How to Make Coney Island "Year Round": Build an Ocean Dome

So, here’s the “year-round” Coney Island solution, though it does look like it takes up a lot of real estate. It comes from Japan, from whence a lot of interesting land use, planning and architectural ideas originate. (Dubai is an excellent source as well.) This came to our attention in the context of someone circulating it as a joke vis a vis McCarren Pool, but we know a unique Coney Island concept when we see one. It’s part of the Phoenix SeaGaia Resort in Miyazaki.

Check out this description of the Ocean Dome and, then, tell us it doesn’t rock:

Perched upon a towel, stretched out on an immaculate white beach, I have turquoise sea in front of me and a cloudless sky overhead. Not a bee, sand fly or mosquito can be seen. The weather is perfect. It’s warm enough for swimming in the inviting sea, but there is no danger of sunburn. A cold drink lays close at hand, along with a thick, juicy novel.

Suddenly, a strange haze drifts into view. Smoke envelops the top of a nearby mountain, which begins spitting out sparks of fire. Eruptions can be most annoying, but not here, not in paradise. As the volcano stirs to life, I don’t even bother. Checking my watch, I see it’s only the half-hour eruption. Returning to my book, I savor a smile. There is still another 30 minutes before the mountain blows its top.

Paradise proceeds with clockwork precision inside Ocean Dome, Japan’s unique, sometimes surrealistic, but utterly updated version of the Garden of Eden. Inside a huge dome that could house six football pitches, the world’s largest artificial sea washes over the biggest indoor beach, fringed with fake palm trees and other eye-popping innovations that have given a holiday make-over to old Mother Nature.

This evocative 21st Century resort shows that even paradise has room for improvement. In Ocean Dome, once every hour, on the hour, the surf is always up. Every afternoon is a carnival. Mechanized parrots squawk from branches of the dome’s ingenious rain forest, which remain lush and tropical without rainfall or humidity. Best of all, in Ocean Dome, you can lull for hours on crushed marble pebbles without a worry about beach vendors, bugs or sun burns.

Instead, perfectly-timed waves whip equally well-groomed surfers along in 28-degree, chlorinated, salt-free water to the sanitized shore where they drip-dry in Ocean Dome’s perfect climate, which remains a delightful 30 degrees, day and night, 365.25 days each year.

Note to Thor Equities: This one’s a winner. It could be the Bellaggio of Water Parks.

Related Post:
Lord Foster’s Kazakhstan Plan Would Make Coney Year-Round Attraction
Sitt Hires a Coney Island Design Consultant

Sakura Matsuri: The Slideshow

myspace graphics
A little slideshow from the Sakura Matsuri Festival this weekend at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. If this doesn’t work for you, you can head over to our flickr slideshow by clicking here.

Atlantic Yards on a Map in Under Ten Years

Here’s a mashup of an Atlantic Yards map with projected completion dates of buildings through 2016. Atlantic Yards Report’s Norman Oder, who posts this today, notes of the completion dates that “time will tell whether it’s a valid reference or a fantasy.” Estimates of the timeline for the full project range up to 15-20 years, which would put the completion dates in “Phase II” well past 2016, into the 2020s. If the 20-year estimate is accurate, children born on the day of the parapet collapse last week will be in college before a building is ever built on the site. Put another way, blocks of what used to be Prospect Heights will sit as “interim surface parking” for almost two decades. The graphic was created by Abby Weissman at southoxford.com.

Don’t Forget the Brooklyn Blogfest, Now with Cool Poster

The Second Annual Brooklyn Blogfest is next week, on May 10th at 8 p.m. at the Old Stone House in JJ Byrne Park. OTBKB, which is organizing the event, has posted this cool poster, which should be appearing in some different spots around Brooklyn. The poster was created by blogger, Lisa Di Liberto of Urban Seashell. For more info on the Blogfest, click over to the blog that OTBKB has created for it.

Brooklinks: Monday Happy Bee Edition

Brooklinks is a daily selection of Brooklyn-related information and images:

• Pink-a-Boo [Dope on the Slope]
• Sakura Matsuri [Brit in Brooklyn]
• Ward Bakery Loses a Wall [AYR]
• Revisioning Atlantic Yards [I’m Seeing Green]
• Times Takes Note of Local Blogging [NYT]
• City to Offer New Residential & Commercial Bldgs. with Reopened Atlantic Ave. Jail [Sun]
• Development on Ocean Avenue [My Life in Brooklyn]
• Contemplating Gentrification in PLG [Kensington Brooklyn]
• Lola Staar Reborn Hoopla [Kinetic Carnival]
• A Day at the Beach [Found in Brooklyn]
• Recap of Gowanus Zoning Meeting [Park Slope Courier]
• Outdoor Life Again at the Third Street Cafe [OTBKB]
• Transit Worker Hit and Killed by G Train [Metro]
• Space Invader in Dumbo Area [Dumbo NYC]
• Need a Subway Elevator? Not Necessarily at Clark Street [Sun]
• Issues with Late Night Construction Noise [NYP]

