To Coney Island’s Candy Man, End Is Bitter, Not Sweet

John Dorman is as much a Coney Island landmark as the boardwalk and the Ferris wheel.

For 41 years, this gray-haired man dressed in a perpetually stained white jacket has dispensed chocolate fudge, candy apples, saltwater taffy, cotton candy and other homemade treats from a small shop at the base of one of Brooklyn’s most decrepit and foul-smelling subway stations. Now, the sweet saga of Philip’s Candy Store may be coming to a bitter end.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the city’s subways, has issued Dorman an eviction notice, saying his space is targeted for demolition during renovation of the Coney Island station.

“I don’t want to fight with them--they’re bigger than I am--but I don’t want to be thrown out on the street either,” said Dorman, 58, surrounded by blackened copper pots pungent with chocolate and jelly residues. “We’ve stuck it out through the bad years. We know everyone in Coney Island. To leave here, we’d lose all our friends.”

What particularly rankles Dorman, his neighbors who do business beneath the screech and rumble of the elevated B, D, F and N trains and many of their customers is that the MTA does not know what it wants to do with the decaying, 68-year-old station. The agency plans a $30,000 study amid rumors that it is seeking an upscale mix comparable to Manhattan’s South Street Seaport or Baltimore’s Harborplace.

“We’re going to be hiring a consultant to come on board and examine the area and what we might do with it, the type of business that might go into that retail space,” MTA spokesman Tito Davila said. With a new, hard-nosed attitude toward concessions, the agency has shut down dozens of lunch counters, flower shops and newsstands.

The MTA says Dorman probably can lease new space in the renovated station, but the candy man is not buying. “First they said get out,” said Dorman, who has hired a lawyer. “Now they say someday, over the rainbow, maybe you’ll have a chance to come back in.”

Describing the ramshackle row of shops on Surf Avenue as “retail space” may be stretching things a bit. The old storefronts are clustered around a long, dark, grimy alley leading to the subway entrance, which smells of urine. The station has not been painted in 15 years.

The neighborhood, a noisy collection of roller coasters, pinball rooms and flea markets, is a haven for drug addicts and derelicts. Nathan’s huge hot-dog emporium remains a big draw, while two beachfront hotels, sad relics of Coney Island’s heyday, now house welfare families.

At night, the 24-hour Philip’s Candy Store is a well-lit oasis for police officers, transit workers and people waiting for the bus.

In the rear of the station, the G&P; luncheonette, where 95 cents buys a fried-egg sandwich, is the spitting image of the old “cheeseburger, cheeseburger” diner on “Saturday Night Live.” During his 12 years there, owner Mike Rigopoulis said, all the MTA did for the station was install a few new lights.

When Brooklyn subway lines were extended to the borough’s southern tip in 1920, Coney Island beaches suddenly were a nickel ride away for most New Yorkers. Dorman came here as a summer worker in 1947, commuting by ferry from Staten Island.

Philip’s, which uses 100 pounds of chocolate a week, is a throwback to that era. Dorman makes most of the candy by hand in a small, cluttered room.

Many regulars are upset about the impending shutdown. “I think it’s terrible,” a policeman said. “They’re the only people around here who make good coffee.”

Dorman said he believes that Coney Island is poised for a comeback as New York’s premier working-class resort. “Not everyone can afford to go to Disney World,” he said. But he grows wistful at the thought that he might not be part of the resurgence.

“Sometimes, it’s like a funeral parlor around here,” Dorman said. “People grew up with this place.”