Ah, summer at Coney Island: Carnies beckoning passersby to try their luck shooting the freak. Wild screams coming from the Cyclone coaster. Elephants taking on humans to see who can eat the most hot dog buns.
But the rollicking, somewhat seedy beachfront park -- which after a rainy June blossomed over the sunny July 4 weekend into its traditional blend of family-friendly fun and boardwalk bawdiness -- also is at the center of an ugly dispute this year among those who agree it needs a face-lift but disagree over how to revive its fortunes.
In one corner is New York City, whose council is to vote late this month on a redevelopment project, boasting restaurants and hotels, that was approved in June by the Planning Commission. In the other are preservationists who say the plan would ruin Coney Island's salty flavor by plunking high rises in its heart. In the middle sits a developer, Joseph Sitt, who has plans of his own and has refused to sell the city the land it needs.
The dispute is an unavoidable topic here along the wooden boardwalk, where squeals of visitors on the amusement park rides compete with music from revelers on the sand.
"The whole idea that Coney Island is dead, that Coney Island is done, is wrong," Stephen Yaros said as three Asian elephants and three people, their stomachs bloated from shoveling buns into their mouths, dawdled behind him.
Yaros is a spokesman for Feld Entertainment, which this summer has brought the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus to Coney Island for the first time. On July 3, the circus featured what it billed as the world's first cross-species eating contest -- won easily by the elephants, which placidly devoured 505 buns in six minutes to their human competitors' 143.
(Like most things at Coney Island lately, the event was not without controversy. "Barbarians!" bellowed animal rights protesters, although circus officials contended that the buns were well-suited to the pachyderms' vegetarian diets.)
"I think there was a need for this," Yaros said, the collection of colorful circus tents rising behind the sand. Although he said Ringling Bros. played no favorites in the current dispute -- "We want to be Switzerland" -- news of the city's revitalization efforts prompted the decision to plan a 12-week run here.
But the circus did not set up on Sitt's 10.5 acres as originally planned, a fact that has boosted city officials in their battle with the chief executive of Thor Equities development corporation.
