Would You Let Your Grandparent — Or Even Some Elderly Neighbor — On That Thing?

Oh my god, that first drop is a doozy:

Two octogenarian thrill-seekers rode the famed Coney Island roller coaster yesterday as part of its 80th birthday celebration.

“It’s the masterpiece of all wooden coasters. You can’t tell what it’s like by looking at it. You have to ride it,” said an elated Ed Murman, 81, of Smithtown, L.I.

Murman hadn’t been on the Cyclone since he was 13, before America entered World War II.

“On this coaster, you get some airtime. It feels like it’s throwing you out,” said Murman, who has braved the twists and turns of about 500 other coasters as a member of the American Coaster Enthusiasts team.

Louis Picariello, 81, of Bellingham, Mass., was so flustered by the Cyclone yesterday that he grappled for the words to describe how he felt.

“I don’t know what I am saying I am so excited,” he gushed before pumping his fists in the air, demanding another ride.

Murman and Picariello were both stationed in the South Pacific during World War II, but they didn’t meet until they joined the roller coaster enthusiasts group.

They each took several rides on the Cyclone yesterday, escorted by Miss Cyclone 2007, Angie Pontani.

Sy Weisberg, 80, of Brooklyn, was also scheduled to ride the coaster yesterday, but his doctor advised him against going on the 110-second ride, which has replicas all over the world.

Still, Weisberg didn’t miss the opportunity to go to Coney Island, where he flirted and danced with shapely stilt walkers as the Sugar Tone Brass Band played big band tunes. “I’m not throwing in the chips yet,” he said.

(Nothing against Miss Subways, but Angie Pontani is kind of sexier. That said, I still don’t think I’d feel comfortable with putting her next to my grandfather on the first car of the Cyclone.)

Location Scout: The Cyclone.

An Apple Martini For The Teacher

If you strike out in Chelsea with inebriated underage suburban girls you can always troll Moe’s in Fort Greene for inebriated 30-something schoolteachers:

Just after 4:30 p.m. on a sunny Friday, Matt Barnes and his friends were impatiently waiting for someone to let them into Moe’s, a neighborhood bar at Lafayette and Portland Avenues in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

Mr. Barnes and his companions, however, were hardly the shiftless types some might associate with afternoon drinking. They are public school teachers, and in late afternoons, especially on Fridays, Moe’s is a place where pedagogues go to party.

“Female teachers are the wildest girls,” said Mr. Barnes, a 35-year-old with a shaved head and thick arms covered with tattoos that surely impress the young delinquents that he teaches at Passages Academy, a public school program that operates in detention centers.

Among those who spend their days at the chalkboard, Moe’s is known as a teacher bar, one of many spots around the city where instructors drink, flirt and gossip about their students after school lets out.

Veronica York, a bartender at Moe’s, takes this distinction seriously. She has marked the last day of school, which this year is Wednesday, on her calendar, to remind her to tell the bar staff to come in early. “We love teachers,” she said the other day, filling a pint glass with beer. “We get them ripped.”

. . .

Among the earliest arrivals at Moe’s this Friday was a clique of young women from the Community Partnership Charter School, a few blocks from the bar. They sat around a low table drinking pints of Hoegaarden, a Belgian white beer, and grumbling about colleagues who brag about their students’ standardized test scores.

Mr. Barnes ambled over, and within a few minutes, he sidled up to Nicole Gunther, a 30-year-old kindergarten teacher wearing a zebra-print top and a chili pepper pendant on a gold chain around her neck. Taking out a digital camera, Ms. Gunther showed off a photograph of some of her kindergartners gathered around a handsome, broad-shouldered man.

“That’s one of the dads,” she said as Mr. Barnes leaned in for a better look. “Hot dad,” she added dryly.

To Paraphrase Mark Twain, I Don’t Care About The Bobble As Long As They Got The Hair Right

Kids, get to KeySpan Park early for your very own limited edition . . . Marty Markowitz bobblehead:

“This is the zenith of my professional career,” quipped Markowitz. “I’ve been called a lot of things. Now I’m a bobblehead.”

