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LI amusement parks to remember

The 1950s and 1960s were the heyday of amusement parks on Long Island, where acres of open space could be transformed into candy-colored paradises promising thrills, chills and fun for the post-World War II generation. As the Baby Boom peaked, “everyone’s moving out to the suburbs, and looking for family entertainment that’s close to home, inexpensive and has a community kind of feel,” said Marisa L. Berman, 39, of Massapequa, author of “Historic Amusement Parks of Long Island: 118 Miles of Memories” (The History Press 2015). Here are Long Islanders’ memories of 10 parks that once offered a few hour’s escape from work and school.

Nunley’s Amusement Park

Where it was

Sunrise Highway, Baldwin

Attractions

Nunley’s calliope was a siren song for kids who wanted to spend a carefree day at a neighborhood park.

It was so popular that “kids in cars would erupt when their parents drove by” its building on Sunrise Highway at the Freeport/Baldwin line, said Berman, who grew up in Oceanside.

For younger children, the big draw was the whirling Stein and Goldstein carousel, with its booming calliope and brass rings promising a free ride, but almost always tantalizingly out of reach.

Nunley’s also boasted a boat ride, a roller coaster, hot rods on a motorized track and a Ferris wheel circling to a bird’s-eye view of the park below.

Leona Gagliardi, 62, of Brentwood, said that as a Freeport student she spent 45-minute breaks at Nunley’s restaurant, which was on the other side of the high school fence. “They made the best pizza in the world; it came out with the brown crispy bubbles on top,” Gagliardi said. “And their hot dogs were great, with one half relish and one half sauerkraut.”

Gagliardi recalls having her future revealed by “the gypsy grandmother fortuneteller behind the big glass case.” She played arcade skeeball for 10 cents a game in the arcade and won a free ride on the carousel. Said Gagliardi: “I still have one of the brass rings.”

Why it closed

The trio of brothers that owned the park closed it in 1995, and retired. The carousel was restored and moved to Museum Row in Garden City.

What’s there now

A Pep Boys auto store

Nunley’s Happyland / Smiley’s Happyland (Jolly Rogers Restaurant)

Where it was

Hempstead Turnpike and Hicksville Road, Bethpage

Attractions

Patrons called it Jolly Rogers, but that was actually the name of the on-site restaurant serving fries and burgers scarfed down between riding Nunley’s wet boats, fire engine or Hodges hand cars, or testing your hand-eye coordination at 200 arcade games and mini-golf.

“The greatest gift my parents could give us was a day there,” recalled Rachel Zampino of Port Washington, who grew up in Wantagh in the 1960s. “When I was finally brave enough and tall enough to ride the brand-new roller coaster, the Mighty Mouse — I had watched it being built, but it was for the big kids — what an accomplishment!”

Allison Caveglia Barash, 63, of Pittsburgh, grew up in Levittown. Barash is a self-described history buff who “appreciated the penny arcade … where you could turn the crank and watch a short film from the early 1900s.” Her other go-to: “the shooting gallery where my dad, a World War II vet, taught me how to shoot.” But Nunley’s sugary, pink cotton candy was the biggest treat for Deb Scheer, 64, of Centennial, Colorado, who grew up in Wantagh. “Every time we went, I had to have it,” Scheer said.

Why it closed

The fun ended in 1978, with the owners citing, among other causes, rising operating costs and competition from fast-food restaurants, according to Berman.

What’s there now

A strip mall

Lollipop Farm

Where it was

Jericho Turnpike (Route 25), Syosset

Attractions

By the 1950s, New York children were apparently so clueless about farm life that when surveys asked them where milk came from, they invariably answered, “the milk man,” according to Berman.

Lollipop Farm, a 4-acre kiddie park and petting zoo carved out of the Jackson family’s former farm and stagecoach stop, sought to end this udder confusion. Named for its resident goat mascot, and known for handing lollipops out to visiting youngsters, Lollipop Farm became a quintessential class field trip.

“It was great because you could still see the old Jackson [farm] ice house,” where ice was stored after it was cut from the adjacent pond, said Gary Hammond, 69, of Wantagh, a retired Nassau County Museums registrar, who visited on a field trip while he was a Farmingdale elementary school student.

The farm was stocked with “young, tame domestic animals and fowl,” according to a brochure in Hammond’s collection. The favorite area was a children’s zoo where piglets, lambs, calves, kids and other animals lived in miniature houses and could be fed and petted by children.

Rides were offered on ponies, in a donkey cart and on a well-remembered mini-train.

Michael Kornfeld, 62, of Huntington, said, “I fondly remember riding the train,” a kid-sized, gas-powered locomotive that rode the park grounds. Kornfeld added that “those memories were rekindled eight years ago as I watched another generation of children ride the Lollipop Farm train during a pickle festival at the John Gardiner Farm in Huntington.”

Why it closed

In 1967, owners Harry and Alice Sweeney retired and moved to Pennsylvania. One of the park trains was restored by the Greenlawn-Centerport Historical Association and runs Saturdays at the John Gardiner Farm in Huntington.

What’s there now

A DSW Designer Shoe Warehouse store and the offices of David Lerner Associates.

Dodge City

Where it was

Sunrise Highway and Waverly Avenue, Patchogue

Attractions

When the Dodge City amusement park opened in the late 1950s, Westerns were riding high on TV and in the movies. It was set in the same city as “Gunsmoke,” the horse opera just beginning its 20-year run on CBS.

Long Island’s Dodge City sought to transport kids to the Old West with its movie set-style saloon, dry goods store, barbershop, jail and bank — the latter held up daily by Jesse James, Belle Starr and their notorious outlaw gang. On any given day the dust would be stirred up by rodeos, shootouts or a stagecoach getaway.

Jane Owen, who grew up in Brentwood, played outlaw Belle Starr in the holdup re-enactments, said her granddaughter, Noel Chaney, 54, of Meadows of Dan, Virginia.

“My grandmother loved that place because she felt like a movie star,” said Chaney, who was born in Glen Cove and moved to Virginia with her family when she was a child. Grandma Jane told tales of a cowboy whose tricks included making his horse rear up on its hind legs, Chaney said. She still has Belle Starr costumes worn by her grandmother, who died about a decade ago at age 103.

Why it closed

Dodge City closed in the 1960s when Western shows were in decline. Its buildings were sold to nearby farms or relocated to Mastic Beach and Center Moriches, according to Berman.

What’s there now

A section of the Sunrise Highway service road.

Spaceland

Where it was

Inside a Roosevelt Field airport hangar on Old Country Road, Carle Place

Attractions

As the Space Age took off, kids with stars in their eyes could imagine they were blasting off into the wild blue yonder at this cavernous amusement center.

Gary Monti, 69, of Westbury, recalled going to Spaceland with his mother, aunt and cousins in 1959, a year after the park opened in the heat of the space race. “It was right after Sputnik 1 [the first artificial satellite launched into earth orbit by the USSR] in 1957 and about the time NASA announced the Mercury astronauts,” Monti recalled recently.

Although only 7 years old on the day of his visit, Monti still remembers Spaceland vividly. “It was a big open hangar with a series of things to climb on, slide down and look at, and of course they had a big concessionary area.” His favorite stop, though, was a spaceship slide.

“You would climb up the stairs and go into a rocket ship, look out at your parents, and then slide down,” Monti said.

Monti, a lifelong aviation buff who grew up to be the director of museum operations for 26 years at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, says he eventually “got to hang out” with original Mercury 7 astronauts Wally Schirra and Scott Carpenter.

Monti, who retired in 2020, and currently is the volunteer Westbury village historian, admits Spaceland “was kind of primitive compared to modern amusement park standards.” But aboard Spaceland’s spaceship, he says, “I felt like I was John Glenn.”

Why it closed

Spaceland was tangled in a stock fraud scandal in 1959, closed the following year, and the hangar later housed a film studio and “Murray the K’s World, ” a nightclub run by the legendary New York disc jockey, Berman said. The hangar was demolished.

What’s there now

An AT&T Store

Frank’s Buck’s Jungle Camp/Massapequa Zoo and Kiddie Park

Where it was

Sunrise Highway, Massapequa

Attractions

Frank Buck was the Jack Hanna of his day, an author, screen star and 1930s household name famed for capturing exotic animals and “bringing them back alive” for exhibition at U.S. zoos and circuses.

Buck’s exotic menagerie became a Long Island attraction after he moved his exhibition in 1934 from the Chicago World’s Fair to Massapequa, where a 40-acre camp housed lions, elephants, tigers, reptiles and some very independent monkeys.

