Beach business owners — already crippled by this summer’s dreary weather — now have Hurricane Bill to blame for a final, crushing financial blow.
“We’re sunk,” said Carol Albert, operator of Coney Island’s Cyclone roller coaster, as she found out that huge waves created by the storm had closed the beach. “Traditionally, the last two weeks of August are very strong, but you have to learn to weather the weather.”
Bill’s pummeling comes just three weeks before the end of the swimming season — one that has already been washed out by a rainy June and a cool July.
“It’s been a really, really rough season,” said Anthony Berlingieri, who runs Beer Island, a Coney beer garden.
“Remember the movie ‘The Perfect Storm’? Everything collided at once. Consider the recession we’re in, the rainiest June in history, the coldest July — and now this hurricane.
“Everything is happening at the wrong time.”
Dennis Bourzeris, co-owner of Dino’s Wonder Wheel amusement park, called 2009 one of the worst seasons he’s seen in 25 years. With Coney closed yesterday, he watched 75 percent of his daily business drain away.
“June was bad, but the last two weeks had been excellent,” Bourzeris said. “The summer isn’t over yet. All we can do is hope.”
On Rockaway Beach, Steven Stathis, who owns a surf shop called Boarders, seemed confident that expert surfers would be willing to defy any ban on getting in the water.
“With this hurricane, I’ll get very good surfers needing gear to cope with the waves,” he said, “but the rental business will be down.
“I won’t be renting boards, because it’s too dangerous for the average person to go out. They’re predicting 12-foot waves. A beginner could get killed.”
But Bobby Vaughn, 34, who runs the neighboring shop FTW Surf, said even a sunny weekend would have done little to recoup losses.
“The weather’s been so bad all summer that, even if it was great this weekend, I don’t think it would make that much difference,” he said.
“One day, it’s been summer; the next it’s raining. It’s been a strange summer, and it’s hard to make a living in weather like that.”
John Thomas, owner of the Coney bar Cha Cha’s, noted that the beach industry relies on weekends — and that even one washout makes a huge dent on the takings.
“In this business, it’s impossible to make up for a bad weekend,” he said.
“This year, there have been a lot of them.”