17 Comments

Such a fun post about Coney Island, Pat, though the Fred Trump part turned my stomach. I do love a good hotdog, especially Nathan’s! So very sorry about losing your darling Farrow!

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Love Coney and Nathan’s and the Weegee photo is such an iconic shot. Thanks for this, Pat. I’m so sorry to hear about your Farrow.

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All three are national treasures! Thanks Jolene. He loved Coney Island too

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It sounds wonderful and fun and a wee bit crazy! Plus a mermaid parade - count me in! Oddly, just last week while researching a different story, I came across an article in the Boston Evening Transcript, dated May 19, 1902, suggesting that Coney Island was negotiating to acquired the Chicago World Fair Ferris wheel at an estimated cost of $150 K. I did a little googling and it looks like that never happened, right?

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Never heard that but I guess it didn't. But steeplechase park did purchase the parachute jump from the 1939 worlds fair and it's still there

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Great bit of history. It's been years since I've visited Coney Island. A mermaid? Tell us more. So sorry about Farrow.

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The yearly visit of the sideshow is coming up if you want to travel on over! It just came into my head that I wanted to be one. My poor husband was at a lost for words as I made the float and sewed tails for all of us. He's really put up with a lot! Thank you about Farrow. It was the biggest thing that happened to us this week so it insisted on getting in there

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Jul 2Liked by Pat Willard

Love this article however really wanted to send ❤️ for Farrow. No greater love.

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Thank you for both. He was the greatest spooner!

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Jul 2Liked by Pat Willard

Seeing Fred Trump at Coney Island with his hot babe demolition team that he would leave in acres of rubble is like finding a missing piece to the jigsaw puzzle that we now call 'the former president'.

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Doesn't it? Really, that was the tip.

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I have actually never been to Coney Island, Pat, but I treasure it as one of the few places in all of the New York area that Robert Moses didn't get to spoil for the rest of us. Am I right?

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Its geography saved about 2 miles of it from beach inland. Then he plowed the belt parkway right through along the bay area and destroying a good part of some great historically diverse neighborhoods like East NY. The man was a menace

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He was that indeed. I am reading The Power Broker right now. Why? Because. I do admire Robert Caro's writing but he seriously needed an editor on this one. A thousand pages devoted to the arrogance of Moses? I am only continuing (I'm about 60% through it) because I relish the idea of a comeuppance in the end.

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I just read your message to my husband who said to tell you when he was assigned it in his graduate urban history class he read it in one week but had to stop 200 pages from the ending feeling like he gave enough of his life to the 2 men. Don't get him started on how much Caro's LBJ needed editing!

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So glad he agrees with me. So I beat on, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

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An admirable endeavor, indeed

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