Review: 'Zipper: Coney Island's Last Wild Ride'

Amy Nicholson’s documentary ‘Zipper: Coney Island’s Last Wild Ride’ is a detailed exploration of several years’ worth of squabbles, dealmaking and human suffering surrounding zoning and land-use issues in Brooklyn’s Coney Island. And in its best sections the film remembers the little guy, giving equal time to Coney Island workers, government officials, and business execs alike.

After the mid-2000’s acquisition of extensive Coney Island acreage by real estate development firm Thor Equities (headed by CEO Joe Sitt), a number of fights broke out over the area’s land-usage. Sitt wanted to bring a more traditional (read: corporate) theme park feel to the area, introducing establishments such as Dave & Busters and Applebee’s. Residents and workers in the area balked. Meanwhile, ride operators and others were evicted. But the area’s unique “C7” zoning laws, which allowed for only amusement-related land-use, foiled Sitt’s development plans. The Bloomberg administration swooped in to try and negotiate with him, pitching its own proposals for restructuring Coney Island’s land usage. The rest was a multi-year bureaucratic nightmare.

The film makes for a fascinating history lesson. “Zipper” fleshes out messy conflicts in great detail, utilizing interviews and archival footage of government officials, protesters, business leaders, and others. Impressively, it is all rendered not only understandable, but engaging. One reason is the frequent use of creative graphics to help the audience with the visualization of numbers and figures – for instance, a rising and falling roller coaster representing the changing rate of Coney Island attendance over the last several years.

Unfortunately, the film has overlong stretches where it gets bogged down in the history aspect, losing track of the human drama. “Zipper’s” best interviews come from everyday folks who are caught in the middle of the storm. The most notable example is Eddie Miranda, who operated the film’s titular ride – a roughly fifty-foot high rotating oval equipped with spinning steel passenger cars – until his eviction by Thor Equities in 2007. Miranda is a lively, charming, and emotionally open interview subject. He roots the story in something genuine – as opposed to the likes of Joe Sitt or local City Councilman Dominic Recchia (a Sitt supporter), who are too mechanical and over-prepared by half. They are slick pros. Miranda is a real person.

So while details about Joe Sitt’s negotiations with City government are informative and interesting, it is the personal accounts of people like Miranda that lend the film emotional resonance. The film works best when it shuttles back and forth between both types of interviews, never settling on one for too long. “Zipper” thrives when it manages to emphasize the human aspect in equal measure with the petty squabbling of power players.

Read the review at IndieNYC.com


David@IndieNYC.com