Arcade game repairman
Louis Beard grew up in Brooklyn and visited Coney Island with friends as a teenager in the 1980's. He joined the Army right out of high school and worked in immigration where he learned that new citizens had more questions about Coney Island...
Content type: Oral History Item
Business Owner and Founder of the Coney Island Sports Foundation
The owner of three businesses on Mermaid Avenue, Edwin Cosme discusses the uncertain future of Coney Island. He is committed to staying in his hometown and promoting the development of more amusements and fewer condominium projects. He describes...
Content type: Oral History Item
Ran penny arcades in Coney Island for over 20 years
Stanley relates a fifty-year history of penny arcades in Coney Island. He and his brother ran a few of them, including Playland, and knew the locations and owners of many others.
Content type: Oral History Item
Family owned the Shamrock Irish House and Eldorado Arcade
Sheila and her family owned and operated the largest arcade in Coney Island, the Eldorado. Her father, his two brothers and three sisters opened The Shamrock Irish House, a restaurant/cabaret/open-air bar, in the early 1940's, and her family...
Content type: Oral History Item
Former employee of Astella Development Corporation
Akosva Albritton shares her experiences in Coney Island when she was an employee at Astella Development Corporation in the mid to late 1980s. In this candid interview, Akosva describes Coney's three distinct, racially divided neighborhoods of...
Content type: Oral History Item
Artist and Champion Break-Dancer
Coney Island artist and champion break-dancer Daniel Blake (aka Africasso) tells true-life tales of Coney Island's real "Warriors," the gangs that roamed the amusement parks in the 70's and 80's.
Content type: Oral History Item
Began his career as a sign painter in Coney Island
John Rea is currently an advertising professional and adjunct professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York, but he began his career as a young teenager working for his father, also John Rea, in the Peluso Machine and Iron Works shop in Coney...
Content type: Oral History Item
The King of Jones Walk
Wally Roberts has been operating amusements in Coney Island since the 1940’s. He rented space in the Feltman’s Building for storage and for a candy shop that sold salt water taffy, popcorn, and jelly apples. He remembers Feltman’s hotdogs, the first...
Content type: Oral History Item
Owner of Williams Candy and past owner of Fascination Arcade
Peter Agrapides owns and operates the Williams Candy shop next door to Nathans. He began working in Coney Island in 1949 and also owned the Fascination game arcade on Surf Avenue next to the old Loew's (Shore) Theater.
Content type: Oral History Item
Model Maker and Music Producer
Roy grew up in Coney Island and, among many other ventures, makes exquisitely detailed scale models of rides like the Himalaya, at which he also worked when he was a child. He tried to get a job at Astroland when he was too young but, eventually,...
Content type: Oral History Item