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Coney Islands
There's more Coney Islands than a single mind can hold.... catch a live one in New York, or several in Ireland and one in the Netherlands.
Where are they? Check out Professor Zebra's 'Coney Islands' on Goolge Maps
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Latest Story: Lorca visits Coney Island: 1929
In 1929/30 the great Spanish poet Fedrico Garcia Lorca was a student in New York - a mind-changing visit he recorded in 'Poet in New York'. He was stunned by the modern, urban whirpool of the metropolis and its myriad peoples, the solitude he felt and the violence surrounding him. He saw this in heightened form when he visited Coney Island. "The amusement park is truly a child's dream. There are incredible roller coasters, tunnels of love ... the world's fattest woman, a four-eyed man, ... but it is simply too much ..."
In his poetry the overwhelming dream-world of 'Dusk at Coney Island' became, 'Landscape of a Vomiting Multitude' (Paisaje de la multitud que vomita').
Original Spanish publication 1940, 'Poet in New York', translation Simon and White with introduction by Maurer; Penguin. 1990.
Federico García Lorca in 1914, aged 16, when a school student in Granada. Photo. Public Domain. See Wikipedia
This article added February 2010.
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Coney Island, New York
Coney Island, New York, USA: origionally a stretch of open-beach coast, then a popular destination for middle-class New Yorkers who stayed away after the extension to the subway provided access to the working classes who crowded the beaches. In their turn they were replaced by the poorest black sections of society.
The whole area is now undergoing regeneration with a vehement save-the-character-of -the-neighbourhood movement.
:: Coney Island timeline from 1609 - 1985.
... and did you know?
Charles Feltman invented the hot dog at Coney Island in 1867.
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A Place of Wonder
The beautifully constructed 'Wonder Wheel' and the Astroland rocket. Coney Island was home to anyone on their own terms - a slice of the American pie with that tang of real fruit - fast food, frantic rides, parades, hot-dog eating contests, street circus, freak shows and people as people is; as resident and 'Lusiocus Jackson' singer Jill Cunniff says 'I love the old rides, the loud music and the funky array of humanity letting it all hang out. There isn't a trace of plastic surgery here.' quoted, Observer 22.4.07
As the artist and co-founder of the now defunct Coney Island Hysterical Society, Philomena Marano puts it: 'Coney is exotic, beautiful and scary all at once.' quoted, Observer 22.4.07
Photo: Wikipedia Commons. Astroland Wonder Wheel
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Coney Island: 1865, before the crowds.
Before the fairgrounds and crowds arrrived, Coney Island was a beach open to the sky and sea with adjacent farmlands. A road was constructed in 1829 which brought wealthy visitors such as Washington Irving and Walt Whitman to the beach area. Boat trips permitted larger groups of working men and women to enjoy a day out from the city. In 1869 the first rail link confirmed the Island's status as New York's democratic playground. The Museum of the City of New York has a painting showing Coney Island with its first buildings in the distance, painted a few years before the rail link opened.
:: See, Coney Island, 1862-65, by Sanford Robinson Gifford. Good notes about the early development of Coney Island accompany the image of the painting.
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The Elephant Hotel, Coney Island
The Elephant Hotel was built by James V Lafferty and was 122 feet high with seven floors and had 31 rooms including a cigar store in one leg and a diarama - (where you could see the surrounding landscape projected onto a screen) - in another. It opened in 1882 and from the Howdah (the structure on top) you could see 50 miles out to sea. Lafferty had a patent on constructing buildings in the shape of animals and also constructed elephant buildings in Margate, New Jersey and in Atlantic City. These elephant buildings also inspired the Moulin Rouge Elephant in Paris. Gradually the Elephant Hotel in Coney Island lost its appeal and in 1896 it burnt down in one of the Island's many fires.
Charles Dudley Arnold - 1844-1927 - was a professional photographer who specialised in architectural photography; he was also official photographer at the Chicago Columbian Expo of 1893 and for the 1901 World's Fair Expo in Buffalo. In 1902 he took a wonderful set of photographs on the island of Martinique in the immediate aftermath of the eruption of the volcano Mount Pelee You can read his story and view the lovely prints at Tom Yanul's bio-website C.D.Arnold and see the Mount Pelee photographs.
Photo: The Elephant Hotel. Photo C.D. Arnold, Copyright Thomas G. Yanul.
