Cyclone Coverup!

The Post reports that Coney Island’s Cyclone had an accident and the family operating the landmarked rollercoaster have covered it up:

A terrifying accident that injured four riders on Coney Island’s world famous Cyclone was the real reason the roller coaster was knocked out of commission, it was revealed yesterday, not the routine maintenance the ride’s operators initially reported.

The 78-year-old coaster screeched to a dead halt during its first death-defying 85-foot drop last Saturday night when the three-car train struck a “misaligned track” at 60 mph, sending four people to the hospital with whiplash and forcing it to be shut down by the city, said Buildings Department spokeswoman Jennifer Givner.

That’s a far cry from Astroland Park manager Mark Blumenthal’s claim after the accident that the ride was shut down — midway through Labor Day weekend — for basic repairs caused by heavy usage over a busy summer season.

What really happened was every Cyclone’s riders’ worst nightmare come true, said one person who claimed, in an anonymous posting on the Web site Craigslist, to have been aboard the ride from hell that night.

“The steel track snapped, the front wheels came off the first car, sparks were flying on the wooden track,” the posting read. “Several safety bars were no longer locked in when we finally stopped, others had to be broken out of their cars.

“The broken steel track on exiting looked like three folded Z’s stacked on top of each other. The wood underneath it had snapped in several places.”

When pressed for comment, Astroland spokesman Joseph Carella admitted an accident had taken place, but said it was far less severe than the Web posting described and insisted the ride is very safe.

“It’s an old lady, and it requires a lot of maintenance, and the care that they put into this is extraordinary,” he said.

Why news of an accident at one of the city’s most well known landmarks would take a week to come to light was not immediately clear.

But Carella said the fact that the Albert family — which has run the ride since 1975 — was in the process of rebidding for the city contract to manage it had nothing to do with it.

“They made all the proper reports,” Carella said. “These people aren’t foolish enough to think that when you have such a visible attraction that this wouldn’t come out.”

Bridge and Tunnel Club was on the scene that Sunday, and thought it strange that the ride was not operating on a busy Labor Day weekend with only a hastily written sign announcing the closing. Little did anyone know . . .

While You Were Out

You realize that the housing market in Brooklyn’s East New York is booming, don’t you? And even if residents aren’t sure whether the neighborhood is entirely safe, it’s too good of an investment to move:

For years, Maria N. Rodriquez has been hoping her parents would sell their home in East New York, Brooklyn, and move someplace safer and more appealing.

Ms. Rodriguez, a 33-year-old mortgage consultant, remembers her anxious teenage years walking down desolate streets in a neighborhood that was one of the most run-down and crime-plagued communities in New York City.

But now, Ms. Rodriguez wonders whether her parents were right to stay in the two-family attached brick house on Montauk Avenue – a mile west of the Brooklyn-Queens border – that they bought with an uncle for $62,000 in 1987.

East New York has changed, especially in the last five years. Last year, her parents’ home was assessed at $350,000, a breathtakingly high number for those who think of the neighborhood as a symbol of urban decay.

Although the crime rate is still higher than in some neighborhoods in the city, it is way down. “For years I pleaded with them to move to a better neighborhood for safety reasons, and because I was embarrassed,” said Ms. Rodriguez, who now lives in a small ranch-style house in Island Park, on Long Island. “I made friends who lived elsewhere and they’d heard about East New York and would not come visit.”

When she would push for a move, her parents – Domingo, 62, and Milagros, 53 – “would always say yes,” Ms. Rodriguez said, “but that would be the end of the conversation.” Perhaps, somehow, they knew something better was coming.

Only a decade ago, the community was pockmarked by “vacant lots, burned-out homes on every block,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “Now they’re putting homes into every nook and cranny.”

The numbers support her perception. From 1995 through the first half of this year, according to the New York City Department of Finance, the average price for a two-family home in East New York nearly tripled, to $351,561 from $122,524.

That “Tastemaking” B43 Bus

New York Magazine’s Real Estate section reports on the Corcoranization of post-Contact yet still “bodega-heavy” Prospect-Lefferts Gardens:

For years, Manhattan expats have been creeping around the edges of Prospect Park, from the Slope into Kensington and Prospect Heights. Now the eastern edge of the park—Prospect–Lefferts Gardens, a neighborhood few of them had probably heard of till recently—is fair game. “It’s become a destination for Manhattanites,” agrees Aguayo & Huebener associate broker and local resident Mark Dicus. Corcoran’s Joy Weiner, [new resident Jason Oliver] Nixon’s longtime agent, says she has sold six properties there in the past few years, all to former Manhattanites.

. . .

Brokers say the friendly vibe and handsome houses make up for some of Prospect–Lefferts Gardens’ shortcomings: Graffiti mars storefronts on the bodega-heavy thoroughfares of Flatbush and Rogers Avenues, and the schools aren’t the best. Still, says Weiner, “sophisticated buyers are willing to go to undeveloped neighborhoods for the architecture.” Besides, with developers circling abandoned warehouses on Empire Boulevard and constructing residential buildings such as the one slated for Hawthorne Street, yet another Brooklyn-neighborhood makeover can’t be too far off. “I’ll be bringing lots of my tastemaking friends to Lefferts Gardens,” says Nixon. “It’ll be the next best thing.”

All of which begs the question: Where aren’t displaced Manhattanites moving to?

Williamsburg-Greenpoint Waterfront To Be Rezoned Residential

The City Council approved a Mayor-backed plan to rezone the parts of Greenpoint and Williamsburg, paving the way for increased density in the blocks near and on the waterfront.

But before you scout pre-sells, please read Jonathan Van Meter’s unironically condescending take on Brooklyn on the New York Magazine website. I say this as someone who may or may not be moving this summer and would appreciate some outer-borough bashing to ward off the competition. (NB: please — PLEASE — do not read the entire piece, the devastating conclusion of which confirms the worst in Manhattan snobbery and could make moot the aforementioned ulterior motive.)

Coney Island Development Misgivings Make Hyperbole Inescapable

I don’t know if “the mayor and his developer cronies are doing a hell of a better job destroying New York than al-Qaeda could ever dream of,” but the news that a mall may arrive on the Coney Island Boardwalk is surely disturbing — especially to the New York Press:

This may well be the last summer to experience Coney Island in a form that even vaguely resembles what we’ve all come to think of as “Coney Island.” It’s looking as if by summer 2006, much of it will be gone, and gone forever.