English

Author and historian of carousel horses and carvers and co-founder of the National Carousel Association
An interview with Dr. Roland Summit, author, historian, expert on carousels and carousel horse carvers, and founding member of the National Carousel Association. Beginning in 1959, Roland and his wife Jo collected, restored, and preserved hundreds...
Content type: Oral History Item
One of Dr. Couney's incubator babies
Janet Rubino tells her story about being one of Dr. Martin Couney's incubator babies on display in Coney Island. Rubino, who weighed 23 ounces at birth, also describes a visit to the incubator exhibit when she was a child. 
Content type: Oral History Item
Memories of growing up in Coney Island in the 1940s and going back four times a year
Stanley Shapiro and his family lived at 2841 West 20th Street in Coney Island when he was a boy in the 1940s. "My heart is in Coney Island," says Shapiro, who goes back four times a year to walk the length of the Boardwalk and have a Nathan's hot...
Content type: Oral History Item
Poet and writer from Afghanistan who grew up in Southern Brooklyn
Zohra Saed is a poet, editor and translator who was born in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and immigrated to Brooklyn with her family as a child in the 1980s. She grew up in the close-knit Uzbek-Turkestani community on Ocean Avenue in Sheepshead Bay and...
Content type: Oral History Item
Growing up in Coney Island as a teenager in the 1960s and '70s
Tony Williams and his family moved from Harlem to Coney Island when he was 13. He lived on West 33rd Street between Mermaid and Neptune Avenues from 1966 until the late 1970s. Tall for his age (he was 6'2"), Tony was hired to operate rides in the...
Content type: Oral History Item
Singer, musician and composer who lives in Sea Gate
This interview was conducted and recorded in Russian. Read Julia Kanin's transcript and translation below. Интервью проведено и записано на русском языке. Вы можете ознакомиться с траснскриптом и переводом Юлии Ханиной ниже. Ellina Graypel is a...
Content type: Oral History Item
Musical inspiration and meditation at Coney Island
Cuzzo Sosay is a musician and producer of gangster hip hop, soul music, inspirational music, and R & B who visited the Coney Island History Project this past summer. As a boy growing up in Brooklyn in the 1980s, his parents took him to Coney...
Content type: Oral History Item
Groundbreaking filmmaker grew up in Sea Gate and on Mermaid Avenue
Filmmaker Joyce Chopra grew up in Coney Island and Sea Gate in the 1930s and ‘40s. Her grandparents were the owners of Kalina's Baths on Surf Avenue at West 33rd Street. Chopra describes how she got the acting bug at Lincoln High School while...
Content type: Oral History Item
Brooklyn College history student grew up working in his family's bodega in Brighton Beach
This oral history was recorded in 2021 when Nasim Almantaser was 21-year-old Brooklyn College student. Nasim grew up working in his Yemeni American family's bodega in Brighton Beach and began helping out in the store as a young boy to be with his...
Content type: Oral History Item
The Roller Coaster Reverend shares stories of Cyclone weddings
After Reverend Cliff Herring married a couple on Coney Island’s Cyclone roller coaster, the NY Daily News called him “the Roller Coaster Reverend” and “a card carrying member of the American Coaster Enthusiasts.” Reverend Herring is member #18 in a...
Content type: Oral History Item