Thanks to Tom Yanul for his help.
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Luna Park
The all-electric Luna Park - "luna" meaning moon - was covered with thousands of electric light bulbs; electric light was still an innovation and novelty at the time. The glow of the lights could be seen far out at sea.
A coloured postcard of the entrance to Luna Park.
Photo: PD. Wikipedia Commons.
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Topsy, the bad tempered elephant, electrocuted:1903
Not a nice story...may upset some people....no happy ending....
Among the amusements on Coney Island were domesticated elephants used both in the shows and to help lift heavy loads. One of them Topsy the Elephant ran amouk on more than one occasion. She was killed by electrocution with alternating current system provided by Thomas Edison and carried out in public at Luna Park as it had a) good electric supply and was b) interested in publicity . A film was made of the execution by Edison and was used as a promotion piece in his campaign against his rival Westinghouse's system of alternating current - AC is dangerous it can kill and elephant! Use DC my system as its much safer! However Westinghouse's system won and became the standard system for electricity supply.
:: Read contemporary Newspaper Report...
:: Wikipedia has the film and more details, Topsy, the movie
:: More about Topsy
Photo: Wikipedia, PD. Still from the Elephant electrocution film.
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Lucy, the Margate Elephant
Lucy the Margate elephant was built in 1881 - also by James V. Lafferty . Lucy is a little smaller than the Coney Island elephant and being 85 foot high and with a trunk of 26 feet - she is, so to speak, still of mammoth proportions! After a 'Save Lucy' campaign she was restored in 1973 and is still a favourite attraction in Margate - a seaside town in New Jersey, USA, just north of New York (- the original Margate is a seaside resort south of London, England.)
:: There is a beautiful collection of postcard's of Lucy the Margate Elephant on the Margate Library website..
Lucy Today photo: Flickr, magoomus'
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Circus performers: 1915
A troupe of "midget" circus performers at Luna Park, Coney Island. In 1915, when the photograph was taken, it was thought permissable to use people as "curiosities", something that is now banned by law. The Eugenics Record Offce in New York, was located near Coney Island and it used the sideshows and circuses as places to carry out their investigations. Do read the text and introductions in the Eugenics archive as well as looking at the pictures.
Photo: American Philosophical Society. Eugenics Archive item 694. For education and non-commercial use only. See the image full size with notes at The Eugenics Archive. If you want to copy this image you should do it from the Eugenics website and ask the permission of the APS Thanks to APS for their help.
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Sighting the New World: 1922
The first thing immigrants to the USA saw from their ships was the lights of Coney Island and the shapes of the huge Coney Island Elephant. The Statue of Liberty only came into sight later as they steamed further into New York Harbour.
An old vaudeville routine by the duo Ed. Gallagher & Al. Shean written in 1922, and a big hit at Ziegfeld Follies, nails down the experience.
“Oh Mister Gallagher, Oh Mister Gallagher,
When you sail home, you’ll get a great surprise;
When your ship is drawing near, it will make you shed a tear
To see the lights of New York shining in the sky.”
“Oh Mister Shean, Oh Mister Shean,
I’ve made that trip, so I know just what you mean.
But there’s one light that shines so bright; it’s the brightest light in sight!”
“Statue of Liberty, Mister Gallagher?”
“Coney Island, Mister Shean!”
Thanks to Michael Sitzman for this reference from his article D-train to Stillwell Avenue in the 'Brandies Hoot'.
:: About Gallagher and Shean
:: Gallagher and Shean comic strip.
:: lost early film, 1925
:: The 'Mister Gallagher and Mister Shean' song was recreated for the 1941, MGM musical 'Ziegfeld Girl'
Photo: Wikipedia Commons. PD.
F. Scott Fitzgerald on Coney Island
In the final elegaic chapter of The Great Gatsby - set in 1922 and published in 1925 - Fitzgerald envisions the response of the early Dutch settlers as they approached land as "...for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presense of this continent."
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Great Gatsby: 1925
F. Scott Fitzgerald uses 'light' as a symbol throughout his writing. In a short story Absolution - written in 1923 as a 'draft' for Gatsby - he writes ..."a thing like a fair only much more glittering” with “a big wheel made of lights turning in the air.” But “don’t get too close,” he cautions, “because if you do you’ll only feel the heat and the sweat and the life.”