The animals “were constantly escaping,” Berman said. Mostly famously, in 1935 150 of the 570 Monkey Mountain denizens crossed a moat on a plank accidentally left behind by a worker (Buck was on a trip to the Far East). The monkeys invaded the camp and ran down Sunrise Highway, causing havoc until they were captured and returned to their artificial mountain home.

Hammond remembers visiting the Massapequa Zoo and Kiddie Park, which took over the camp in the 1950s, adding rides and tamer animals that kids could hand feed. Hammond recalls the then still standing Monkey Mountain as a “concrete, brownish, tall, sculpted structure with a pit like a moat and a machine where you could buy food to feed the monkeys.”

Why it closed

The jungle camp closed because of a shortage of gasoline, bananas and other vital zoo resources during World War II; Buck died of lung cancer in 1950. The zoo closed in 1965, its owners citing high property taxes as the reason.

What’s there now

Sunrise Mall. A historical plaque marks the zoo’s former location.

FAIRYLAND AT HARVEY’S

Where it was

East Jericho Turnpike and Elwood Road, Elwood

Attractions

This smaller version of Brooklyn’s popular Fairyland featured a Ferris wheel, carousel, train, arcade and a miniature golf course, according to Berman.

Why it closed

The owners closed the park after a child fell to her death from the Ferris wheel in 1964.

What’s there now

A gas station

Fairytown, USA

Where it was

Jericho Turnpike, Middle Island

Attractions

Possibly the next best thing to meeting Mickey Mouse? Hanging out with Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Miss Muffet, and the Three Little Pigs at this 28-acre storybook village featuring 12 fairy-tale structures.

“As a girl, I visited Fairytown with my family,” said Gail Lynch-Bailey, 65, of Middle Island. “I remember feeling like we were walking through a living book of nursery rhymes. It was an enchanting place.”

Hammond said that on childhood visits he was most impressed by The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe exhibit, an 18-foot-tall, boot-shaped house where a live “old lady” beckoned kids inside.

Fairytown could also be “pretty tacky” and “strictly fake,” with mannequins among the human actors, Hammond recalled.

Toward the end of Fairytown’s eight-year twinkle, Hammond said, “Martians and a spaceship were added to bring it up to date.”

Why it closed

The park apparently closed around 1963, for reasons lost to history, according to Berman.

What’s there now

An empty lot where a Kmart was demolished a few years ago.

Frontier City

Where it was

Route 110, Amityville

Attractions

Like a dusty Western Brigadoon, this cowboy-themed park opened in 1959, but quickly disappeared the following year into the dust bin of amusement park history.

Touted as being open “From High Noon to Sunset,” it was where kids could pretend to be real cowboys roaming a dusty small town with a trading post, sheriff’s office, a corral and Boot Hill cemetery, Berman said.

Surrounded by costumed “cowboys and Indians,” a visitor could chase rustlers as a marshal’s deputy, join a shootout at the local “OK Corral” and attend a Boot Hill outlaw funeral. The trading post sold moccasins and cowboy hats for the ride home in the family wagon.

Why it closed

The decline in popularity of Westerns sent Frontier City to Boot Hill in 1960, according to Berman.

What’s there now

A luxury apartment complex recently replaced the appropriately-named Frontier Mobile Home Park that had been on this spot for decades.

Sports Plus

Where it was

110 New Moriches Rd., Lake Grove

Attractions

For the Millennial generation, Sports Plus, which opened in 1996, was the place to play on weekends or attend a birthday party.

“They had an epic laser tag,” recalled Long Island historian Christopher Verga, 40, of Bay Shore, author of “World War II Long Island: The Homefront in Nassau and Suffolk” (The History Press, 2021). “When you walked in everything was glowing with black lights, and you wore a vest with a target on your chest that lit up when you got shot,” Verga recalled. As a 12-year-old, though, he was often out-lased by older players. “I thought I was bad and then — boom! — I was done — but it was still fun.”

The $32 million family entertainment center’s 169,000-square-foot play area encompassed separate video game arcades for young children and teens, a rock climbing wall, a National Hockey League regulation-size ice rink, a 48-lane computerized bowling alley, a pizzeria and a pub, according to contemporary media accounts when it opened.

Debuting in 2004, the 700-foot-long Thriller Coaster, touted as Long Island’s first indoor roller coaster, sent passengers 22 feet up through a haunted castle roof before plummeting downward. Sports Plus also hosted rock concerts, a pro-wrestling tournament and, in the run-up to Halloween, the House of the Living Dead haunted house.

Why it closed

Reportedly plagued by financial problems, the facility closed in 2007.

What’s there now

LA Fitness and Whole Foods Market

A ride through time: Amusement parks of the past


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Revisit the Calderone Theatre, Old Bethpage Theater and more

They are Long Island’s lost picture palaces — the single-screen movie theaters that for decades were as much hometown fixtures as the firehouse, public library or all-night diner where you dissected the night’s movie with friends over a burger and cola.

Whether truly palatial with grand prosceniums and balconies or modest shoe boxes with a few hundred seats, they ruled the Long Island entertainment scene from the silent era on, bringing moviegoers together for a few shared hours inside one cavernous, often sold-out theater. And like the Silent Era, Hollywood’s Golden Age and stars who sparkled on their single screens, they are sadly (mostly) gone now.

“If you were lucky enough to have sat in a sold-out movie theater and engaged with an audience of people you didn’t know, you had an experience so many will never live,” said filmmaker and cinema historian Keith Crocker of North Baldwin.

“With multi-screen theaters you often find yourself sitting all alone,” said Rita Hines, 73, of Merrick, a retired Seaford High School English teacher and a longtime movie fan. Hines intentionally saw “The Call of the Wild” (2021), a Harrison Ford movie based on the Jack London tale, at the 300-seat Bellmore Movies and Showplace, the Island’s last surviving single-screen movie theater, founded in 1915. “There were children in the audience and you could feel the communal experience. It was going to the movies old-style,” Hines said.

Ross Melnick, co-founder of Cinema Treasures, an online guide to 56,000 movie theaters around the world, said: “At a single-screen cinema, everyone gathered for the same film at the same time for the same experience. The show, as they say, began on the sidewalk. The buzz began there and continued until the lights went out and the projector whirred.”

Melnick continued, “In an increasingly divided country — especially during the pandemic — there are few venues where you can share a collective experience with others you might otherwise never meet. In the movie theater, for those two hours, differences can melt away.”

Here’s a look at 11 of LI’s single-screen theaters and the moviegoing memories of those who frequented these long-vanished gems.

Calderone Theatre, Hempstead

Seats: 2,500

In the early 20th century, the Calderone name was synonymous with Long Island moviegoing. Sicilian immigrant Salvatore Calderone, who had opened his first Manhattan movie theater in 1907, moved to Hempstead in 1914, founding a small entertainment empire with a half-dozen locations from Valley Stream to Glen Cove — and earning the nickname the “Master Showman of Nassau County,” according to documents in the Calderone Theatre Collection at Hofstra University.

The Calderone Theatre and Concert Hall, one of the chain’s most expensive theaters at a cost of $2 million, opened in 1949, designed by William Lescaze, a pioneer of Modernism in American architecture.

Cinema historian Crocker worked there as a projectionist and said the Calderone “was so large, you really felt like you were in a palace, so whether you were going to a movie or an event, you felt like it was grand.”

Paul Baar, 65, of Islip, went in the 1970s when the Calderone was being turned into a live performance venue. He said the Calderone had a balcony and “was way bigger” than the theater in Babylon where he grew up. “I went to see ‘The Three Musketeers’ (1973) and the next year I went to see Santana,” Carlos Santana’s legendary rock band, he said.

What’s there now

The Calderone family sold the property in 1982 and the building is currently the Faith Baptist Church.

Uniondale Mini-Cinema

Seats: 416

For Baby Boomers coming of age in the 1970s, the Mini-Cinema was the go-to destination for Hollywood classics, concert movies and midnight shows.

Larry Jaffee, who grew up in Kings Park, lined up in 1977 to get into “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

Jaffee, 63, a NYIT professor who lives in Washington Heights, remembers a “Rocky Horror” fan asking “whether I was a ‘virgin,’ i.e., encountering the film for the first time. I lied and said, ‘No.'” When the self-appointed gatekeeper demanded to know Jaffee’s favorite scene, he said, “Totally bluffing, I blurted out, ‘All of them!'”

For classic movie fans like Gary Apple, now 66, of Manhattan, the Mini-Cinema was the closest thing on Long Island to Manhattan revival houses like The Thalia (which itself closed in 1987).