New Brooklyn Blog: Walksbklyn

[Photo courtesy of Walksbklyn]

A GL reader who got in touch some time ago as he was moving to Gowanus, emailed to let us know that he’s started a new blog. It’s called Walkbklyn and the blogger respectfuly acknowledges that the name “was delicately lifted and then modified from Runs Brooklyn…I just don’t have the stamina to actually run Brooklyn.” In any case, Walksbklyn features the bloggers walks around the neighborhood with his dog, which gets at three of our very favorite things: information about Gowanus and environs, cool neighborhood photos and cute dog pics. How can you possibly go wrong? There have been 37 posts so far in April, so blogger and dog (Chester) have already covered some territory. We are told, however, that Chester is in Boston for a couple of weeks and his “parents” are traveling a bit, so enjoy the April posts and look for more upon everyone’s return to Gowanus.

Greenpoint Oil Spill TV Redux

Any coverage of the awful Exxon-Mobil Greenpoint Oil Spill is to be applauded, and so we were interested to get an email from WNET announcing a definite Tivo moment: an episode of New York Voices on the Greenpoint Oil Spill this Friday, May 4 at 10 PM.

The email about the show says:

For over 50 years, residents of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, have been living on top of an astonishing 17 million gallon oil spill that contaminated the waters of Newtown Creek, left behind from the oil refinery industry in the 40’s and 50’s, and seeped into the surrounding land. Many residents are claiming that they and the people around them are sick with cancer as a result of the spill, yet little has been done to rectify this situation…

New York Voices joins chief investigator Basil Seggos from RiverKeeper, an environmental watch group, on a tour of Newtown Creek. Seggos discusses the damage caused by the 17 million gallons of oil (50 percent more than the amount that saturated Alaska’s coast from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill), and the danger this kind of pollution poses to the surrounding areas, homes, businesses and people of Brooklyn and Queens. Riverkeeper is suing ExxonMobil, among others, to hold the corporation responsible for the spill and enforce a long over-due clean-up.

Greenpoint residents are frustrated with the lack of attention given to the spill. They believe there is a strong connection to the alarming trend among family members and neighbors who are sick with cancer and the oil vapors and toxic soil found under their homes. The New York Health Department has known about the spill since 1978 but they have never conducted an official health study…

Should be interesting viewing. Speaking of which, if you didn’t catch the superb vbs.tv series on environmental issues in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, make sure you watch the seven episodes of Toxic Brooklyn. Knowledge may not change anything, but at least, you know.

Interesting Vid: Williamsburg Under Construction

Check out this video of “Williamsburg Under Construction.” Even though it will come up as being quite long, the vid itself is a little more than a minute. The rest is the Hot Hot Heat track used under the visuals.

More Sakura Matsuri!

Here’s a little more from the Sakura Matsuri festival yesterday at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. As we noted yesterday, the blossom scene leaves a little to be desired this year due to some trees that have already bloomed and lost their blossoms and a whole bunch of trees that won’t be at full bloom for a few more days. However, there’s excellent people watching to be had (example above and yesterday’s post). Meantime, some blossom photos below. More photos and some video, tomorrow.

Related Post:
Sakura Matsuri: Not Many Blossoms, but Good People Watching

Have a Look at Gowanus, Washington Park Remnants Included

[Photo courtesy of Yanksfan v. Soxfan]

The blog Yanksfan vs. Soxfan is an unexpected place to find a long and interesting post about Gowanus, nonetheless they posted one yesterday. It’s actually about “New York’s Oldest Extant Ballpark,” which is Washington Park, one of whose walls still exists on Third Avenue. We’ll let them explain:

Extant is actually a stretch. The retaining wall pictured above is the last standing vestige of Washington Park, home to the NL’s Brooklyn franchise from 1898 to 1913. That wall, which now encloses a Con-Ed facility, runs along Third avanue between Third and Fourth streets in Gowanus, an amorphous industrial neigborhood sandwiched between Park Slope and Carroll Gardens. The ballpark that once occupied the site was a lovely affair, with a covered grandstand and seating for nearly 20,000. A previous Washington Park, just a block away, had been home to that same Brooklyn team in its earlier affiliations…the boys were occssionally referred to as “Gowanucians.” Fans came from the surrounding neigborhoods, the area was known generally as “South Brooklyn” back then, and from Manhattan, an easy commute across the then-new Brooklyn Bridge.

Click over to the full post as it’s got some nice shots of our favorite neighborhood.

Related Post:
Rays of Light and Hope for Gowanucians