Tricia Vita spent the first 18 years of her life traveling with carnivals, where her first job was picking up darts and replacing busted balloons in her mother's dart game. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, she has worked as a writer, translator and book scout in New York. As administrative director of the Coney Island History Project since 2007, she helps plan programming and manage a multilingual oral history project and a free exhibit center. Tricia earned a Certificate in Reminiscence and Life Story from the University of Wisconsin--Superior and creates reminiscence and storytelling workshops for older adult centers in New York.
Interviews
Kathy Fenyves and her family were original tenants of Luna Park Houses' Building 5 with an apartment that looked out on the amusement park. She lived there from 1961, when she was a toddler, until she was 23, and her parents continued to live there...
Erum Hanif is a member of Community Board 13 and CEO of Apna Brooklyn Community Center, a not-for-profit social service organization with locations in Brighton Beach and Bath Beach. Apna was founded by Pervez Siddiqui, a local pharmacist and...
John Philip Capello is a painter and sculptor who grew up in Bensonhurst in the 1940s and '50s and now lives in Sag Harbor. This oral history is the culmination of the interviewer's 12 year search for the mystery artist who carved faces into rocks...
Born in 1930 in Coney Island, Frieda Schwelke and her family lived on West 36th, West 29th, and West 32nd Streets. In February 1962, she moved with her husband and son to Luna Park Houses when it first opened, and lived there through 1970. Schwelke...
Born in 1953, Fred Stern recalls growing up on West 32nd Street in Coney Island, in a house next to Sam's Knishes, and going to the beach and spookhouses in the amusement area. In 1964, his family moved to neighboring Bath Beach, where he still...
Born in New York City in 1954, Amparo Garcia has lived in Brighton Beach all her life. Her parents emigrated from Spain in 1949 and because her father loved the beaches of his native Cádiz, he decided the place to live in New York was Brighton Beach...
Roy Omori grew up in the 1950s and '60s in Coney Island where he could see the Parachute Jump from his window and Steeplechase Park was his playground. Omori's Japanese-American parents moved to Coney from California in the 1940s, during World War...
Orlando Mendez moved from Hell’s Kitchen to Coney Island as a toddler and lived with his extended family in a series of apartments on West 16th, West 20th, and West 29th Streets. In 1969, Mendez and his father and brother moved into Carey Gardens, a...
Alison Cintorrino and her family were original tenants of Luna Park Houses. Born in 1962, she was brought to Luna Park from the hospital as a newborn and lived there for 25 years. Her 86-year-old mother still lives in Luna Park Houses today....
Alan Kirschenbaum grew up in Coney Island Houses, where he was among the original tenants of Coney’s first superblock high-rise housing project. "Growing up in Coney Island Houses and in Coney Island was a really wonderful experience" he says. "And...