“The Mini-Cinema changed my life,” said Apple, who grew up in Old Bethpage. “I saw a Bogart film. And then got into Bogart and the other Warner stars. Then the Marx Brothers,” said Apple, who grew up to be a writer of situation comedies (“The Simpsons”) and off-Broadway musicals.

What’s there now:

Grace Cathedral International

Old Bethpage Theater

Seats: 600

Opening in 1961 as The Bethview, and for a time an adult film showcase that closed after a 1969 police raid, the theater shut for good in 1986.

Renamed the Old Bethpage Theater in 1971, it was a favorite of Apple and his friend, Mark Barash, who grew up on the same block in Old Bethpage.

“Gary and I enjoyed going there in part to see horror movies” such as “Frankenstein” and “Dracula,” recalled Barash, 66, a retired TV sportscaster in Pittsburgh.

Barash and Apple eventually figured a way to save the $1.50 admission price, by striking a deal with the theater manager to record the “movie phone,” in exchange for free passes. Apple wrote the scripts, and they both recorded the audio. “We would ham it up, like it was a scary movie.”

Both were off in college in 1977 when the name changed, to Cine-Capri, and remained so until lights out in 1986, according to Cinema Treasures.

Century’s York Theatre (Huntington)

Seats: 650

The York, which opened on the day after Christmas 1961, offered a rare amenity on Long Island: black-suited ushers who used flashlights to escort guests to their seats.

Dylan Skolnick, co-director of the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington, remembers seeing “Halloween III” at The York, despite the reviews. “As we were going in people were coming out saying, ‘don’t go in, it’s terrible,’ and of course we went in and enjoyed it.”

Baar said he went to The York “when they were starting to show exploitation movies,” British horror films from Amicus and Hammer studios, and Philippine-American productions starring American actors, such as “Beyond Atlantis” (1973).

The York closed in 1985, according to Cinema Treasures.

Syosset Cinerama Theater

Seats: 1,400

If you wanted to see a widescreen spectacular the way the filmmaker intended, this was the place to feast your eyes, fill your ears and blow your mind.

Films were shown in 70 millimeters, on a huge, curved screen, said Skolnick. As a young teen, he attended a rerelease there of the 1968 Stanley Kubrick science fiction epic, “2001: A Space Odyssey.” “We stayed all day long and watched it two and a half times straight through,” he said. “It was spectacular, and the sound was great, six-track stereophonic.”

The theater debuted in 1956 — in a decade when many studios were introducing novel cinema processes — with a benefit screening of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, “Oklahoma!” (1955), one of the first films shown in Todd-AO, according to Cinema Treasures. In 1959, it was converted into a three-strip Cinerama theater presenting “This Is Cinerama,” according to Cinema Treasures.

It became a triplex in 1983, and closed in 1995.

Nassau Theatre (Roosevelt)

Seats: 404

According to Cinema Treasures, this was “a neighborhood house that played double features for low prices. It opened as the Roosevelt Theatre and was renamed Nassau Theatre in 1939 after a refurbishment.”

Nassau Theatre had one of its most successful nights in July 1966, after protesters gathered outside to decry its bill of “obscene films,” according to a contemporary Newsday report posted on Cinema Treasures. In an attempt to placate censors, the management used India ink to paint bras and panties on nude women in advertising posters, and shortened “Days of Sin and Nights of Nymphomania,” to “Days of Sin.” The theater soon switched to G-rated blockbusters such as “Zorba the Greek” and the musical, “My Fair Lady.”In the 1970s it was popular for “blaxploitation” triple features, according to Cinema Treasures.

What’s there now:

A parking lot

Amityville Theater

Seats: 1,000

According to Cinema Treasures, the Amityville theater opened as The Star Theatre in 1913. It was replaced by a new, larger Amityville Theatre in May 1936 with “A Message to Garcia” with Barbara Stanwyck and Wallace Beery.

The theater was luxurious for its era, with air conditioning and a smoking loge. It was demolished in 1960 by a road widening project and replaced by yet another, larger, theatre at the same site.

What’s there now:

A pizzeria

Meadowbrook Theatre (East Meadow)

Seats: 1,200

The huge, family-oriented movie house on the Levittown/East Meadow border offered a triple play for a weekend date or a scout outing. You could roller boogie to an organ soundtrack in the rink at the Levittown Arena, take in a matinee at the Meadowbrook — “Yellow Submarine,” The Beatle’s 1968 animated feature, was a typical family-oriented offering. Then you could walk to Jahn’s Ice Cream Parlor and Restaurant to share a gargantuan “Kitchen Sink” sundae.

Like the era’s other avid Beatles fans, Robin Leidner, 64, who grew up in Wantagh, stood on a long line that “coiled around the building” to see the Fab Four’s debut, “A Hard Day’s Night” (1964). Leidner, a college professor in Philadelphia, said “At seven years old, I was already a fervent Beatles fan. Still am.”

What’s there now:

A TD Bank

Northport Theater

Seats: 500

Built in 1912, the original Main Street theater burned down in 1932, and a new theater was built in the adjoining lot, according to a history posted online by the John W. Engeman Theater at Northport.

The theater was renovated in 1950, but by the early 1980s was showing second-run movies at 99 cents, then $1.25 per ticket.

For Glenn Andreiev of Kings Park, The Northport Theater was an essential part of growing up to be an independent filmmaker. At age 18, on the weekend after he received his driver’s license, he drove a friend to see Ridley Scott’s “Alien” (1979).

“It was pretty packed,” Andreiev said. In “Alien’s” most notorious scene, “The whole theater was going nuts when the alien comes out of his chest.”

Skolnick saw “The Road Warrior,” (1981) there when the theater “was a little rundown,” but the movie looked “spectacular on the big screen.”

What’s there now:

The John W. Engeman Theater at Northport.

Sunrise Drive-In, Valley Stream, Century’s 110 Drive-In, Melville

One of Hines’ earliest memories involves seeing the Film Noir classic, “Kiss Me Deadly” (1955) at the Sunrise Drive-In when she was 8.

“I was very happy wearing my pajamas outside of the house and getting snacks at the concession stand, and was very intrigued with the concrete slide” at the playground, Hines said. “I also remember being very bored with the movie until the end when she’s opening the suitcase with a bomb” in the film’s famously explosive finale.

Opened in the summer of 1938, the Sunrise Drive-In was noted for its huge, curved screen and a big play park, which drew a stream of moviegoers in automobiles from across the city line. It was the first drive-in theatre in New York State, according to Cinema Treasures.

Crocker recalls sneaking into an age-restricted 1979 double bill of “Dawn of the Dead” and “Meatcleaver Massacre,” by hiding under blankets in a car.

“The line was so long for getting into this film that they didn’t check the car,” he said. The audience was very demonstrative. “Whenever something gruesome happened on the screen, patrons in the cars tended to honk their horns in excitement,” he recalls.

Leidner wore pajamas watching the movie from the back seat of her parents’ car at Melville’s 110 Drive-In — where the capacity was about 3,000 cars.

Leidner said, “The sound from the speaker that hung in a window was usually terrible.”

What’s there now:

The Sunrise Drive-In closed in 1979, and was replaced by the Sunrise Multiplex, which itself closed in 2015. The site is now Green Acres Commons, the outdoor shopping complement to Green Acres Mall. The Long Island Marriott hotel now stands on the site of the 110 Drive-In, which closed in 1976.

You must remember these…

Vintage movie ads from Newsday

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‘Killer Bees’ documentary explores hoop dreams in the Hamptons

In his senior year at Bridgehampton School, Jamari Gant finally decided to try out for its famed basketball team, the Killer Bees. An affable kid who had honed his skills during lunch periods at East Hampton schools before transferring to Bridgehampton’s two-story, pre-kindergarten-through-12th-grade school as a freshman, Gant made the cut but then found the pressure was on. Not only would the Killer Bees attempt to defend its state championship title that year — without its star player, who had left the team — but a documentary crew had signed up to film the Bees’ 2015-2016 season from start to finish.

“I was like, ‘Oh, great — the first time I’m ever going to be playing, and I’m being recorded,’ ” Gant says. Privately, though, he had more pressing concerns. He and his family — his mother and five siblings — were in the process of being evicted from their home.

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The Killer Bees’ Tylik Furman takes a shot in a game against Southampton during filming of the documentary. Photo credit: Hilary McHone

“I just hadn’t really told anybody,” says Gant, 20. “I just didn’t want to bring it upon people to worry about me. So I just worked hard in school and tried to do my best to get good grades.”

