Amanda Deutch is a native New Yorker whose mother and grandparents lived in Coney Island. She has worked with the Coney Island History Project since 2008 and is also a teaching artist and poet. Amanda is the author of four poetry chapbooks and her poems have been published widely in journals. In 2009, she founded Parachute Literary Arts, which utilizes poetry as a catalyst for community engagement and youth empowerment. Her passions include impressing bystanders with her Skee-Ball skills and riding the Wonder Wheel.
Interviews
Memories of riding the Steeplechase Horses, Human Roulette Wheel and Parachute Jump 70 years ago
Born and raised in Astoria, Queens, Chris Cuomo, 78, shares memories of going to Steeplechase Park in the late 1940's and early '50s. "Every summer, my mom would take us and half the neighborhood down on the train to Coney Island, and she'd pack a...
President of the Coney Island Polar Bear Club for the past 12 years and a member since the 1980s
Dennis Thomas, the president of the Coney Island Polar Bear Club for the past 12 years, shares memories of his first swim with the club - "That's crazy, I want to do it!"- and feeling drawn to the desolate yet haunting atmosphere of Coney Island in...
Memories of working at Coney Island's pony track as a boy in the 1940s for "no pay, just tips"
Born in Flatbush, Steve Burke shares boyhood memories of working at Coney Island's pony track, where the Aquarium is now, in the 1940s. As a boy of 10 and 11 he worked two summers for "no pay, just tips" and the fun of riding the horses, he says. ...
Memories of working at Astroland's Neptune Diving Bells in the summer of 1964
Patrick Phillips recalls the summer of 1964, when he was a college student from Florida spending his summer working at Astroland's Neptune Diving Bells for his father's friend, Robert Coffey. He describes his job maintaining the complicated...
Boyhood memories of Ocean Tide Baths and the B&B Carousell's Lincoln horse
"Anyone who knows me fairly well has been to Coney Island with me," says Arthur Nintzel, who grew up in Brooklyn on East 37th Street at Nostrand and Flatbush Avenues. On a visit back to Coney Island with his daughter, Arthur Nintzel shared boyhood...
Growing up on West 16th Street between Mermaid and Neptune in a cold water flat in the 1940s and '50s
Carmela recalls growing up in Coney Island on West 16th Street between Mermaid and Neptune Avenues in a cold water flat with a coal belly stove and an ice box. She lived there until 1959, when she got married and moved to her husband's neighborhood...
Memories of growing up on Brighton First Court and a summer job renting beach chairs in Coney Island
Bill Zeidenberg grew up in the 1950s and 1960s at 212 Brighton First Court, just east of Ocean Parkway, the dividing line of Coney Island and Brighton Beach. He shares vivid memories of his summer job working for the M. & C. Chair Operating...
Environmental justice organizer who was born in Coney Island and raised here in the 1960s and '70s
Born in Coney Island in 1963, Karen Dawn Blondel shares memories of the 1960's, '70s and '80s. Family members, including both sets of grandparents, aunts, and cousins lived in the community in bungalows, apartments, and public housing, and after her...
Memories of riding the Parachute Jump and Steeplechase horse race ride in the 1950s
Marian Carbone and Anna Jackson, twin sisters who grew up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, share their memories of 1950's Coney Island. "It didn't cost much. It was a nice day out. What was it? 15 cents on the train," says Marian. "Coney Island was our...
Got a tattoo of the Astroland Rocket in honor of her first date in Coney Island
Sarah Schneider, who visited the Coney Island History Project in 2017, shares her story of getting a tattoo of the Astroland Rocket in honor of her first date in Coney Island.