Astroland To Astroturf

Because of course the YouTube demographic is closely aligned with the big-time New York City developer demographic:

A video posted on Coney Island developer Thor Equities’ Web site and YouTube last week has ruffled some fins out in the seaside neighborhood.

The clip, which opens and closes with the Mermaid Parade logo, features costumed revelers professing their love of Coney Island and the parade. Then, in the last few seconds, a woman wearing a Viking helmet slips in: “The spirit of Thor matches that of Coney Island!”

The woman was Digna Rodriguez, a Thor Equities employee.

The video was designed as goodwill promotional material and showcased the High Steppers, a Brooklyn-based marching band Thor Equities sponsored in the parade. Absent from the video were the many protesters who marched in the parade to “Save Coney Island.” Many fear Thor’s proposals to transform Coney Island into a year-round attraction with upscale hotels will wash away the local character(s).

And see what you get when you renege on plans to save some dumpy old building? They revoke your ability to mediate experiences on the internet:

“Thor has just been sent an email,” Dick Zigun of Coney Island USA, the group that runs the Mermaid Parade, wrote on his Web site, “informing them that they have NO PERMISSION to use the name or logo MERMAID PARADE within their FUTURE OF CONEY ISLAND logo such as they have done at the start and finish of the YOU TUBE piece.”

See also: “thorothunder”‘s Thor at Coney Island’s Mermaid Parade YouTube Video.

You Know Your Work Is Irrelevant When . . .

Oh god, performance art is so 1983:

At slack tide off Red Hook, Brooklyn, there are usually lots of things floating in the water, most of which you would not want to touch without the help of a good hazmat suit. But just after sunrise yesterday, something truly strange was bobbing there in the shallows near Pier 41: a submarine fashioned almost completely from wood, and inside it a man with an obsession.

The man, Duke Riley, a heavily tattooed Brooklyn artist whose waterborne performance projects around New York have frequently landed him in trouble with the authorities, spent the last five months building the vessel as a rough replica of what is believed to have been America’s first submarine, an oak sphere called the Turtle, said to have seen action in New York Harbor during the Revolutionary War.

Mr. Riley’s plan was also military, in a sense — though mostly metaphorical, given that he is an artist. He wanted to float north in the Buttermilk Channel to stage an incursion against the Queen Mary 2, which had just docked in Red Hook, the mission objective mostly just to get close enough to the ship to videotape himself against its immensity for a coming gallery show.

But when his sub was stopped by a New York City police boat around 10 a.m., the outcome was not metaphorical at all: Mr. Riley, 35, and two friends who had helped tow him were taken into custody by a phalanx of law enforcement officials, and their excursion briefly raised fears that a terrorist attack might have been under way.

. . .

Mr. Kelly said a New York police detective assigned to the department’s intelligence division who was aboard the Queen Mary 2 yesterday morning first spotted what looked like a hobby-shop submarine towed by a flimsy rubber raft manned by Mr. Riley’s two friends. He called the department’s harbor patrol, which dispatched three boats to the scene along with a helicopter, joined later by the Coast Guard and a hazardous-materials truck.

Still, Mr. Riley, who emerged from his rusty hatch without the tall-boy can of beer he had taken into his vessel when it launched about 9:15, managed to make it to within about 200 feet of the bow of the ship, at a time when officials say harbor security is a critical factor in guarding against terrorism. From a nearby pier, several of his friends and his art dealers shouted congratulations through a chain-link fence.

The only thing funny about this is that early reports — see, for example — had Riley’s name listed as “Philip Rey,” of G.I. Joe fame.

Earlier: Oh Those Mischievous Mariners . . .

Oh Those Mischievous Mariners . . .

Actually, “marine mischief” sounds a lot like a bad 50s romance novel:

An illegal submarine bumped into trouble off the coast of Red Hook Friday morning.

The replica of a Revolutionary War submarine was stopped by the Coast Guard after it came too close to the Queen Mary 2 ocean liner.

Police took the sub’s sole occupant into custody, as well as two other men in a nearby rowboat.

They have not been charged yet, but have been issued citations for unsafe sailing and violation of a security zone.

In a statement, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly says the craft did not pose a terrorism threat and was a case of “three adventuresome individuals” involved in “marine mischief.”

Sure, it’s all good clean urban exploration until you start freaking out her majesty. (Or is it a case of bad performance art?)

How To Stay Relevant? We Hear Syphilis Might Be On The Rise . . .

When something should go without saying, you should really consider going without saying it:

Eleven years ago, the musical Rent made stars out of twentysomethings Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal and forever linked them to that squat-filled, polysexual, Alphabet City version of La Bohème that seemed so utterly, tragically of the moment. Rapp and Pascal are reprising their roles beginning July 30 in a musical that’s become as much a period piece as the opera that inspired it. Nobody takes only AZT anymore, and starving artists live in other boroughs, if not other cities. Some changes are for the better. “The show definitely loses some of its resonance because of the fact that teenagers today don’t know a society where lots of people are dying of AIDS,” says Pascal. “But given the choice, I would certainly have fewer people dying of AIDS, and fewer kids connecting to Rent.”

Run To The (Dongan) Hills, Run For Your Lives!

This obviously will become a top YouTube download:

Cops on the North Shore are hoping to give attention-starved graffiti suspects a different kind of notoriety — by featuring their mug shots in a DVD video set to heavy metal and reggae tunes.

The video, put together by the 120th Precinct’s anti-graffiti squad, is set to go out to community leaders, politicians and police brass, and may find its way into school assemblies.

It shows before-and-after pictures of graffiti clean-up jobs at hundreds of different spots on the North Shore, as music by AC/DC, Iron Maiden and Green Day blares in the background.

And it’s capped off by mug shot photos of nearly three dozen graffiti suspects, as their alleged tags scroll up the screen, shown to the tune of “Bad Boys” by Inner Circle.

. . .

The DVD’s parade of mug shots ends with a close-up on Russell Farriola, 20, of West Brighton, who cops refer to as the Island’s top graffiti vandal. Using the tag “Aloe,” Farriola waged a one-year graffiti campaign on dozens of spots on the North Shore, cops allege.

Farriola’s lawyer, Jason Leventhal, declined to comment about his client being included in the video, except to say, “It is what it is.”