The artwork for the original cover of Gatsby by Francis Cugat seems to bring the illuminations of the big city, the shoreline and the amusement park into one spectacular lightshow under the blue night and the petrifying gaze of some jazz-age Medusa. If not the Coney Island 'Wonder Wheel' itself, then certainly a wheel of wonder; not , in it's partial form, unlike the image filmed 'fifty' years later for the opening of 'The Warriors'.
:: Read the essay by Charles Scribner III - third son of the founder of the book's publishing house] - at Celestial Eyes: from Metamorphosis to Masterpiece, University of South Carolina, 2003.
:: Artwork by Francis Cugat. Image: Wikipedia Published Charles Scribner, 1925.
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Woody Guthrie on Mermaid Avenue: 1945 - 1954
Woody Guthrie lived on Mermaid Avenue, Coney Island between 1945 and 54. The Coney Island Period produced many songs and lyrics including one using 'The Wonder Wheel' as a life-metaphor - "Wheel of Life will spin again and roll on."
:: The Woody Guthrie Archive has a really good on-line website with timeline, biography, lyrics and photographs. Some of the Coney Island period lyrics have been set to music and recorded as part of the Archive's on-going project by Brooklyn group The Klezmatics. See Wonder Wheel, by the The Klezmatics ncludes Woody's observations of life in Coney Island - such as the "the raggedly race" of Mermaid Avenue.
"No, I’ve never seen a mermaid here
On Mermaid Avenue
I’ve seen hags and wags and witches;
And I’ve seen a shark or two
My five years that I’ve lived along
Old Mermaid’s Avenue."
:: Mermaid Avenue, Woody Guthrie: ... all the lyrics ...
:: Publisher: Woody Guthrie Publications, Bug Music ...
:: Listen to Brilliant radio interview with Norah Guthrie - Woody's daughter and sister of Arlo who runs the Woody Guthrie Archive - with the Klezmatics singing three-song set including 'Mermaid Avenue' Norah talks about life on Mermaid Avenue and Woody's response to the Jewish culture he had married into.
Ruby Hirsch grew up in Coney Island in the 30's and 40's on Mermaid Avenue, just three doors down from Woody Guthrie. In this interview, Hirsch reminisces about growing up in the area, playing stickball in the street and listening to Guthrie play impromptu concerts on his stoop.
Ruby Hirsch; Oral History
In 1998 Billy Bragg and Wilco did the first recordings of "the forgotten lyrics" from the Archive on their CD titled, but not about, 'Mermaid Avenue' or Coney Island.
:: Source of Photo: Woody Guthrie,1943. United States Library of Congress.
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Coney Island Films from the Open Video Project
The Open Video Project lists about 12 Coney Island films including:
:: Coney Island USA 1952 21 mins. tinted colour. An impressionistic view of a day in the life of Coney Island from the desertion in the early morning to the hysteria at midnight.
:: Coney Island 1940 9.19 minutes. B&W. Sound. The great amusement zone in its heyday.
:: Rube and Mandy at Coney Island 3.55 mins. B&W. Silent. A country couple amuse themselves on the steeplechase, rope bridge, riding the bulls, etc.
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Coney Island Films from British Pathe
There's about 10 Coney Island films in the British Pathe archive, including:
:: IS SHE YOUR CHOICE? 31/08/1931 Film ID 865.08 B&W, sound. Lovely story about Modern Miss Venus beauty contest in Coney Island.
:: DIZZY-DIVE LAND 21/07/1932 Film ID 1594.04 B&W, sound. A roller coaster at Coney Island is seen in action - good shots from on board.
:: LET'S GO CONEY! (ISLAND) 23/06/1932 Film ID 1592.14 B&W, sound. Great footage of rides at Coney Island including classic footage of air jets exposing girls' undies!
:: FIRES SWEEP NATION Film ID 2086.15
Fires across United States include shots of fires at Coney Island and Pallisades Park, New Jersey.
There were two big fires in Coney Island (at least...) The Dreamland fire of 1911 (some great panoramic photos) and the fire of 1932 described by Goldie Durlester in the Oral History Archive]
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Coney Island photographs from the 1890's: Byron Collection
Wonderful collection of photographs in the The Museum of the city of New York including a must-see set of Coney Island prints from the Byron Collection shot in the 1890's. They are silver-bromide prints and many have a 'snapshot' quality so very different from the more formal, topographic images which are often used to illustrate Coney Island histories. People cross through the camera's view and iconic buildings are partialy seen in the backgrounds. The snapshots capture the press of people moving around the beach, the sea front and the main attractions; the cameraman is in amongst the flow; it's a peoples' view of themselves at play.