Gant plays a crucial and perhaps symbolic role in the documentary “Killer Bees,” which opens in select theaters July 27 and becomes available on video-on-demand Aug. 7. Written and directed by two Bridgehampton natives, Benjamin and Orson Cummings, “Killer Bees” focuses on a nearly all-black high school team in the Hamptons, a region synonymous with white wealth. Produced partly by Shaquille O’Neal, “Killer Bees” uses basketball as a way to explore how Bridgehampton’s black community — one that goes back decades, to the days when black migrants worked Long Island’s potato fields — is being squeezed out by new development and rising real estate prices.

“Basketball is one of our ways of speaking out,” the school’s former basketball coach, Carl Johnson, says today. “We’re a little school, probably one of the smaller schools in the state of New York. And we want to show them we can compete on and off the court.”

The idea for “Killer Bees” came to the Cummings brothers through an alum of the Bridgehampton School who suggested, via Facebook, that they focus on Coach Johnson as a local institution and part of a disappearing demographic in the Hamptons. That idea appealed to the filmmakers, both in their 40s, who had attended Bridgehampton School in the lower grades (they graduated elsewhere) and still remember it fondly.

Orson credits his “somewhat Bohemian” parents — they were both writers — for sending their Caucasian kids to a mostly black school. “They felt we might learn something being around a minority group in our formative years,” Orson says. “We were the minority, and nobody seemed to care that much.”

JP Harding in a scene from Orson and Ben Cummings' documetary about the Bridgehampton basketball team.

JP Harding in a scene from the documetary about the Bridgehampton basketball team. Photo credit: Hilary McHone

In the summer of 2015, the brothers met for lunch with Johnson at Bridgehampton Candy Kitchen, a traditional hangout for generations of local students. There, they learned that the Killer Bees’ star player, Charles Manning, had switched schools to Long Island Lutheran (a defection that Johnson says stings a little even today). More importantly, the brothers learned that Johnson felt, as they did, that the film should address larger issues of race, income inequality and gentrification in Bridgehampton.

The documentary film crew follows JP Harding as he walks by a house in Bridgehampton.

The documentary film crew follows JP Harding as he walks by a house in Bridgehampton. Photo credit: Hilary McHone

“Carl came and said he had one condition, that he wanted it to be about more than basketball,” Orson recalls. “He said there were all these things he wanted to talk about.”

For help producing the film, Orson turned to a man he knew primarily as a tennis partner in the Hamptons: Glenn Fuhrman, a Rockville Centre native and co-founder of MSD Capital, an investment firm that handles the capital of tech mogul Michael Dell. Furman then got in touch with O’Neal, with whom he had worked on a nonprofit project several years ago.

Elijah Jackson, 20, coach Carl Johnson, Jamari Gant, 20 all from Bridgehampton stand inside the gym at the Bridgehampton School in Bridgehampton on Friday, July 20, 2018.

Elijah Jackson, 20, Coach Carl Johnson, Jamari Gant, 20, all from Bridgehampton, stand inside the gym at the Bridgehampton School in Bridgehampton on Friday, July 20, 2018. Photo credit: Randee Daddona

“I called him and asked if he would be involved, and he just instantly said yes,” says Fuhrman. “That was an exciting moment because he obviously has a lot of requests on his time… We were excited that this was something he felt good enough about to align himself with.”

Although “Killer Bees” tackles a number of larger issues about race and income inequality, what emerges most powerfully is the role Johnson plays in the lives of his young athletes. Johnson was once a hotshot player at Bridgehampton himself, known by his mysterious nickname, Pujack. As a number of people testify in the film, Johnson seemed destined for the NBA — but a dispute with a friend led to a shooting incident that damaged Johnson’s right arm and ended his hopes for the pros.

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Elijah Jackson and Coach Carl Johnson in a scene from “The Killer Bees” documetary. Photo credit: Hilary McHone

“He flew in an orbit that was mythical,” says Benjamin Cummings. “I remember the day he got shot, even though I was just in grade school. The whole school was traumatized.”

After college, Johnson took the coaching job at Bridgehampton thinking it would be a short-term gig. “I told myself I was never going to coach any of my former players’ kids,” he says, though that’s exactly what happened. “I guess I overstayed my years.”

For that, many young basketball players have been grateful. Elijah Jackson, 20, a former player who appears in the film, calls Johnson a father-figure whose best qualities were a strict sense of discipline, an infectious love of the game and, occasionally, a soft touch. When Jackson needed a late-night ride home from a friend’s house, he recalls, Johnson would be the one to pick him up. “I’m not calling my parents to come and get me,” Jackson says with a smile. “Like, I’m calling Carl. He was always there.”

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Elijah Jackson, JP Harding, Tylik Furman, Maurice Mungin and Kevin Feliciano in a scene from “The Killer Bees” documentary. Photo credit: Hilary McHone

Jackson’s teammate Gant credits Johnson with helping him through a tough year of borderline homelessness. “Coach Johnson was always like, ‘If there’s anything wrong, or you need someone to talk to, always come to me,'” Gant says. “He was like a father to me. I never had a father.” (Gant, now studying computer science at SUNY Fredonia, currently has no home to come back to; his family lives in a shelter. Gant says he is spending this summer at the house of another Bridgehampton teacher.)

Johnson retired in 2017 and now serves as an aide at the Bridgehampton School, but seems unable to stop coaching. Former players still call him “coach” on the street, he says. He’s trying to chase down two recent graduates to coax them into a “sit-down” and find out why they’ve stopped attending college. And the younger students at Bridgehampton, he says, seem to have claimed him as their own.

“These little kids in the lower grades were like, ‘OK, now that you’re not coaching the big boys anymore, you’re our coach now,'” Johnson says. This past winter, he began volunteer-coaching fifth and sixth graders. “It was fun,” he says. “That’s what my job is, to help that grassroots grow.”

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Matt Hostetter, Joshua Lamison and Tylik Furman in a scene from the documentary about the Bridgehampton basketball team. Photo credit: Hilary McHone

WHEN | WHERE At Cinema Village, 22 E. 12th St., Manhattan. Showtimes daily at 1:10, 3:10, 5:10, 7:10 and 9:10 p.m. Tickets are $12. Call 212-924-3363 or go to cinemavillage.com. Available Aug. 7 via video-on-demand.

Opening excerpt from the “Killer Bees,” which documents a Hamptons championship basketball team, but also explores race, inequality and gentrification. Credit: Frank Publicity / Photo credit: Hilary McHone

Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden:
♪   Oh, oh, oh — for the 100th time   ♪

Joel at a 2016 concert. Photo by Myrna Suarez

BILLY JOEL SITS on a rolling office chair in what is normally the visitors locker room at Madison Square Garden and puts daughter Della Rose on his knee.

Della has a request. She wants him to play “Don’t Ask Me Why” in that night’s show.

“What will you do when I play that?” Joel asks Della, who will be 3 years old on Aug. 12.

She slides off Joel’s knee and does a little dance, much to the delight of Joel, wife Alexis, and the crew gathered in the room. Joel takes creative director Steve Cohen aside and tells him to move “Don’t Ask Me Why” up in the set to make sure she can see it.

That night, “Don’t Ask Me Why” moved all the way up to the third song in the show. Joel dedicates it to his daughter, telling the crowd, “She’s probably going to be falling asleep soon.”

As the band starts, Joel sits at the piano and shades his eyes from the spotlight to look over to the seats where Della is already dancing with Alexis. Seeing them happy, Joel starts the countdown to signal the band that he is ready to start singing, “Uno! Dos! Uno, dos, tres, cuatro!”


BILLY JOEL IS most definitely a rock star. His American tour this summer is nothing but stadiums — including Fenway Park in Boston, Wrigley Field in Chicago, Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. His greatest hits collection has sold more copies than any other album in history, except Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and the Eagles’ greatest hits. He is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and he was honored by the Kennedy Center for the Arts and received The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.

But these days, the Hicksville native’s life is increasingly about family — both the one that lives with him on Centre Island and the close-knit work family that has helped him put on shows for decades. On Wednesday, July 18, Joel is set to headline Madison Square Garden for the 100th time — nearly 40 years after he made his debut there — marking a milestone so high it was considered unthinkable for years.

“I remember my first show at The Garden, that was a milestone,” Joel says. “If someone would have projected that I would do 100 shows there, I would have laughed at them. I’d say you’re being ridiculous.”

