Years ago I saw a documentary on Coney Island which begins by showing the haunted roller coaster as it appeared back in 1995 when my mother and I visited there - amidst a blanket of fog, scrawled with graffiti. It represented, metaphorically, the shadow of evil, and the social decay that Coney Island came to represent. The five mile stretch on the coast of Brooklyn, just nine miles from Manhattan, was the home to three great parks (Steeplechase, Luna Park and Dreamland) which were built in the late 1800's and early 1900's... all of which were destroyed by fire (although Steeplechase was rebuilt soon after)... thus, the name, "The City of Fire." The great, but crooked, builder, McKane, had ruled the island in the late 1800's; but he was not a good man and landed in Sing Sing for election fraud, misuse of public funds and other charges.
Ministers and reverends spoke of the violence, lewd sex, gambling and prostitution that went on there, "victims they make drunken and rob." There were actually three chief men who created the parks and all of them were shady characters who competitively argued amongst each other, always trying to outdo one another. One of them died and another ended up bankrupt. They never really reveal the details of what went on there; but even in 1995, there was an unmistakable dark presence in the remains where the sordid, shoddy amusement shacks still ran full blast, where the hiss and boom of the breakers and crumbling paste board dominated the scene. The Wonder Wheel still stood in Astroland. Historians, nonetheless, say we should always consider Coney Island to be "forever an opportunity, a frontier..." not a place to rebuild what once was. [more...]
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