Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Coney Island
The city of the departed Dodgers, of Henry Ward Beecher, Walt Whitman, and Coney Island, is ready for its next act as a world-class tourist destination.
Nathan Ward says in his essay on Brooklyn in this issue that one in seven American families has its roots in that borough’s soil.
“Popular culture” is not the opposite of or the alternative to something called “high culture.” It is not degraded, debased, simple, or undisciplined. Nor is it defined primarily by its mass appeal or commercial values.
The monarch of all amusement devices is beautiful to look at and exhilarating to ride. Even so, roller coasters nearly died out in America before recent events brought them surging back.
Thank God for failed screenplays and the ideas they set free.
Saltair, the stately pleasure dome that used to rise out of the waters of Great Salt Lake, was the Coney Island of the West.
Today the place is one great migraine headache of noise and neon, and it takes a very observant visitor indeed to pick out the few pathetic remnants of the old glory: a scrap of decorative wrought iron on top of a building, a carved wooden allegory in the cla
On the theory that the greatest show is people, George Tilyou turned a rich man’s resort into a playground for the masses
On every warm summer week end on Coney Island a great swarm of people may be found heading for a slow-moving line that leads always to the same entertainment device.
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