Billy Joel and Madison Square Garden

Joel performs at Madison Square Garden on Dec. 15, 1978. Photo Credit: Getty Images/Waring Abbott

Even Jim Dolan, chairman and CEO of The Madison Square Garden Co., said the record seems unbreakable. “Billy Joel is one of the greatest figures in rock and roll history, and he has now accomplished something that might never be equaled — 100 shows in a single venue,” Dolan said in a statement. “This milestone is a testament to the strength of Billy’s music and his incredible connection to his fans — many of whom come from Long Island. All of us at The Madison Square Garden Company look forward to he, and his fans, continuing to make The Garden their home well into the future.”

Joel jokes that he accomplished the stunning feat simply because he didn’t die. (“The secret of success? Just don’t die!” he says, laughing. “The secret of longevity? Stay alive!”)

When pressed for a serious answer, he laughs again. “I don’t have the slightest idea,” says Joel, who began playing monthly at The Garden in 2014, the first (and only) arena-sized residency in music history. “The audiences are great. The venue is great. It’s a world-class venue. To have a residency there is a dream already. I never imagined that anyone could have a residency at The Garden. We’re a franchise. We’re like a sports team. The whole thing has just been one crazy, exhilarating night after another.”

Unlike many superstar headliners these days, Joel keeps most of his show preparations secret. He doesn’t sell VIP concert packages that include access to his sound check. He doesn’t offer meet-and-greet sessions before his shows. He doesn’t even sell tickets to the front row of seats, for that matter. (Those seats are given to excited fans that Joel’s crew finds in the upper-level seats.)

However, Joel granted Newsday access to the backstage preparations of his Madison Square Garden concert on May 23, the 98th Garden show of his career, to see what goes into putting on his show at the arena. More than 1,500 people work at every Joel concert — including everyone from the musicians to the ushers — and most have worked at many, if not all, of the shows in the residency.

Billy Joel and Madison Square Garden

Kevin James presents Billy Joel with his recognition for a record 65th appearance at Madison Square Garden on July 1, 2015. Photo Credit: Robert Altman / Invision / AP


MOST DAYS START around 8 a.m. with production manager Bobby “Boomer” Thrasher, who handles the setup of the stage and the logistics of putting together everything backstage, meeting with his team. “I wouldn’t call it a science,” says the Ontario native who started with Joel 36 years ago building stages and quickly moved up the ranks. “It’s called a living.”

Thrasher, who has also worked on tours with Bruce Springsteen and Elton John and received the 2018 Parnelli Audio Lifetime Achievement Award, says the residency has given a lot of people a stability that is almost unheard-of among music professionals. “It’s almost like a cab medallion — once you get it, you don’t want to lose it,” says Thrasher, who proudly says his sons Ted, the drum tech, and Lucas, who helps build the stage and works the teleprompter, also work for Joel. “This is where you want to be. This is heaven.”

Most of Joel’s tight-knit crew say the atmosphere comes directly from The Piano Man himself. “With other acts, management handles the hiring and they are often deciding based on the dollar,” Thrasher says. “For us, Billy handles it and he decides based on what’s best for the show… He brought all of us here. We’re his family. We’re his comfort factor and he’s our comfort factor.”

Joel says he believes the key to keeping his band and crew together is mutual respect. “A lot of these guys have been with me for 40 years or longer,” he says. “[Sound engineer] Brian Ruggles has been with me for 50 years. … I respect what they do. I know how hard they work and I hopefully compensate them accordingly. I acknowledge that everyone is as important as everybody else. I know I’m out front, but I still feel like I’m playing in a band.”

Billy Joel and Madison Square Garden

Billy Joel dances with then girlfriend Christy Brinkley as she holds onto Joel’s Madison Square Garden Platinum Ticket on July 5, 1984. The Garden Platinum Ticket was presented to music entertainers who attracted more than 250,000 fans to The Garden. Photo Credit: Associated Press / Mario Suriani

Joel has his own dressing room at Madison Square Garden, of course. Actually, it’s a well-appointed suite of rooms. But he prefers to be in the main production room, at the end of Thrasher’s table, not too far from the pizza boxes and chicken wings set up for the band and crew.

That’s usually where the VIPs come in to meet him before the show. It’s where they’ll gather to sing “Happy Birthday” to Joel’s agent Dennis Arfa and saxophonist Mark Rivera before they take the stage. It’s where creative director Cohen likes to arrive around 10 a.m. on show days, hours before he really needs to be there.

“They’re all my family and we only get to see each other once a month so this is where you want to be on a workday,” Cohen says. “It’s not like other tours where you wait until catering is all set up.”


THE MUSICAL PLANS for the day start with Cohen, who comes up with a rough draft of the night’s set list. “That’s usually based on looking at what we’ve done in the past and what we’ve been talking about that might be fun to add,” says Cohen, who proudly says he is one of only four people in the organization, including Joel, to be at all 100 shows at The Garden, along with sound engineer Ruggles and agent Arfa. “Billy likes to not sing certain songs back to back. Some guys like to play certain songs. I filter all that stuff.”

Around 4 p.m., the closing half of “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)” floats into the production room from sound check, as Cohen talks. The band — keyboardist/musical director Dave Rosenthal, guitarists Tommy Byrnes and Mike DelGuidice, the horn section of Mark Rivera, Crystal Taliefero and Carl Fischer, bassist Andy Cichon and drummer Chuck Burgi — has started without Joel, who is caught in the traffic caused by President Donald Trump’s visit to Long Island.

When the band kicks into “My Life,” Cohen pauses to listen. After a few notes, he says, “That’s Mike DelGuidice singing. Billy must not be here yet.”

Cohen says the residency has succeeded because it is “like the perfect storm.” “You have Billy, who is like the hood ornament for the city of New York; Madison Square Garden, which is the most famous arena in the world; and Billy playing ‘New York State of Mind’,” he says. “Every single night, I get goose bumps. I think I remember the electricity of seeing Frank Sinatra walk on the stage in Las Vegas. That’s the only kind of thing I can equate this to. … The sum is greater than the parts.”

Billy Joel and Madison Square Garden

Joel belts out a tune while playing guitar at The Garden on Oct. 2, 1993. Photo Credit: Associated Press / Paul Hurschmann

While the band runs through some other songs, most of the people in the production room continue their work. But when the band moves into something unfamiliar, everyone looks up. “What are they playing?” asks deputy production manager Liz Mahon, before several people go to find out.

It turns out the band is rehearsing “Half a Mile Away,” a song from Joel’s 1978 album “52nd Street” that he has never played in concert before.

“We dabbled with it and thought, ‘Let’s give it a shot,’ ” Rosenthal says later. “He has so many great songs to choose from. We like to mix it up a little bit.”

Rosenthal says that every sound check with Joel is different. On this one, the band wanted to warm up a bit since it had been a while since they had all played together.


WHEN JOEL ARRIVES, they try “Half a Mile Away” again, then Joel leads them into a bit of the Gloria Gaynor disco classic “I Will Survive,” adopting a falsetto until Taliefero takes over in full voice.

“We’re not faking it,” Rosenthal says afterward. “We’re really having a good time.”

The band goes through “Goodnight Saigon,” which Joel wants in the set as a tribute to Memorial Day, and that segues into The Doors’ “The End.” Joel says they also need some summer-themed songs to mark the holiday.

“I thought ‘Summer Wind’ might be kind of cool,” Byrnes says, as they try it out. Soon, they are all doing bits of “Hot Fun in the Summertime” and “Summertime Blues,” before going into Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times, Bad Times.”

They also practice “I Go to Extremes,” with the five-part harmonies sounding extra-crisp in the empty arena. As they wrap up, Joel breaks out a bit of “I’m in the Mood for Love” and “Tangerine” on the piano. Burgi keeps the beat while the rest of the band leaves the stage.

Billy Joel and Madison Square Garden

Joel performs at MSG on April 14, 2017. Photo Credit: Theo Wargo/Getty Images

Rosenthal says later that he was happy with how “I Go to Extremes” sounded. “We hadn’t done that song in a really long time,” he says. “It’s a remarkable group of musicians who can come together like that. We haven’t played together in six weeks. We didn’t rehearse. We did a sound check, played a few songs and here we go. The band is like turning over an old Chevy. You turn the key and it goes. It takes a certain type of chemistry in a band to be away and then be on 10 now. It’s a certain type of energy and a lot of that comes from Billy because he’s able to do that too.”

Sitting at Thrasher’s table before the show, Joel still isn’t sure about doing “Half a Mile Away” in the show. He asks Cohen and they decide to go for it.