The plastic doll — in a business suit but with a baseball bat — is part of the Met minor-league team’s Legends of Brooklyn series and will go to the first 2,500 fans at that Sunday afternoon’s game [Aug. 5].

“I’m better looking,” Markowitz said upon seeing the doll last week. “I’m certainly younger looking . . . They got the hair right. I don’t know if they made it chubby enough, though.”

He admitted to worrying that this might boost “a caricature of me as a comedic character” but called the promotion “all in good fun.”

“I am what I am, a legend at 62,” he said. “Being a bobblehead has its distinguishing characteristics.”

Cyclone general manager Steve Cohen called Markowitz a “true champion for the borough [and] one of the Cyclones’ most loyal supporters.”

Sometimes Self-Obsession Cuts Both Ways

Better that they’re talking about it than simply ignoring it like one more tired old David Blaine stunt:

When Clinton Hill artist Travis Clarke decided to spend seven nights sunset to sunrise in the eight-by-eight front window of Soapbox Gallery at 636 Dean St., he came prepared with typed description of the live art installation, titled “Wishing dead trees back to life.”

The piece is about “attempting to do something that seems impossible,” said the artist’s statement posted at the gallery, which sits between Carlton and Vanderbilt — directly across the street from Bruce Ratner’s controversial arena, residential, office and retail project.

Little did Clarke know just how the statement, the dead tree limb in the window and his somnolent, halogen-lit body next to it would resonate with neighborhood residents, many of whom have learned a whole lot about trying do something that indeed has proven to be (so far) impossible.

“Could the tree also be representing the possibility of a future dead neighborhood?” asked one area resident, Lumi Rolley, on her anti–Atlantic Yards blog, No Land Grab.

The owner of the gallery, Jimmy Greenfield, also couldn’t resist the metaphor.

“It’s an homage to nature right across a piece of property that will eventually be covered in tarmac against the wishes of a community that tried very hard to stop [it].”

. . .

“I just don’t believe he can actually sleep,” [Dean Street resident Jim Everitt] said. “A lot of trucks and buses bang around down here.”

Clarke agreed that getting rest was no easy task, even with two mats as bedding.

“The other night someone yelled obscenities at me,” he told The Brooklyn Paper during the daylight hours when he is not imprisoned in the gallery. “He was with his family and children. A couple of people have commented on how the piece is an example of gentrification. People talk about money a lot.”

. . .

Clarke said a connection could be drawn between his art and Ratner’s controversial, state-supported development, albeit not one he made before his nights on Dean Street.

“People in this neighborhood went up against a very powerful system,” he said, adding that the connection wasn’t “the most curious thing” he heard from passing sidewalk critics.

Astroland As Bargaining Chip

The good old “Balloon Water Race Game” doesn’t seem like that much of a bargaining chip, but there it is:

A day after the unexpected news that Coney Island’s Astroland would survive until next summer, negotiations for an extension appear to have bogged down over rezoning concessions the site’s developer is seeking from the city, a Brooklyn councilman said yesterday.

The developer, Thor Equities, was reportedly planning to give the storied amusement park a reprieve until 2008, but Astroland’s owner said she has not been offered the lease extension that Councilman Domenic Recchia Jr. (D-Brooklyn) has been working to broker.

Astroland’s 45-year run was expected to end after this summer, and the go-karts, batting cages, bumper boats and miniature golf are already closed.

“Of course, if Thor Equities wishes to provide a lease under reasonable terms, Astroland would be very interested in negotiating an agreement,” Astroland owner Carol Albert said in a statement.

At Recchia’s urging, Thor seemed willing to give Astroland one more season at its current location, the councilman said. However, by yesterday afternoon, the prospects of a deal suffered a blow when Thor president Joseph Sitt told Astroland officials that “they would extend the lease only if they get the rezoning that they want,” according to Recchia.

Location Scout: Coney Island Amusement Core.