[Brooklyn Paper]-There goes the neighborhood!
A Web site created by Coney Island landowner Joe Sitt to herald “the future of Coney Island” is now an adult-only site that hawks “the best porn on the Net.”
So much for the future of Coney Island!
As first reported by the Web site Curbed on Monday, visitors hoping to read about Sitt’s $2-billion Vegas-style Xanadu plan for the so-called “People’s Playground” on “thefutureofconeyisland.com” were instead met with this sexy come-on:
“Here is the best porn site on the Net,” the text reads (we’re translating from the French, by the way).
Then, by clicking on the word “porno,” the viewer is taken towww.sexeporno1.com, a racy Belgium-based site registered to Davina Cukier.
Attempts to reach Cukier — for journalistic purposes, we assure you! You know, to get renderings of her plans for Coney Island — were unsuccessful on Monday. Her own Web site reveals a lot about her current line of work.
Closer inspection revealed that Sitt’s site was not hacked, but actually picked up by Cukier after Sitt’s company, Thor Equities, allowed it to lapse last fall.
Sitt’s decision to no longer maintain the “future of Coney Island” site cast new doubt on the developer’s interest in continuing his battle with city officials over a zoning change that he needs in order to build his 24-7-365 amusement, hotel and retail complex in an area roughly between the Cyclone roller coaster and the Keyspan Park baseball stadium.
Sitt has spent more than $100 million acquiring land in the amusement area, but the city has been negotiating to buy his property and create a larger amusement area run by a yet-to-be-determined outside amusement operator.
The newly sexed-up Web site was the talk of the Coney Island Message Board today.
“[Thor has] abandoned the future of Coney Island!” wrote a poster who goes by the screen name Electricia. “The future of Coney Island is now porno.”
[Gothamist]- Well this gives a whole new meaning to those amusement park height requirement signs! Last night we received a flurry of tips about how the Future of Coney Island website, launched in 2007 by Thor Equities, has become a porn website.
Not only that, one tipster wrote in: “when clicked on, a warning message came up from Norton saying an attempt to hijack my computer had just been blocked. The risk name was Malicious Toolkit Variant and the risk level was High.” The site is registered under GoDaddy and lists a contact as “Davina Cukier,” whose Google results aren’t very G-rated.
While no one has wanted to click on the URL after warnings showed up on the Coney Island message board, it looks like the Brooklyn Paper boys took one for the team, and report back that the site is now indeed hawking “the best porn on the Net.” They also note that this wasn’t the work of hackers, but Thor let the site expire on purpose, a decision that has “cast new doubt on the developer’s interest in continuing his battle with city officials over a zoning change that he needs in order to build his 24-7-365 amusement, hotel and retail complex.”
The URL isn’t the only thing Thor has let go, the blue walls surrounding their property are reportedly “neglected, fallen, and exposing the dumpster site he’s created with garbage bags and junk.” It looks like while the future of Coney Island turns to porn, the past and present are falling apart. WCBS also has aerial shots of Astroland’s ongoing destruction (last week the rocket took flight from the area, and though no one knows where it will land, a statement in the near future has been promised).