‘Mayor’ of Coney Island fi red
Community rallies behind Dick Zigun, co-founder of Coney Island USA
COURIER LIFE, DEC. 31, 2021-JAN. 6, 2022 21
BY BEN BRACHFELD
& JESSICA PARKS
The longtime unoffi cial
“mayor” of Coney Island has
been fi red from the venerable
sideshow organization he cofounded,
which runs the Coney
Island Museum and puts
on the Coney Island Circus
Sideshow and the annual Mermaid
Parade, after apparently
reaching an intractable impasse
with the group over the
terms of his succession.
Dick Zigun, who for 40
years has been the face most
associated with the People’s
Playground save for the
iconic Funny Face, tweeted
on Christmas Day that he had
been fi red from Coney Island
USA, effective Friday, Dec. 31,
and that the locks on the organization’s
Surf Avenue headquarters
had been changed
and his work email disabled.
Zigun’s profi le page on Coney
Island USA’s website has also
been deleted.
The peninsula’s longtime
unoffi cial mayor declined
to comment further when
reached by Brooklyn Paper,
noting that he is under a nondisclosure
agreement until
his termination takes effect at
5 pm on New Year’s Eve.
“I am not able to comment
further at this time so cannot
answer some questions,” Zigun
tweeted on Sunday, Dec.
26. “I will have more to say
soon perhaps in a week.”
Nonetheless, Coney Island
USA on Monday posted a
lengthy statement on its website
rebutting Zigun’s contention
that he was fi red on
Christmas, instead arguing
that his termination was the
culmination of a years-long
rift over who would succeed
the 68-year-old carny, and the
fate of the cultural programming
he was inextricably
linked to after his retirement.
“Dick was not fi red on
Christmas day, although he
wants you to think he was,”
the statement from the group’s
board of directors reads. “He
has not corrected those who
have made that assumption.
This is a shameless bid for
sympathy, regardless of the
facts. Given these false and
disparaging statements, Coney
Island USA must set the
record straight.”
The fracas allegedly began
in 2018, when Zigun and Coney
Island USA set in motion
a transition for a successor,
Adam Rinn (aka Adam Realman),
to take Zigun’s place as
artistic director. Things were
going as smooth as a ride on
the Thunderbolt until January
of this year, at which point
the saga became as bumpy as
the Cyclone.
That month, Zigun allegedly
claimed that he, rather
than Coney Island USA, had
exclusive domain to put on the
Mermaid Parade and the Coney
Island Circus Sideshow, a
claim vociferously contested
by the board of directors that
created an impasse between
leadership and its most notable
fi gure.
“This shocked the Board
since it was completely contrary
to the working relationship
and legal relationship
between Dick and Coney Island
USA,” the board said in
its statement. “This unacceptable
claim and the economic
demands that came with it
created a very signifi cant and
ongoing confl ict of interest between
Dick and Coney Island
USA and an existential threat
to Coney Island USA.”
Differences between Zigun
and the board proved irreconcilable.
“Though attempts
were made to resolve the matter,
Dick stuck to his claims,”
the statement reads. “The confl
ict of interest festered and
hampered Coney Island USA’s
operations.”
Asserting that the “situation
was untenable,” Zigun
was “relieved…of his duties”
in early November, and on
Dec. 2, he was fi red effective
Dec. 31, the board says.
The group further claims
Zigun was offered a severance
package allowing for a “more
positive departure and recognition
of his many contributions,”
which remains on the
table until Wednesday despite
Zigun having formally declined
it last week.
“Instead, Dick has chosen
to go public with inaccurate
and infl ammatory statements,”
the board said. “The
facts simply do not support
his positions. The Board of
Coney Island USA deeply regrets
Dick’s actions, which
led to this unfortunate result.
However, Coney Island USA,
The Mermaid Parade, and the
Coney Island Circus Sideshow
must go on.”
Zigun again declined to
comment after the statement’s
publication, citing the NDA
he remains under until Friday
afternoon.
The Connecticut native cofounded
Coney Island USA in
1980 with Costa Mantis and
Jane Savitt-Tennen, at a time
when the People’s Playground
was in crisis, as the area suffered
from high crime rates
and the rides and amusements
suffered from neglect
and deterioration; one of the
district’s main roller coasters,
the Tornado, was mostly
destroyed in a 1977 fi re, while
another coaster, the Thunderbolt,
shut down in 1982 and lay
dormant before being eventually
razed in 2000. The Cyclone
nearly met a similar fate.
Originally from Bridgeport,
Zigun arrived in New
York in the 70s, settling in
southern Brooklyn and taking
an eye to restoring Coney
Island to its turn-of-the-century
splendor when virtually
everyone else had deemed the
seaside carnival a lost cause.
“Back in the late 1970s, everyone
was looking at Tribeca
and South Street Seaport, but
I wanted to come to Coney Island,”
Zigun told Brooklyn
Paper’s sister publication
Brownstoner in 2017. “I was
impressed when I arrived how
many businesses were run by
healthy elderly people from
the golden age of Coney Island.
There’s something about
the salt air that preserves the
body but rots the mind: They
were healthy but out-of-theirminds
crazy. I wanted to take
on the role of preserving old
Coney Island for those who
came after me.”
In the early 80s, Coney Island
USA began devising cultural
programming aimed
at elevating Coney Island’s
wacky side, rather than its
scary one. He and the group
established the Mermaid Parade
in 1983 and the Circus
Sideshow in 1985, and the positive
PR accrued for the peninsula
by Zigun’s bacchanal led
to his becoming its chief public
booster. It was in that vein
that he fashioned himself Coney
Island’s mayor.
“I’m the ‘permanently unelected
mayor of Coney Island.’
That nickname was
deliberate,” Zigun told Brownstoner,
noting his eccentric
getup was all for Coney’s benefi
t. “I knew that visual communication
was important. If
my image was going to be in
public, I could communicate a
lot by the way I looked, in addition
to what I said. As the
PR director, I made the name
up and people bought in because
I had the look.”
The sideshows, and Zigun’s
eccentric, media-ready public
persona, were a key piece of
the puzzle in Coney Island’s
revitalization in the 90s and
2000s.
He has remained one of
Coney’s most prominent
denizens over the years:
when former Mayor Michael
Bloomberg proposed rezoning
the area to preserve its
amusement district, Zigun
was one of the plan’s strongest
and most prominent boosters,
though he favored preserving
a larger area for amusements
than did Bloomberg. The rezoning
ultimately passed in
2009.
While he’s earned his share
of detractors, Zigun’s work
has also earned him plenty of
fans: distraught Coney afi cionados
plan to rally in solidarity
with him outside the Sideshow
Circus’s Surf Avenue
building, which houses Coney
Island USA’s HQ, at 1:30
pm on New Year’s Day, many
dressed in the mermaid garb
Zigun made inextricably associated
with the People’s Playground.
Following the original version
of this article’s publication,
the Coney Island bigwig
tweeted, “Can’t wait to reply
to the Board of Directors nonsense
once my NDA expires.
Stay turned and fasten your
seatbelts it’s going to be a
bumpy ride…”
CONEY BALONEY: Coney Island’s “unoffi cial mayor” Dick Zigun claims he’s been cast out to sea by the Coney
Island organization he helped found. Gerard Zarra