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 activities for older adult centers in New York.
Interviews
Resident of Coney Island for 47 years and retired transit cleaner at Stillwell Terminal
Lorraine Ross recalls moving to Coney Island on April 1st, 1973, never imagining she would stay so long. Now 72 and retired, she first lived in an apartment on West 36th Street, where she raised her sons, before moving to Gravesend Houses, where...
A voice actor's reflections on how growing up in Coney Island in the 1990s shaped her imagination
Tiana Camacho is a professional voice over actress for video games, anime, radio plays, and commercials who grew up in Coney Island in the 1990s. When her family moved from Gravesend Houses to a house on West 19th Street next to the Coney Island...
Author of Dreamland Social Club, a novel set in Coney Island, who got engaged on the Wonder Wheel
Tara Altebrando is a native New Yorker who rediscovered what a magical place Coney Island was when she was in her 20's. The author of 11 novels, she says her favorite is Dreamland Social Club, which is set in Coney Island and was published in 2011...
Poet who grew up in Coney Island and was one of Dr. Couney's incubator babies
Poet Norman Stock grew up on West 24th Street in Coney Island. Born in 1940, he spent the first 1-1/2 months of his life as an incubator baby in Dr. Martin Couney's exhibit, which by that time had moved from Coney's Luna Park to the New York World's...
Greg Birbil's father, Paul, was a candy maker who owned the Paradise Ice Cream Parlor on Surf Avenue
Founded in 1928, the Paradise Ice Cream Parlor, also known as the Paradise Luncheonette, was a fixture at 1605 Surf Avenue across from Steeplechase Park for more than 30 years. Greg Birbil, who was born in 1937, shares memories of growing up in "Pop...
Memories of growing up on West 29th Street in Coney Island in the 1940s and '50s
Sheldon Krimsky and his family lived in an apartment at 2995 West 29th Street from the time he was 4 until he graduated from college. He shares memories of growing up in the 1940s and '50s: playing stickball and street games like Ringolevio;...
Memories of growing up on West 5th Street and grandfather's shoe repair shop on Ocean Parkway
Born in 1946, Robert Levrini shares boyhood memories of growing up on West 5th Street and a silhouette of himself cut on Surf Avenue. Left to roam on his own, Robert and his friends played in a field adjacent to Lincoln High School and Coney Island...
Brooklyn artist who emigrated from Russia as a child is drawn to Ocean Parkway and Brighton Beach
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1975, artist Alisa Minyukova immigrated to New York City with her mother and grandmother in 1981 and grew up on the Lower East Side. In a 2016 essay titled "Food Stamps and Caviar: How I moved to Brighton Beach,"...
Memories of growing up at Bensonhurst's Termini's Bakery and riding Coney Island's Astroland Rocket
Richard Termini's earliest memories are of playing under the El on New Utrecht Avenue in Bensonhurst, where his family operated Termini's Bakery. Founded by his grandfather Giuseppe 'Joe' Termini in Manhattan in the early years of the 20th century,...
A lifelong resident's memories of growing up in Coney Island's Gravesend Houses and Kaiser Park
Born and raised in Coney Island, Maria Navarro says her family came here from Morovis, Puerto Rico in 1957 and lived on West 36th, 27th, 21st, 28th and 29th Streets before settling in Gravesend Houses in 1970. "Everybody knows each other," says...