Ali Lemer is an independent audio producer, travel writer and editor based in Brooklyn; her previous work includes producing an episode on British culture for the podcast I Travel For and writing numerous guidebooks for Lonely Planet. A native New Yorker and a naturalized Australian, she is especially interested in immigrants' stories, having collected over two dozen of them from foreign-born Australian writers for the book Joyful Strains: Making Australia Home (Affirm Press, 2013), which she co-edited. Ali is a 2019 graduate of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies at Maine College of Art and also has degrees from Columbia University and the University of Chicago.
Interviews
Memories of growing up on West 29th Street and meeting her lifeguard husband on Coney Island Beach
Ellen Abrams' earliest memory is sitting in a wicker carriage and being taken for a stroll on the boardwalk by her mother and grandmother. Growing up in Coney Island in the 1940s and '50s, Ellen enjoyed birthday parties every July on the beach and ...
An actor's memories of growing up in Sea Rise apartments and a souvenir of the Wonder Wheel
Born in Brooklyn in 1988, Emmanuel Elpenord is an actor who grew up in the Sea Rise apartments in Coney Island's West End. He describes the unique design of the high rise building, where he played games with boys from his floor on the terrace...
Brooklynite who was a lifeguard in the 1950s and met his wife of 60 years on Coney Island Beach
Born in 1938 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Martin Abrams learned to swim at Washington Baths pool and worked as a lifeguard for six summers at Coney Island Beach. It was there that he met his wife Ellen. "My first time working at Bay 21, I noticed...
Memories of working at the Tornado roller coaster and other Coney Island rides and games in the 1970s
Michael Liff recalls growing up in Coney Island across the street from the New York Aquarium and working in the amusement area as a teen in the 1970's. His first job was taking plush animals by handcart from the Surf Avenue warehouse of Harry ...
Memories of bus trips to Coney Island with the Good Will Family Club from the 1940's through 1961
From the 1940s through the 1970s, bus trips to Coney Island were so popular that concessionaires recall 50 to 100 buses arriving on Saturday mornings and staying till 6 or 7 at night. Growing up in a close-knit family in Philadelphia, Alonzo...
Memories of operating Steeplechase Park's Sports Car ride in 1963-1964 and fighting the Ravenhall fire
Born in 1946, Jim Lucarelli grew up in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. He describes "the opportunity and the privilege" of working at Coney Island's Steeplechase Park in 1963 and 1964, the last two summers before the park closed. As a 16-year-old ride...
Brooklynite who posed for a now iconic 1950's NY Daily News pin-up photo on Coney Island Beach
In 1954, Lois McLohon posed for a Daily News photographer as a bathing beauty against the backdrop of Coney Island beach and its famous skyline. When the photo appeared as a "cheesecake photo" in the paper's centerfold, she and her friends thought...