Visit to Yesteryear

Coney Island: What I was expecting

The reality: July 24, 2007

The Dutch named it Conyne Eylandt, or "Rabbit Island," because the place was overrun with rabbits. The English, with their usual acute sensitivity for foreign languages, thought those words sounded like "Coney Island," and there you are. I was expecting a beach overrun by rabbit-like human hordes, as in the top photo above, but the reality -- even on a hot, beautiful day in July -- was something quieter and in some ways sadder.

Two bucks gets you a one-hour express ride on the MTA's "N" train from Times Square to Coney Island, on the south coast of Brooklyn. I stepped out of the station, not knowing quite what to expect, and found before me a long sandy beach with a rotting wooden boardwalk, a flat Atlantic Ocean with very little surf, a tacky carny atmosphere, and a decaying amusement area called Astroland.

Coney Island also has a pier jutting out into the Atlantic. Believe me, that is the only resemblance Coney Island bears to the beach at Santa Monica.

I couldn't actually bring myself to enter Astroland, but I more or less circum-navigated it. It's located in a strategic area, near the subway terminal. It features a rather interesting and complex ferris wheel ("the Wonder Wheel"), and it boasts of the Cyclone, which was built in 1927 and is one of the nation's oldest surviving wooden roller coasters. A separate landmark, a few hundred yards to the west, is the 271-foot high Parachute Jump, the first such ride ever built, constructed for the New York World's Fair in 1939.

Astroland is to be razed to the ground at the end of the summer. The Cyclone will be reduced to kindling. The Parachute Jump will continue to be maintained as a landmark -- "Coney Island's Eiffel Tower" -- but has not been operated as a ride for many years.

In its heyday, before World War II, Coney Island boasted three major amusement parks: Luna Park, Dreamland, and Steeplechase Park. Luna Park closed in 1946, after a series of fires. Steeplechase Park, the last of the big three, threw in the towel in 1964 -- apparently in response to competition from Disneyland and similar modern theme parks, together with some minor 1960's gang activities in the area that scared away visitors. Across the street from Steeplechase Park was a monster roller coaster called The Thunderbolt, which continued to operate until 1983. (The Thunderbolt was actually built over and around a house, a situation made famous in Woody Allen's movie, Annie Hall.) The Thunderbolt was finally demolished in 2000.

Present day Astroland was a smaller amusement area that was revived and enlarged in later years, after the big three had closed. When it shuts down this year, to be replaced by a hotel, the amusement ride tradition of Coney Island will come to an end. What will be left are carnival-type attractions, a few isolated rides such as a carousel and bumper cars, a long boardwalk, and a decent if unexciting sandy beach.

You'll still be able to buy an original Nathan's Coney Island Hot Dog ("Home of the International Hot Dog Eating Contest" -- male world record: 66). And the Cyclone's ghost will live on as the guiding spirit of the "Brooklyn Cyclones," a single-A farm club for the Mets, that plays on the site of the old Steeplechase Park.

And so it goes. The ride back to Times Square seemed to pass quickly as I sat, lost in thought, staring out the window.