:: See Coney Island collection from the The Museum of the City of New York
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'The Crowded Beach', 1940: 'Weegee'
Classic photograph' of the crowded beach at Coney island by famous New York crime photographer 'Weegee' - be very afraid. Full title is, 'Coney Island, 28th of July, 1940, 4’clock in the afternoon'.
:: 'Crowd at Coney Island', Weegee,1940
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'Coney Island', 1949: Andreas Feininger
Andreas Feininger, 1906-1999, was the son of Lyonel Feininger one of the founders of the Bauhaus, the modernist Art and Design school in Germany. Trained as an architect, he later took up photography. He emigrated to the US in 1939. His photograph of Coney Island shows the incredibly crowded beach from above and at a distance - very different from the Wegee photograph.
See 'Coney Island, 1949' and other Feininger photos at the David Gallery website.
:: About Andreas Feininger Eastman Archive. Has lots of Feninger images.
:: Feininger Quotes
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'Coney Island', 1952: Garry Winnogrand
Garry Winogrand said "I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed"...and he did, all round and all over America. Great shot of people on the beach at Coney Island in 1952 about halfway down GlinnBridge's page - and just before his famous image of "A Couple in Central Park Zoo" of 1967.
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'Coney Island, 4th July 1958': Robert Frank
In 1958 the photographer Robert Frank made a book of 83 photographs which he called 'The Americans' - he selected the photographs from 28,000 taken on a trip through the States recording and revealing a previously uncelebrated underside to the American dream. Jack Kerouac wrote the introduction noting how Frank's "little camera" had "sucked a sad poem right out of America."
Frank took a further sequence of photographs after the 4th July celebrations on the beach at Coney Island. "The images reach into the penumbra of dawn with felt-black sea and with tired, pummelled sand, strewn with scraps of rubbish and drunken couples crashed-out - beached, desolate, desparate - a new day yet to take hold." (Mateer, 2007)
:: View Coney Island, 4th July by Robert Frank on the Metropolitan Musuem of Modern Art website.
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Coney Island: 1950's.
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Coney Island: Archive footage from the 1940s or 50s showing the fairground rides in action. Edited to a soundtarck of Death Cab for Cutie's track Coney Island by colourthelight, Published on You Tube
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'A Coney Island of the Mind',1958: Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Now what do you think Lawrence Ferlinghetti meant when he used the phrase "A Coney Island of the Mind" as the title of his 1958 collection of poems? A note by Ferlinghetti in the current edition explains that the title "expresses the way I felt about these poems when I wrote them - as if they were, taken together, a kind of circus of the soul."
Henry Miller, the novellist, first wrote the phrase "a Coney Island of the mind" in "Into the Night Life" a privately published book about burlesque and popular/edgy entertainments written in 1947 which was later adapted into a play. The phrase "Into the Night Life" itself, had previously appeared as a section title in Miller's earlier book Black Spring (1936) describing in surreal images a nightmare experience.
Fascination with the "parade sauvage" can be traced further back to one of the origins of the modern literature - the French poet, Arthur Rimbaud who wrote in the 1870's about "Chinese, Hottentots, gypsies, simpletons, hyenas, Molochs, old madnesses, sinister demons, they mingle popular, motherly tricks with brutish poses and caresses. They would interpret new plays and 'respectable' songs. Master jugglers, they transform the place and the people and make use of magnetic comedy...I alone have the key to this savage parade." Rimbaud, 'Les Illuminations: IV'
Back with Ferlinghetti... Then there's that car on the back cover of the poems with the phrase "Coney Island of the Mind" graffited down it's long-finned length. The poet Robert Lowell said in his still-challenging poem, 'For the Union Dead', "giant finned cars nosed forward like fish; / a savage servility / slides by on grease."; and as Lowell reflected in Boston it's as though the great American car slid off to the interior where the Beats got in a drove....
:: Listen to Robert Lowell reading For the Union Dead'
:: Written in 1954, Roberet Creeley's poem 'I Know a Man' urged a little caution to the driving American: "& why not, buy a goddamn big car,/ drive, he sd, for/schrist's sake look/out where yr going."
