All About My Favorite Place to Be on July 4th

Yes, it'll be a bit crowded but there's always room for you.

Coney Island, 1940. Photo credit: Weegee

You should come to Coney Island with me on Thursday. You may think you have heard all about it, but you probably don’t know how many times it has been knocked down hard and, against dire odds, has always gotten back up. With it’s roller coasters and freak shows, Madame Maria’s Fortune Teller Emporium, its spinning lights and questionable food, Coney Island is a mighty representive of America’s historical brand of roguish hucksterism. Sure, we’ll have to shimmy in among the crowd but Coney Island people always make room for a couple more

Consider a few notable facts about the Island’s history:

1. It was once a fashionable destination for wealthy New Yorkers who stayed in luxury hotels built along the shoreline. The most exclusive was The Oriental Hotel, erected in 1876 and demolished in 1916. By then the city had extended the subway to the beach, bringing to the beaches the city’s poor, mostly immigrants, who were only seeking a bit of fresh air.

   

   Oriental Hotel, circa 1910. Photo credit: Library of Congress.

2. Coney Island had the first roller coaster in the country, built in 1884 in a park near the shoreline. It was called the Switchback Railway with a 600 foot long track that went up and down hills at the thrilling speed of 6 mph.

3. Coney Island’s first amusement park, Steeplechase park, opened in 1897, soon joined by Luna Park in 1903, and Dreamland in1904. Constructed almost entirely of wood, all burned to the ground, rebuilt, and eventually went bankrupt as the neighborhood declined. The last to go was Steeplechase. Fred Trump, the former president’s father, bought it and the empty lots where the other parks stood in 1964 with a plan to build houses. When the city wouldn’t give him the necessary zoning changes he threw what he called a “demolition party” where participants were given bricks to smash the park’s facade. Soon afterwards, he brought in bulldozers to level the rest but abandoned the project the following year, leaving behind acres of rubble.

   

   Four bathing beauties and Fred Trump at his demolishing party, September 21, 1966. Photo credit: The Coney Island History Project.

4. Guess how many hotdogs we’ll eat over the July 4th holiday? The National Sausage and Hot Dog Council claims 150 million. The annual Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog eating contest is a major contributor. The winner of the first competition in 1972 was Jim Mullin, a recent Irish immigrant, who ate 13 hot dogs. But the all-time champion is Joey Chestnut who, over the last 16 years, has eaten a total of 1070 Nathan’s Famous hot dogs. He topped out in 2021 at 76. He is now forbidden to enter the contest because he recently began to promote Impossible Foods’ vegan hot dogs. 

   

5. I’ll leave you with my most beloved Coney Island tradition, the Mermaid Day Parade. It takes place the week before the 4th, marking the formal opening of the beaches. The great Dick Zigun, the man who inarguably has played the biggest roll in revitalizing Coney Island, inaugurated it in 1983 and today it is considered the largest art parade in the country. It survived Hurricane Sandy but the pandemic stopped it for two years. 2022’s parade was a doozy. Historical fact: I was once a mermaid in the parade, something that will be carved on my tombstone.

   

   Four mermaids (author third from left) and a seaman who thought he was king for a day!

   Cover photograph credit: Fourth of July over Coney Island, David Rosenblym, 2012.

   ---

   This story is dedicated to the memory of Farrow, the best dog in the whole wide world!

My view of Farrow when we would wake up from our naps together.

Always in my office, helping me work. It’s going to be iffy without him.