Before Joel plays it in the show, he warns the crowd about the song. “I wrote it, I recorded it, I forgot about it,” he says. “We’re on the edge here.”

The crowd offers its encouragement. “I don’t even know how it starts,” says Joel, before the band kicks into the disco-era jam which segues into “I Will Survive.”

“I didn’t expect it to work that well, but I don’t know that it’s going to become a dedicated part of the show,” Joel says later. “We’ll just keep taking stuff out of mothballs and try it out. It’s almost like doing new material if you haven’t done it in a long time.”

It was a fun moment, the kind that sticks out in Joel’s memory. His favorite moments at Madison Square Garden are the ones that involve special guests. “John Mayer is such a good musician, it’s great working with him,” he says. “The night we had Paul Simon and Miley Cyrus, that was fun. … Kevin James did some wild stuff with us.”

Billy Joel and Madison Square Garden

Paul Simon, Miley Cyrus and Billy Joel perform at Madison Square Garden on Sept. 30, 2017 during one of Joel’s shows. Photo Credit: Getty Images/Kevin Mazur

For Joel, the night that stands out most in his head was one that wasn’t particularly good. “I was sick and I took all kinds of medicine and cough syrup and cold medicine and then somebody had the bright idea of bringing me tea with whiskey in it and honey to help my cold,” he says. “This was right after 9/11 and about halfway through the show, all that [expletive] kicked in and I just started rambling, talking about American war battles like Iwo Jima and Normandy and the Alamo. I was all pissed off about being attacked. I just started yelling, ‘Who the hell do they think they are?’ and ‘We’re not going to take this!’ And by the end of the show, my crew comes over and says, ‘Are you OK?’ I was kind of out of it…. I was so angry about 9/11 that something had to give. I had to say something. I don’t usually get up on a soapbox, but that particular time I was so emotionally overwrought that, yeah, I did.”

That night sparked plenty of questions about Joel and his drinking, though it quickly became overblown, even after a stint in rehab. “People think I’m the Dean Martin of rock and roll and that I’m drunk whenever I’m on the stage,” he says. “That would be impossible. That show I did overmedicate. It stands out in my memory. That was terrible. I’ll never do that again. I felt bad that my throat was so bad.”

In a way, it was similar to another remarkable night in Joel’s Madison Square Garden history — Aug. 21, 2017, the concert the week after the white supremacist riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

“I was angry then too,” Joel says. “I wanted to make a statement, but I didn’t want to do it verbally. I wanted to do it in a symbolic fashion. And I thought, ‘This will be the night for me to wear the yellow star.’ ”

Joel says his decision to wear the Star of David, a symbol of Jewish identity connected with the Holocaust, offended some. “I don’t know if they know that my family was persecuted by the Nazis,” he says. “Most of my family was slaughtered in Auschwitz. Most of my father’s family was fortunate enough to get out just before they were sent away. … I was protesting Trump saying there were good people on both sides. No. No, no, no. You can’t equivocate evil like that, I’m sorry. Nazis are bad. Ku Klux Klan? Bad. Those aren’t good people.”

Joel has often said he tries to stay away from politics because he doesn’t want to influence people in a way that could be wrong. However, he felt he had to stand up against white supremacists.

“I was really upset about what happened in Charlottesville,” he says. “It was an indicator of what was happening in the entire country and it really upset me. I’m still upset to this day about that. I’m personally offended by Nazis. They personally offend me. The Ku Klux Klan personally offends me. I don’t put up with that. Not only did my father’s family go through that, but my father was in the Army with Patton fighting Nazis as a soldier. Now these stupid punk neo-Nazis are marching through the streets of my country? After my father went over there to stop Nazism? I’m personally offended by that. I think if my father’s generation saw these stupid idiots walking around with swastikas on their armbands, they’d smack the living [expletive]out of them. I find it personally offensive. We fought a war to put an end to that kind of thing. These morons are going to try to resuscitate it. No. If the current leader of our country is OK with that, it’s not OK with me.”

Though Joel’s political statements are few and very far between, he says he does appreciate how his residency offers him a monthly outlet to communicate with his audience. “There is a little bit of the town crier in it,” he says. “I’m a New Yorker. I kind of sense what other New Yorkers are feeling. I think it would be remiss of me not to remark on something happening at the moment. It depends on what it is, though.”

Billy Joel and Madison Square Garden

Joel performs at MSG on Jan. 27, 2014. Photo credit: Andrew H. Walker / Getty Images


JOEL HAS CONCERTS scheduled through the end of this year and expects to continue next year, when he turns 70. When the residency began, he famously said that the shows would continue for as long as fans wanted to see him, but now it has become clear that may not come any time soon.

Joel says he may call an end to his residency when his body can’t handle it any more. “There is definitely a physicality to the job and the older I get, the more apparent it becomes to me,” he says. “If I can’t do it well, or as well as I want to, I’m going to stop. I admire the athletes who took themselves out of the game, the Joe DiMaggios, the people who walked away before they lost it. That’s an honorable thing and I’d like to be able to do that. I did it with recording and songwriting and I’ll probably do it with performing as well.”

The discussion of when to stop is one that comes up with many of his friends. Paul Simon plans to retire from touring in September, with a massive show at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens. Paul McCartney, on the other hand, has just announced plans for a new album and another world tour.

“Paul said, ‘What am I gonna do? Sit around and watch the telly?’ ” Joel says, adopting the Beatle’s British accent.

“Bruce’s thing was, ‘Well, it just seemed like a good idea,’ ” Joel says, doing his best Springsteen.

“[Don] Henley said, ‘Well, this is what I do. What else would I do?’ ” Joel says. “They’re all right for their own reasons. I find myself agreeing.”

For years, he has dropped hints about retirement. But after replacing both hips and working out some issues with allergies, Joel now moves and sounds better than he has in decades. And he clearly lights up when his family comes into a room.

Joel says he gets a kick out of seeing Della run around backstage at The Garden. “I don’t think she knows what a rock star is, which I kinda dig, I’m just Daddy,” he says. “If I start to sing in the house, she says, ‘No, no, shut up. I wanna sing.’ She tells me to shut up. So I joke around. I say, ‘People want to pay money to hear Daddy sing.’ And she says, ‘No, no, no, I wanna sing.’ She doesn’t care. It’s cute. I’m just Daddy. And all the folks backstage, those are all her aunts and uncles. They’re crazy about her.”

Della isn’t quite 3 years old, but the dramatic element of her personality is already on display. “Alexa, my oldest daughter, was always definitely musical — she took piano lessons,” Joel says. “Della is musical, but I don’t know if it’s the same kind of musical as Alexa. She likes to sing and fool around on harmonica. She’s more theatrical, more an actress type. The little one, Remy, I think she’s going to be an attorney. She’s very serious. She looks like she’s going to be a deep thinker.”

Billy Joel and Madison Square Garden

Joel performs with daughter Alexa Ray in 2018. Photo Credit: Myrna Suarez

Joel says he would be happy with his daughters no matter what they do. “It would be very convenient if the younger daughter is an attorney and she looks after the rest of the family,” he says, laughing about planning her career even before her first birthday in October. “That would work out fantastic. We don’t have any lawyers in my family.”

Joel is clearly not interested in doing massive tours any more — the long, tedious ones that he says make him feel like Willy Loman from “Death of a Salesman.” But he likes his current pace of work and wonders if stopping completely would be a mistake.

“Maybe when you stop doing it is when you stop being alive,” he says. “What did Dylan say, ‘He not busy being born is busy dying’? There’s probably something to that. If you do not continually invent yourself, if you don’t do what your life force is telling you to do, you begin to die.”

For Joel, he’ll know it’s time to retire the way some people define art. He’ll know it when he sees it, or feels it.

“One night, I’ll know right then and there and I’ll say, ‘That’s it. Don’t put any more tickets on sale,’ ” Joel says. “One thing I know, I’m not going to do a farewell tour. If I’m going to stop, I’m just going to stop. I’m going to take myself out of the lineup like DiMaggio.”

Until then, Joel plans to rock on.

Billy Joel and Madison Square Garden

Joel performs at MSG on April 14, 2017. Photo Credit: Theo Wargo / Getty Images

My Father’s Place, legendary Long Island venue, returns

Michael “Eppy” Epstein built his career by seeing potential where others didn’t.

At his legendary club My Father’s Place, Epstein proved that the suburbs would embrace cool artists just as much as city dwellers did, bringing Bruce Springsteen, Bob Marley, U2, The Ramones and countless other groundbreaking artists of the ’70s and ’80s to Roslyn. He believed America would fall in love with reggae music as much as he did in Jamaica, helping Marley and numerous other reggae stars get started in this country.

