A portrait of the pioneering entrepreneur who designed and built Luna Park - which in 1903 transformed Coney Island into a respectable venue for middle-class recreation - and created the Hippodrome, the world's largest theater when it opened in 1905, filling it with lavish spectacles at affordable ticket prices. The author also explores the development of the idea of adult amusements in America during Thompson's day, and ours.

"Roller Coaster Kids; Tales of 1960's Coney Island" is a Brooklyn artist's coming of age memoir that chronicles the author's many wild experiences while growing up in the unique Brooklyn, New York neighborhood of Coney Island during the tumultuous decade of the 1960's. One outrageous Coney little rascal story follows another, from almost being emasculated in a friendly chicken fight, to how his 1st. grade classmate's friendship informed his views about the ongoing civil rights movement, to almost being kidnapped by a strange, very lazy old lady, to exploring an old Sea Gate mansion about to be demolished by a giant bulldozer. "Roller Coaster Kids, Tales of 1960's" reads like a Brooklyn, New York Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn adventure. By 1960, only one grand amusement park remained in Coney Island, George C. Tilyou's Steeplechase Park. Who better to tell this classic Brooklyn, Coney Island story than the author, who is very likely the last little rascal to go on a ride in the old Steeplechase Park before it was demolished. If you love Brooklyn, New York or just love stories about growing up in America, or you have a connection to the historic decade of the 1960's, and you enjoy zany, crazy wild rides.... then this book is for you. It's all about Brooklyn, the sights and smells, even the beloved rooftop pigeon coops and the whirring acrobatic flocks taking to the sky above Coney Island. FORGETTABOUTIT!

More than simply an escape from New York's sweltering summer streets, the strip of Brooklyn's south shore known as Coney Island embodied a new American attitude toward entertainment. Here, you'll experience the decadent delights of this magical land of ritzy hotels and penny arcades, where dance pavilions and freak shows shared space with sizzling burlesque and cooling ocean breezes. You'll meet George Tilyou, whose Steeplechase Park featured the Blowhole Theater, the Insanitarium and the Human Pool Table, and Nathan Handwerker, whose Nathan's Famous hot dogs became synonymous with summertime food. You'll ride the legendary Cyclone roller coaster and stroll through Dreamland and Luna Park, where generations of New Yorkers met and mingled in a place that came to define American fun.

It ought to be just a game, but basketball on the playgrounds of Coney Island is much more than that -- for many young men it represents their only hope of escape from a life of crime, poverty, and despair. In The Last Shot, Darcy Frey chronicles the aspirations of four of the neighborhood's most promising players. What they have going for them is athletic talent, grace, and years of dedication. But working against them are woefully inadequate schooling, family circumstances that are often desperate, and the slick, brutal world of college athletic recruitment. Incisively and compassionately written, The Last Shot introduces us to unforgettable characters and takes us into their world with an intimacy seldom seen in contemporary journalism. The result is a startling and poignant expose of inner-city life and the big business of college basketball.

Twenty-nine poems from the 1950's.

A shy little mermaid comes out of her shell to march with all the other sea creatures at the Coney Island Mermaid Parade.

Coney Island is a unique New York City neighborhood and a place of exciting innovation, where the roller coaster and the hot dog were introduced to the world, the glow of a million bare lightbulbs at Luna Park dazzled early visitors, and rocket rides at Astroland fueled intergalactic fantasies. Coney Island served as the pressure valve for New York, drawing millions to its famous beach on sweltering weekends. Astroland Park, created at the dawn of the space age, was the vision of Dewey and Jerome Albert. They transformed the 3-acre Feltman's Restaurant property, one of Coney Island's oldest attractions, into a futuristic amusement park that would anchor the amusement zone for the next half century. The park's ambitious opening in 1962 mirrored the wide-eyed optimism of the early 1960s and helped Coney Island survive the closure of the venerable Steeplechase Park.