Lou Nasti

Brooklynite Lou Nasti, the owner of Mechanical Displays in Flatbush, refers to himself as an "artistic mechanical engineer." He has designed, manufactured and installed one-of-a-kind, custom animated characters and displays both locally and around the world for over 40 years.  Among his specialities are amusement park dark ride and haunted attractions. In this interview, Nasti recalls redoing all of "the tricks" in Astroland Park's Dante's Inferno in the 1990s. Among his creations was the seven-foot-tall gorilla now at home in front of Deno's Wonder Wheel Park's Spook-A-Rama. Nasti talks about various tricks and visual displays that he has created over the years, why the last trick in a dark ride is the most important, and how he first got into this business after a photo of him as a teen and the robot he'd built appeared on the front page of the New York Times.