrowa filed a harassment complaint against Cass, telling police that Mickey refused to pony up his share of the rent. The cops wrote up the complaint, then left the two alone again.

About four hours after the police left the scene, neighbors saw Cass climb onto the fire escape, wipe off the window sill, jump down to the street and scamper away. Everyone who saw him agrees that he was wearing socks on his hands.

Someone alerted the building's super, who let himself into the apartment and found Dombrowa's body in the closet. A preliminary examination reveals that he'd died of asphyxiation, having either been strangled or smothered.

The ensuing investigation revealed that Cass, a known drifter and hustler, was also being sought by police in Buffalo in connection with a similar strangulation murder last year of a gay computer analyst.

After the murder, Cass hopped a bus to Miami, where he was arrested at a homeless shelter.

The lesson to be learned here is a simple one?never, ever, under any circumstances, trust a guy named "Mickey." And for godsakes, never let him move in with you.