Coney Island’s Loss Is Honduras’ . . .

The “Zipper” and the “Spider” sound like classics but have you ever gone on them for a ride? No matter, they’re off to Honduras now:

Two longtime Coney Island rides were shut down yesterday to be sent overseas, the latest casualties of a developer’s stalled bid to bring a $1.5 billion entertainment complex to the amusement district.

Workers yesterday began dismantling the Spider and Zipper rides near the West 12th Street shoreline, so both could be sent to an amusement park in Honduras.

The workers said the rides’ operator opted to sell the attractions after being unable to obtain a land-lease extension with developer Joseph Sitt, who owns 10 acres in the heart of the amusement district but is having difficulty getting city approval for his controversial project.

. . .

“I think people are in denial about what we’re facing for next year,” said Dianna Carlin, the owner of Lola Staar Souvenir Boutique on the boardwalk.

But a Sitt spokesman yesterday said the developer won’t let Coney Island become a ghost town and there will be plenty of amusements in future years.

Location Scout: Coney Island Amusement Core.

Eak, Another Lawyer!

And here you thought Coney Island wasn’t gentrifying:

For 15 years, Eak the Geek earned his living as a “freak” in the Coney Island Circus Sideshow, wowing thousands of spectacle seekers each summer with his spacey facial tattoos and signature stunt: the Bed of Nails sandwich.

Then he decided it was time for a career change. He thought he’d like to be a lawyer — maybe even a city councilman one day. And so Eak — whose given name is Eduardo Arrocha — is headed back to school at age 45.

“Coney Island was very good to me, but it was just time to go,” said Eak, in a recent phone interview from Lansing, Mich., where he will start classes in contracts, torts and constitutional law at Thomas M. Cooley Law School on Tuesday.

He left the sideshow, but Eak is careful to point out this new foray into law isn’t a rejection of his fellow freaks. On the contrary, he’s doing it to help them.

“I know it sounds weird, but I want to be a freak lawyer,” he said. “I hope to have a little office in New York and work with the alternative people . . . all the so-called riff-raff, to give them legal representation that is not judgmental.”

Eak is six feet tall with a clean-shaven head and burly 220-pound frame, and says he’s been deflecting suspicious side glances and many times open looks of disdain since he began the process of having his body tattooed from head-to-toe.

Maybe Jeremy Piven — Or If You’re Lucky, Wallace Shawn — Will Play You In The Feature Film

There are at least two acts in there somewhere (some enterprising whippersnapper needs to supply the third):

The Carroll Gardens widow who fought to die in the home she’d lived in her entire life, won a Pyrrhic victory this month — dying in the apartment on Aug. 12 and defeating a developer’s two-year-long quest to evict her.

Angelina Visconti, 88, died of natural causes at Long Island College Hospital, though she was still a resident of the Cheever Place rowhouse.

“She got her wish, and that was what it was all about,” said Leonard Visconti, her son. “She always said she was born here, she wanted to die here.”

Visconti’s residency became an issue in 2005, when her nephew Joseph DeLeonibus, the son of Visconti’s late twin sister, tried to evict her so he could make a killing in the booming Carroll Gardens real-estate market.

The house was eventually sold for $1.13 million to developer Wayne Warnock, who picked up the eviction proceedings where DeLeonibus left off.

Earlier: Notices To Quit Thicker Than Blood.

Come On, You Don’t Think I Already Understand The Risk Of Eating Ceviche I Bought In A City Park?

When the story of who killed the Red Hook Ballfields is written it will turn out that we are all guilty:

Honduras Maya, a restaurant owned by one of the vendors that serves Latin American food on weekends at the Red Hook Ball Fields, was closed down by the Health Department this week after an inspection stemming from the city’s crackdown on the vendors.

The shutdown could merely be a taste of what’s to come if the 13 food vendors at the ball fields fail to meet strict health code requirements by this weekend. And the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation may not extend the vendors’ temporary permit — which officially expires after Labor Day — until the soccer season ends in late October, as earlier promised.

. . .

Cesar Fuentes, executive director of the Food Vendors Committee of Red Hook Park, said health inspectors are expected to start issuing fines — or shutting down vendors — this weekend for not meeting requirements like providing hot and cold running water, refrigeration, and preparing food in commercial kitchens rather than at home.

Suany Carcamo, the owner of Honduras Maya, has been operating a Honduran food stand specializing in baleadas at the ball fields for more than a decade. Fuentes said her restaurant was investigated by the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene as a follow-up to a letter she submitted to prove that she was preparing her food for the stand in a city-certified commercial kitchen — her own restaurant.

The Park Slope restaurant received 122 violation points, compared to the citywide average of 14 points, according to the inspection report. Among the 20 violations listed were: missing Choking First Aid, Alcohol and Pregnancy, and Wash Hands signs; evidence of flying insects and mice; toilet facility not maintained and provided with toilet paper; and wiping cloths dirty or not stored in proper sanitizing equipment.

The owners were not available for comment by press time. An employee, when reached by phone, confirmed that the restaurant had been shut down.

But Carcamo could be viewed as one of the lucky vendors. She is one of only two that also owns a restaurant, while many of the others are struggling to find a commercial or community kitchen certified by the Health Department where they can prepare their food.

“The report from my vendors is that it is basically very, very difficult to do,” said Fuentes. After word traveled that Honduras Maya was shut down, “a lot of people were denying vendors the use [of their facilities] out of fear that the Department of Health would enforce harshly.

“Anyone who doesn’t have that letter wouldn’t be allowed to sell,” he said.

(The vendors do nothing to conceal it, we visit there because we want to eat it, we blame the Health Department for being there, but we are all there . . .)

I guess it’s back to those old reliable subway churros for us . . .

The Bride, Until Last Month, Resided In A Building On Pacific Street . . .

This may be one of the few examples of the Sunday Styles vows section as clever political protest*:

It’s getting damn close to the end times for opponents of the Atlantic Yards project, the massive basketball, housing, and retail complex slated to rise up on the rail yards between Fort Greene and Prospect Heights. With two lawsuits drawing to a close in the next few months, lead anti–Atlantic Yards organizer Daniel Goldstein has been dreaming up every way possible to rally support for his cause. When the development company Forest City Ratner started offering lucrative buyouts to the owners of the condo building where he lives, Goldstein was the lone holdout. He’s since spent two years living alone in his 31-unit building, right where the New Jersey Nets will theoretically hit their jumpers.

Now, loner Goldstein has found romance with fellow anti–Atlantic Yards activist Shabnam Merchant, and the two plan to get married next month. And they’ve even cooked up a scheme to use their wedding to advance the anti-Ratner campaign. They’ve submitted their nuptials to the New York Times Sunday wedding-vows section, in the hope that editors will find the concept of NIMBY love too irresistible to pass up — and give the Atlantic Yards campaign a little free publicity to boot.

“I kinda doubt they would run it,” Goldstein says, even as he squirms at the prospect of his personal life bleeding into La Causa. “They get tons of submissions. But I don’t think there’s a more interesting wedding occurring this month.” If they give him a pass, he adds, he wouldn’t be surprised. After all, his arch-nemesis Ratner built the Times’s new headquarters.

*Not counting the Times’ decision back in 2002 to include gay and lesbian unions.

Location Scout: Atlantic Yards.