And now, Epstein hopes to establish a new kind of club experience on Long Island when My Father’s Place at The Roslyn Hotel opens with an ambitious run of concerts starting with Buster Poindexter on Friday, June 29.

Michael ‘Eppy’ Epstein in the ballroom of the Roslyn Hotel on June 8, 2018. Video by: Bruce Gilbert

“Maybe I’m being romantic about this,” Epstein says. “But I believe the best thing I can do is help people fall in love with music again.”

He paved the way for so many musical love affairs from 1971 to 1987, a few blocks away on Bryant Avenue. The original My Father’s Place, which became the first venue inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2010, introduced generations to up-and-coming artists from all over the world, from Hicksville’s Billy Joel and Long Beach’s Billy Crystal to British rockers like The Police and Jamaica’s Bob Marley & The Wailers.

“We want to offer something for everyone,” he says. “If you don’t see it one night, you’ll see it another time. I was always a general practitioner in music and I still am.”

Though the 70-year-old Epstein has dreamed of opening another concert venue in Roslyn for years, My Father’s Place at The Roslyn Hotel came together quickly.

When 935 Lakshmi LLC, headed by Upper Brookville’s Sudhir Kakar, purchased The Roslyn Hotel in April 2017, the new owners wanted to generate excitement at the 77-room hotel. In November, they settled on bringing in Epstein and his partners, chief operating officer/general manager Dan Kellachan, best known for his decades of heading up marketing at Westbury Music Fair and NYCB Theatre at Westbury, and chief financial officer Alex Ewen, best known for co-founding Renegade Nation with Steven Van Zandt, the company that developed the Little Steven’s Underground Garage radio show and satellite channel, as well as concerts and other events.

Weeks after the deal was announced, though, it became clear to Epstein how much work had to be done. Walking through the basement space, which housed the hotel’s ballroom, he pointed out all the changes he wanted to make to the 2,700-square-foot space, about half the size of the original club.

“The carpet has to go,” Epstein says. “We’re going to tear down the mirrored doors.”

Standing in a mirrored entranceway, he says, “The stage will go here.”

In a storage room stacked with extra tables and chairs, Epstein envisions a smaller bar, where concertgoers can wait for the doors to open in the main room before the show or grab a drink afterwards. The hotel gym and its treadmills gets slated to become the band’s dressing room.

“Can you see it?” Epstein says. “We want to build a place for people to come for a good time.”

Epstein recognizes, though, that for fans of the original My Father’s Place, the definition of “a good time” has likely changed in the past three decades.

“People want a good meal and a good chair to go with seeing a good show,” says Epstein, adding that he is eager to bring the concept of a Manhattan supper club to Roslyn, but with the Long Island luxury of more space.

Kellachan says that comfort will be an important part of the new My Father’s Place experience. “If an act has a bigger stage setup, I’m going to be killing seats rather than squeezing people together,” he says, adding that the room’s capacity could be larger, but to keep the atmosphere relaxed, they planned to cap it at 200. “We’re aiming to make it comfortable.”

Kellachan says that the whole experience will be different from the one at the old My Father’s Place. “We’re not a roadhouse,” he says. “It will be more of the experience at a nice restaurant. Nobody will be jumping up and down in front of you and spilling cheap beer on your girlfriend. Everyone will have a great view of the stage.”

One thing Long Islanders will have to get used to is the $25 minimum per person at the show, though it will be a familiar concept to visitors to many Manhattan clubs, not just the supper clubs.

Kellachan says the new My Father’s Place is trying to inform concertgoers about the best way to experience the venue through its website, myfathersplace.com. In order to enjoy a leisurely dinner, Kellachan suggests arriving two hours before the show’s start time. Tables will be cleared before the music starts and food won’t be served while the bands play, though you can still order drinks at your seat or at the bar.

“It’s a basic premise: Now that we’re older, we’re looking for a nicer experience,” Kellachan says.

What hasn’t changed, though, is My Father’s Place’s commitment to music.

“Left to my own devices, I’d book nothing but original local talent and work to develop some new superstars,” Epstein says. “But what we’re going to do is mix it up. We’ll take traditional artists and give them a chance to do something special. We’ll have local artists in to give them a chance. I’m really proud of this opening run. We have some really great bands.”

Epstein says fans of NRBQ from around the country are already booking rooms at the hotel in order to see the eclectic band on July 27. However, he acknowledges that booking bands will be harder this time without a radio partner like WLIR to promote the shows the way they did at the original My Father’s Place.

“It’s a different world,” says Denis McNamara, who was WLIR’s program director when it would regularly broadcast shows from My Father’s Place. “But these are good people putting it together … And Eppy is a star. He is always looking to find new artists and trying to build a community of music-loving people.”

McNamara says the days at the original My Father’s Place will be hard to duplicate. “There were so many remarkable memories,” he says. “We helped The Police bring in their own amplifiers. We saw Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood there.”

However, McNamara says he hopes the new My Father’s Place succeeds. “I hope they can bring back that dynamic of ‘anyone can be there and anything can happen’,” he says. “It can only be good for Long Island, for our culture and for our sanity.”

Epstein says he feels like he has to try to help.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he says. “I don’t know where the club is going to lead me … But I’m going to do what I can because I’m really unhappy with the way the music industry is going.”

The radio in Epstein’s modest office in The Roslyn Hotel’s basement is regularly tuned to BBC Radio 6 so that Epstein can hear the new music DJ Steve Lamacq is playing. He worries that many of the bands he likes will break up because they won’t be able to survive without major-label support.

“There is a lot of work to be done,” Epstein says.

He balks at the idea of a wishlist of acts for the new My Father’s Place. “I want everyone to play here,” he says, though he adds, “I would love to see The Police get back together. And I know I’m going to get that phone call one day from Keith Richards wanting to play here with his favorite blues players just for fun.”

Epstein says he believes that great concerts can save the music industry.

“I think it can all be fixed,” he says. “It’s all about finding the next great song and being able to sit and enjoy it.”


WHAT The Grand Reopening with Buster Poindexter

WHEN|WHERE 8 p.m. Friday, June 29, My Father’s Place at The Roslyn Hotel, 1221 Old Northern Blvd., Roslyn

INFO $75; 516-625-6700, myfathersplace.com

A SENSE OF ‘PLACE’

Michael “Eppy” Epstein wanted the opening shows at My Father’s Place at The Roslyn Hotel to show the range of original music the venue hopes to bring to Long Island.

LOCAL HEROES Zebra (July 20) will do an “almost acoustic” show; Barnaby Bye (Aug. 4-5) already sold out the first night; Jimmy Webb (Oct. 7) will showcase some of the classic songs he has written, including “MacArthur Park” and a string of Glen Campbell hits

’80S ROCK The Blasters (Aug. 11) will bring their “American Music” back; Glenn Tilbrook (Aug. 17) will offer Squeeze classics and his solo material; Marshall Crenshaw (Sept. 15) will satisfy “Someday, Someway”

BLUES & JAZZ Roomful of Blues (July 1) bring five decades of blues styles; John Hammond (July 13) will show his “Timeless” blues; Spyro Gyra (July 21) show off their jazz fusion “Morning Dance”; McCoy Tyner (Aug. 3) may hopefully feel some inspiration from Dix Hills’ John Coltrane

REGGAE Third World (July 12) will bring some of Epstein’s beloved Jamaican reggae. — GLENN GAMBOA

What would the Royal Wedding look like on LI

he luxury and grandeur of the Gold Coast befit a royal — say, Meghan Markle. The American-born actress — this year’s most-buzzed-about bride-to-be — will exchange vows with Prince Harry on May 19 at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.

And while Windsor is a ways away from Long Island, we couldn’t help but wonder what the celebration would look like if the pair received the royal treatment on our turf. So we asked local event planners to design a royal celebration, Long Island style.

Newsday suggested fitting venues: Oheka Castle or Old Westbury Gardens — and asked each planner to style the entire affair, from dress to cake to flowers. Here’s what they had to say:


Styled by Shoreham-based planner Deborah Minarik

The dress, the cake, the flowers

Credit: Solotu Custom Gowns

Minarik envisions Markle in a hand-sewn wedding dress created by Solotu Custom Gowns in St. James. Raffaella Galeotafiore, the creator and designer behind the St. James design house, would create a crisp, Italian silk Mikado dress covered in hundreds of tiny, three-dimensional organza flowers, each embedded with a clear crystal to sparkle under the ballroom light. The gown would have pockets and a 3-foot-long train (that’s 7 feet less than Kate Middleton’s Alexander McQueen dress, and much less than the 25-foot train on Princess Diana’s 1981 wedding gown). The look would be completed with a customized cathedral veil also covered in clear crystals.

