Damn, Brooklyn’s Changed: You Can’t Grow Up Under A Roller Coaster Anymore.
We all love Annie Hall, right?
Of course we do!
Stop reading if you don’t.
Ok, cool.
Whether or not Annie Hall is Woody Allen’s greatest movie, the greatest New York movie, or just the greatest movie ever is obviously a debatable topic that we’re not really going to get into here.
What is not debatable is the fact that one of the fun parts of watching the film is recognizing the parts of New York that Allen captured, thus bestowing upon them a specific kind of iconic status.
The truly awesome website Scouting New York posted the first of a two-part series that identifies locations shot in Annie Hall and then checks out what the locations look like now, more than 35 years later.
Most of the movie takes place in Manhattan, the Hamptons, Chippewa Falls, and of course, LA, but the flashbacks of little Alvy Singer are all Brooklyn.
Scouting New York re-visits Alvy’s childhood home by the Coney Island boardwalk and, famously, under a roller coaster and finds—an empty lot!
That’s right!
Depressing.
In the film, Alvy recalls growing up in an apartment under a roller coaster and it seems like more of a narrative device than like something that could actually have happened.
In fact, there was an apartment house that was located right under the tracks of the Thunderbolt roller coaster. The Thunderbolt was a wooden coaster, just like the Cyclone (which is the roller coaster that many people mistakenly believe to be what Allen references in the movie), and it ran in Coney Island from 1925-1982.
However, it fell into disrepair in the 80’s and was torn down by fucking Giuliani in 2000, to be replaced by an empty lot.
Fucking Giuliani.
Does anyone else remember those great, bright yellow “Fuck Giuliani” stickers that were EVERYWHERE in 2000?
They were so spot on.
I had one on my Discman.
Anyway.
I wonder how much an apartment under a roller coaster would go for today? I mean, there’s the noise factor. But the CHARACTER of a place like that?
Priceless.
