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Summary: Is there still a Coney Island? Once renowned as a funspot, Coney Island has been largely forgotten. Does it still exist? What has survived of the place? And what was it like? In this book CONEY ISLAND, Professor Solomon takes us there to find out.
Roaming about, he interviews old-timers searches for antiquities explores what is left of the amusement area. (Among his finds: a man who remembers seeing the first human cannonball, shot into the air at Coney Island; the remains of Steeplechase Park; and a ride the Wonder Wheel that began as a perpetual-motion machine.) He also provides a history of Coney Island from its Canarsie Indian days, to its era as a lawless, Tijuana-style resort, to the rise and fall of its amusement parks. |
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Excerpt:
My first visit to Coney Island was a disappointment. For we had arrived to find most of the rides, booths, and stands closed.
I was thirteen at the time, and a tourist in New York City. The trip was a bar mitzvah gift from my grandmother, who was accompanying me (along with my brother, whom I had managed to squeeze in on the gift). Before leaving home, I had determined which sights I wanted to see; and heading my list had been Times Square, the subway, and Coney Island. Times Square I intended to film (at night, for the neon signs) with a movie camera borrowed from my father. The subway I wanted simply to ride. As for Coney Island, was it not the most renowned of amusement parks? And were not such parks the crowning achievement of Western Civilization—the proper end of technological progress? The place had to be checked out. |
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Author biography: An “amateur professor” with a degree in English from Harvard, Professor Solomon is a findologist—an expert at finding lost objects. As such, he has appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” National Public Radio’s “What Do You Know?” and other shows. He was recently seen in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary “Lost and Found.”
His Twelve Principles were featured by Family Circle magazine as their “Great Idea” of the month.
Solomon is the author of How to Find Lost Objects, published by Penguin Books. His other publications include Japan in a Nutshell, Coney Island, How to Make the Most of a Flying Saucer Experience and The Book of King Solomon.
His method for finding lost objects has been compared with that of Sherlock Holmes and Lord Peter Wimsey. See chapter 4 of Debugging by Thinking: A Multidisciplinary Approach by Robert Charles Metzger. |
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