You are currently browsing the stories about the Coney Island neighborhood

Lost in Coney Island

by 03/01/2020
Neighborhood: Coney Island, East New York

  Each summer it was a requirement that my brothers and I attend summer school. We could not be idle. We must all do something to further our education. My mother, Dot, laid down the law. She was formidable—not standing more than 5’4”, she wielded the power in our household. My father, though technically present, […]

What the World Can Do

by 12/02/2018
Neighborhood: Coney Island, East Village

In the summer of 1973, my younger brother and I shared a basement apartment on East 12th Street in Brooklyn off Avenue J, a nice middle-class sort of area. We had lost our parents to cancer and a stroke, ten months apart, a few years before this, when he was fourteen and I was sixteen. […]

Carlisle the Violinist

by 09/16/2018
Neighborhood: Brighton Beach, Coney Island

On the Saturday evening of Memorial Day weekend, I found myself seated at a snow-white draped table next to a card featuring my first and last name in italicized letters. The joyous occasion was the wedding of a childhood friend. It was no different from the other weddings I’ve attended, except for a violinist, who […]

If Dad Was A Doll

by 04/09/2017
Neighborhood: Coney Island

My father took me to the Coney Island Freak Show every summer growing up. My artist Dad seemed unfettered from his day job as a social worker, sketching subway riders on the hour train ride from the Lower East Side, where we lived surrounded by junkies and prostitutes wandering derelict streets. On the boardwalk, he […]

The Ancient Swirl of Time that is Always Present Over Coney Island

by 10/20/2014
Neighborhood: Coney Island

It’s a bone chilling day in winter as I park my car on a side street next to the Cyclone roller coaster. My head is spinning with all these old Brooklyn memories, and I’ve come back here now looking for signs of them, looking for pieces left behind from the sad sweep of time. Sometimes, […]

Spa Day

by 09/06/2014
Neighborhood: Coney Island

The massage was about three-quarters of the way through when Galina stopped what she was doing and disappeared, leaving me face down and naked on the table, without a word of explanation. Galina? Bafflement gave way to blessed relief that her thumbs had, for a moment, ceased bullying me into a state of relaxation. I […]

I Love You, U-Bet

by 03/26/2012
Neighborhood: Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, Coney Island, Sheepshead Bay

              When I was a young man—no bigger than this             A chocolate egg cream was not to be missed             Some U-bet’s chocolate syrup, seltzer water mixed             with milk             Stir it up into a heady fro—tasted just like milk             You scream, I steam, we all want Egg Cream.                                                                         […]

My Father’s Father’s Coney Island Costume Jewelry Shop

by 07/19/2011
Neighborhood: Coney Island

“It was 1958,” my father says, “the year my dad opened Marcelle’s Jewelry Store on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island. You should have seen this place. I wish there were pictures now, but who would have taken pictures of some shoddy storefront on Mermaid Avenue? Displayed in one window were all the pieces of costume […]

Things Inside My Head

by 09/12/2003
Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Coney Island

I. It is a popular misconception that autistics can count hundreds of matches in the blink of an eye and draw fantastic pictures. In reality, few are like this and less than one percent fall into the idiot savant category. Most are mildly to severely retarded and autistic. Some are autistic and emotionally disturbed. Some […]