LP MEDIA
Just keep spinning.
Bryant Park’s iconic carousel is back up and running two days after a fire tore through a nearby stall at the green space’s famed holiday market and shuttered several kiosks until further notice, workers told The Post on Sunday.
A 19-year-old carousel worker who only gave the initials KM estimated that the carousel ride, located steps away from where Friday’s fire erupted, lost thousands of dollars on the day of the blaze when it had to be shut down.
The park attraction was back up and spinning the next day.
“We had to close for the day,” KM said. “I was coming into work that day, but then before I left my house, I got a message from my boss, and they were like, ‘Hey, there’s a fire. So you can’t come in to work today.’ ”
Trinity Thompson, a stall worker at nearby Babka Bailout, said the fire clean-up effort “was just really fast.
“The fire department came [and] blew it out. And then I think two, three hours later, it was just cleaned up in the parking lot. It’s business as usual,” said Thompson, 24.
The employee she wasn’t working when the fire broke out about 9:20 a.m. She said the blaze didn’t have a big impact on Babka Bailout, which is near the Seapark seafood kiosk where the fire originated.
The raging fire at a stall for Seapark – which offers lobster rolls and seafood fries – was “accidental, caused by cooking oil coming in contact with combustibles,” the FDNY said.
The blaze appeared to have started as a trash fire, sources told The Post, and then spread to the 6-foot-by-40-foot kiosk. The fire was placed under control by around 10 a.m., officials said later Friday.
“There was slight damage to the adjacent kiosk, and there was some heat impingement on the roof of the ice-skating rink behind the kiosk on fire,” FDNY Chief of Battalion 9, Joe Castellano, told reporters at the time. “No real fire spread, just some flame impingement, and you see a little browning of the white roof structure.”
Despite the swift recovery effort, not all businesses seemed to get back up on their feet as quickly as others.
Seapark is one of four kiosks that remain closed until further notice, according to the vendor’s social media pages.
Kiosks for Down the Chimney, Criollas and 4×4 Burger were also shuttered fornow, Seapark said. The holiday market is due to close its doors Jan. 5.
“My parents and I have worked so hard to keep this business going for the last few years, and we are now going to endure an extremely heavy lost [sic],” Seapark founders’ son Daniel Xie wrote in a GoFundMe post for the eatery, which amassed nearly half of its $9,000 goal in 48 hours.
While most vendors told The Post their business hadn’t been affected by the blaze – and unaffected stalls were able to open starting later in the day Friday – KM reported the carousel’s workers weren’t paid for the day off.
“I’m not too worried about the carousel making money, but … I did not get paid for not coming in that day,” KM said.
“It was kind of a bummer, but, you know, s–t happens,” he said. “But still, that kind of sucks, especially during the holidays – [not] being able to help out my family” with the extra cash.