The dress, the cake, the flowers

Credit: Dear Stacey Photography

If Markle were to wed at Old Westbury Gardens, the obvious design choice is English Garden theme. “I envision her carrying a bouquet of whimsical flowers with lots of greenery — white peonies, Vendela roses, white astilbes and seeded eucalyptus,” Minarik says. The couple’s reception centerpieces would be high and low arrangements, made up of white peonies, light pink astilbes, blue thistle (which have a distinctive snowflake-shaped bloom), pink Mondial roses (ideal for romantic events), assorted eucalyptus and British ivy flowers, all styled by Marion Terwilliger, owner of Something Blue Floral Events in Sayville.

The dress, the cake, the flowers

Credit: Events Capture

Minarik favors an over-the-top, six-tier wedding cake from Leanne’s Specialty Cakes in Stony Brook. It would be decorated decadently with hundreds of handmade sugar roses, white fondant with gold detailing and leaves dusted in gold. To satisfy the appetites of the couple’s many guests, the layers would vary from vanilla with caramel buttercream and salted caramel to vanilla with chocolate ganache and raspberry jam. And, in true New York fashion, there would be a sheet of vanilla cake with cannoli filling.


Styled by Khadejah Bhutta, of Events by Khadejah in East Meadow

The dress, the cake, the flowers

Credit: Galia Lahav

Bhutta fancies the Corina, a long-sleeved princess ballgown from Galia Lahav’s Royal Collection. It is made of silk, satin tulle and French Chantilly lace and has a tiny sweetheart corset and delicate appliques adorning the train of its voluminous skirt. The gown is decorated with clear crystals.

The dress, the cake, the flowers

Credit: Handout

When she thinks of Markle, orchids and peonies come to mind. She’d incorporate both in the flowers and cake. The bouquet would, of course, be cascading, Bhutta says, and created by Stylish Events NY in Hicksville. The centerpieces would be a mix of tall and low floral arrangements. “I imagine Meghan to be simple and classy, but still wanting a beautiful affair,” Bhutta says.

The dress, the cake, the flowers

Credit: Khadejah Bhutta

Bhutta gives the nod to an extravagant, multi-tiered creation from The Sweet Peace in Lynbrook.


Celebrity event planner Michael Russo, who designed the nuptials of Kevin and Danielle Jonas, as well as Joey Fatone and Kelly Baldwin. Both couples wed at Oheka Castle.

The dress, the cake, the flowers

Credit: Michael Russo

There’s got to be some sparkle for Markle, Russo says. He sees her in an “ultrachic gown” with a touch of glam such as the Wings of Desire sleeveless wedding dress with a ruched bodice from the Reem Acra spring 2019 wedding collection. It can be found at The Wedding Salon of Manhasset.

The dress, the cake, the flowers

Credit: Handout

“I would think the couple would select flowers that are pretty simplistic, clean and elegant,” Russo says of the arrangements he’d have made by Pedestals Floral Decorators in Garden City Park. “Like garden roses and hydrangeas with a touch of natural greenery.” Russo says he sees candelabras at the reception with a modern/younger twist: chunkier pillar candles instead of tapers.

The dress, the cake, the flowers

Credit: Handout

A five-tier cake with a clean and modern design, natural greenery, fresh flowers and a touch of golden accents. For an Oheka couple, this cake would be made by the castle’s in-house pastry chef, Daniel Andreotti — or at The Sweet Duchess bakery in East Meadow.

NYCurious: Answers to your burning questions

Intro here. You have questions, we have answers. Intro here. You have questions, we have answers.Intro here. You have questions, we have answers.Intro here. You have questions, we have answers.

How does the affordable housing lottery work?

How does the affordable housing lottery work?

While competive, the application process is straightforward.

Is the IDNYC card worthwhile?

Is the IDNYC card worthwhile?

Yes to free memberships, no to valid ID for beer.

How do we get our water?

How do we get our water?

Behind each drop of water is quite a journey.

How to score Broadway tickets for less

How to score Broadway tickets for less

You can win your way into a show for as little as $10 per seat.

Who's responsible for shoveling snow?

Who's responsible for shoveling snow?

The city's regulations apply to tenants and owners.

Recycling ... how/what/where?

Recycling ... how/what/where?

Yes to that plastic toy, no to that Capri Sun container.

How do I become a Rockette?

How do I become a Rockette?

If you can do 300 kicks in 90 minutes, you’re on your way.

Why can't we go up the Statue of Liberty's torch?

Why can't we go up the Statue of Liberty's torch?

The reason dates to WWI.

Comedians Esther Povitsky and Benji Aflalo give their best dating advice

If Esther Povitsky and Benji Aflalo want you to take anything away from their show it’s this — their relationship is strictly platonic and, yes, they like it better that way.

The two comedians behind Freeform’s new series “Alone Together” portray characters not unlike themselves. They’re blunt, millennial BFFs who prefer kicking back on the couch with a personal pizza to putting any real effort into their love lives.

“The relationship [you see on screen] is real and it’s the truth,” Povitsky says. “For some reason, we’re so obsessed as a culture with the will they/won’t they, but why not give the opposite of that a chance and let a man and a woman do a buddy comedy together? There’s so many stories to be told between a man and woman that have nothing to do with sex or romance.” Aflalo agrees, adding: “Young people don’t really get married as much either, so why not explore that friendship dynamic?”

Several episodes in the first season — including the third episode’s fertility plot where Benji thinks he’s unable to have children — are based on the duo’s real-life friendship. They met nearly nine years ago at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles where they were both performing stand-up. The secret to keeping someone around for nine years? “Have no one else,” they both agree.

They wrote the script for their Lonely Island-produced show two years ago and pushed it out on Vimeo, where it lived until being picked up by the Freeform network. “Alone Together” has already been renewed for a second season.

We asked these friendship experts to share their best dating advice. Here’s what they said.

On a first date, who should pay?

Benji Aflalo Benji:

“The guy should always pay. It costs a lot of money to be a woman, to get mani-pedis all the time. I know there’s that whole ‘men and women are equal’ thing but I think men should pay — but that doesn’t mean they’re entitled to anything in return.”

Esther Povitsky Esther:

“Men and women are equal. I think the guy should pay because it’s a romantic gesture and also because I’m not a guy.”

Benji Aflalo Benji:

“Esther, you just don’t want to pay for anything.”

Sit on same side or across the booth?

Benji Aflalo Benji:

“Same side is good. It also opens you up to look at people better looking than the one you’re with.”

Esther Povitsky Esther:

“You asked her on a date, you a–hole.”

Benji Aflalo Benji:

“Ok, well I just don’t like facing the bathroom when I’m at a restaurant.”

Play it cool or show your interest?

Benji Aflalo Benji:

“Play it cool. If you show you’re interested, now you’re competing with people who have social skills. If you just lean out you might seem mysterious.”

Esther Povitsky Esther:

“Show you’re interested! If you play it cool, I’m out. I’m not playing games.”

Benji Aflalo Benji:

“What if they’re playing it cool but they still paid for your dinner?”

Esther Povitsky Esther:

“NO! I’m still insecure. Engage and show interest.”

Meet online or in person? Dating profile red flags?

Benji Aflalo Benji:

“Online. And nothing’s a red flag. Except if a girl has height stuff, like ‘I’m 5’10.’ Then she’s too tall for me and I know she’ll be throwing her height in my face. Or, ‘I got my own money I don’t need yours,’ that’s aggressive.”

Esther Povitsky Esther:

“Everything. I’m not an online dater.”

Battle of the Bands entry form

Newsday’s Battle of the Bands Contest Entry 2017

Is your band ready for a battle?

Newsday is looking for the greatest band rocking Long Island, across all genres from country to metal. To get in on the competition, enter your band below before 11:59 p.m. New York time on July 11, 2017.

The following week, the contest will open for reader voting on Newsday.com — so be sure to share with your fans and encourage them to vote! A panel of music industry judges will then choose a contest winner from the Top 10 bands with the most reader votes.

The 2017 Battle of the Bands Contest champion will win an opening act slot at The Paramount in Huntington, plus a feature story by Newsday’s music critic in Newsday and on Newsday.com, plus major bragging rights as Long Island’s best band. Enter now for your shot at fame!

Fill out the Battle of the bands form here.