Oral History Archive

Filtering by beaches back to all

Jeanette Bigelson

At age 103, Coney Island resident shares her memories and secrets to a long and happy life

Roy Omori

Growing up Japanese American in Coney Island in the 1950s and '60s

Gabriel Valencia

Twenty-five years at Gregory & Paul's and Paul's Daughter on the Coney Island Boardwalk

Connie Scacciaferro

Memories of going to Coney Island Beach as a child in the 1930's and a teenager in the '40s

Norman Finkel

Boyhood memories of visiting Coney Island in the 1930s and getting lost on the beach

Judith Densky

Memories of growing up in Coney Island and Sea Gate in the late 1940s and 1950s

Tina Mednicoff Smokler

Growing up in Coney Island and being elected to Leon Friend's Art Squad at Lincoln High School

Irwin Temkin

Growing up in Coney Island and how learning French at Lincoln High School influenced his life

Diana Wiener

Growing up in Sea Gate and Coney Island in the 1940s and '50s and moving back in the mid-1960s

JR Lopez

Memories of growing up on West 35th Street in Coney Island in the 1990s

Karen Wilcox

Memories of living in Luna Park Houses and going to Coney Island bathhouses in the 1960s

Samantha Robles (Cake)

Tattoo artist who grew up in Coney Island's West End

John Philip Capello

Mystery artist who carved faces into rocks on the shoreline at Brighton Beach

Amparo Garcia

Lifelong Brighton Beach resident shares stories of Brighton Beach then and now

Tymell Murphy

Professional basketball player and author of a book of poems and stories who grew up in Coney Island

Esther Delgado

Growing up in Gravesend and going to Coney Island in the 1940s and living there today

Rena Stutman Rice

Memories of growing up in Brighton Beach in the 1950s and '60s

Ellen Abrams

Memories of growing up on West 29th Street and meeting her lifeguard husband on Coney Island Beach