Lou Nasti was known as the Geppetto of Brooklyn for his glasses, his bushy gray mustache and, above all, his preternatural ability to grant sentience to toys. Using his robotics expertise, he animated legions of puppets and dolls for holiday displays around the world.
His animatronics have been famous in the Dyker Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, where tourists flock to see lawns filled with extravagant Christmas decorations. Some families in the area spend thousands of dollars on their displays.
Mr. Nasti staged a Toyland display at one mansion in Dyker Heights for more than 30 years. The home, owned by Alfred Polizzotto, a lawyer, and his wife, Florence, became a regular stop for sightseers: It featured spinning carousels, toy soldiers atop mechanical horses and a singing,fef777 talking Santa two stories high. Reindeer on the house’s second level presided over the illuminated yard below.
“He was a master at what he did, and yet he was like a little kid,” said Tony Muia, the owner of A Slice of Brooklyn Bus Tours, which offers a Christmas tour of Dyker Heights. “You could see that in everything he created; there was an awe to it.”
In a star system 508 light-years from Earth, the researchers found conditions that support an alternative “top down” approach to planet formation, in which the fertile material circling a young star rapidly collapses into a planet. The mechanism, known as gravitational instability, could explain the existence of mysterious, massive worlds known to follow wide orbits around relatively young stars.
The Toyland setup took three days of strenuous manual labor to install. For Mr. Nasti and his team, it was yet another herculean effort in a career saturated with them.
ImageMr. Nasti at the installation of an enormous Santa at the Polizzotto family’s mansion in Dyker Heights in 2017.Credit...Johnny Milano for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.
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