ATZ: NY Times Got Coney Island Boardwalk Debate Wrong, All Wrong

At the end of the cult classic movie The Warriors, when the radio DJ, who had been broadcasting the “big alert”- ordering the city to chase the Coney Island toughs in revenge for the death of an assassinated gang leader, realizes that “the earlier reports were wrong… all wrong,” she responds to our pursued protagonists with a curt “sorry ’bout that.”

That could be the same type of apology grudgingly given by the New York Times once the issue of new Coney Island Boardwalk materials is finally settled.

Tricia Vita over at Amusing the Zillion thinks the Gray Lady jumped the gun by giving its readership the impression that the debate to replace the boardwalk’s wooden slats with plastic and concrete was pretty much a done deal, as part of an article she sees as unfairly slanted in favor of proponents for the aesthetically unpleasing plastic and concrete.

In reality, “the so-called compromise plan was in fact voted down by the Community Board last year,” according to ATZ.

Vita also pointed out the cancelling of two different hearing so far this year as evidence of the “Goliath” Parks Department sticking it to the workaday members of the Coney-Brighton Boardwalk Alliance. She explains that working people who may have had to take off from work to attend the hearings may be less willing to attend future ones.

Check out ATZ for more – including a copy of the letter from the Alliance to the Public Design Commission, refuting the Parks Department’s claims.

And while you’re at it, please visit the Coney Island-Brighton Beach Boardwalk Alliance’s online petition, to make your voice heard!