:: 'A Coney Island of the Mind' is published by City Lights. 'A Coney Island of the Mind'
:: More about the Beats on Shapesoftime.
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Coney Island Memories, 1950s and 60's: J.K. Sinrod
Lovely memories of Coney Island in the 50's and 60's when he was growing up by J. K. Sinrod - written 1996 onwards. Read the visitors comments as well - many of them have good memories too...nice one! A punch-card ticket to the Steeplechase
Lots of detail about stickball, the meaning of money, the "death of Superman", The 'Steeple Chase' ride (long before health and safety - so hang on in), going to school, first girl friends, watching films and tv, and getting into trouble. He also describes the decline from 1963 of the area.
:: Coney Island Memories Thanks to Kim Sinrod.
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Funhouses, Darkrides and Haunted Houses! 1950s
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'The Warriors': The Wonder Wheel: 1979
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'Forgotten Coney', 1999: Kevin Walsh
Lovely feel to this website page on Forgotten Coney Island by Kevin Walsh. Photographs and postcards of the forgotten corners of Coney Island and the attractions gradually crumbling away or, in some a cases hanging on in there.
Forgotten Dreams
The Thunderbolt Roller Coaster. Photo: Kevin Walsh, 1999
Thanks to Kevin Walsh for his help
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"...I can hear the Atlantic echo back...", 2001: DCFC
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Coney in monochrome, 2006: Catherine Jones
Out of season, winter atrophies the colours and the babble of the summer crowds into the sinewy undertow of the sea and the keening wind. Lowslung, shadows fall through the Cyclone and over the walkways. The little metal kiosks are tight shut and a painted head is held mid-scream till the spring when the new season bursts open again.
Photographer Catherine Jones recalls, "I used to live in Brooklyn along the "F" train line and spent many, many days out there, winter and summer. It's one of my favourite places to photograph. The images in the series were taken on a winter's day out at Coney Island using a medium format, analogue (= real film) camera."
In these monochrome images Coney is latent, waiting...calling out across the Atlantic to the loughs of Ireland.
:: See the 'Cyclone' image full size with several other's from the Coney Island set at Catherine Jones Photography
Photo:'Cyclone'; Catherine Jones. Thanks to Catherine Jones for her help.
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One night of fire!...the parade...2006
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Wonder Wheel, 2006: Klezmatics
The CD, 'Wonder Wheel is a set of Woody Guthrie lyrics, unrecorded in his lifetime, set to music and pereformed by the Klezmatics - reknowned for "klezmer" music; a traditional Ashkenazi Jewish celebratory music - this time round with added world grooves. Beg, buy, borrow a copy somehow.....
Many of the songs refer directly to Coney Island; for instance 'Mermaid Avenue' with its acute observations of the diversity of Coney Island culture and the title track itself Wonder Wheel.
"Ah ha!" I hear you say, "and how could anyone fail given the gimlet thought and granite words of Woddy Guthrie to start with?" "Well listen friend it goes further - listen to how the music lifts the archived lyrics carrying them into the sound-scape of our new-century days. In the latter verses of 'Gonna Get Through This World' listen as the violin and reeds weave new skeins of melody counterpointing the claritas of the voice. As Woody says in 'Pass Away' "Not a word of mine / Will ever pass away..."; together the words and music reach the living spirit...play on.
:: Klezmatics homepage
:: Listen to Brilliant radio interview with Norah Guthrie - Woody's daughter who runs the Woody Guthrie Archive - in which Klezmatics do three-song set including 'Mermaid Avenue'
:: Great freely painted, though carefully constructed - artwork on the CD and liner notes from Steve Keene. Try playing the CD on a turntable at 33rpm for best visual effect of the Wonder Wheel ? Though not with the stylus!
Steve, a one time DJ, has an interesting take on multiple and series art and the economics of distribution. He literally produces a wall full of work on a theme. For him, every painting is part of a single on-going work of art that is now many miles long. Each individual painting is a souvenir of a locus in this larger unending work. There's a video of him painting a 'multi-portrait' as part of a music video by the The Triffids - Steve Keene website ...and... 'Save What You Can', music video from You Tube
Text and review copyright Marshall Mateer, 2008.
The Klezmatics, Photo by Michael Macioce, Wikipedia Commons
'Wonder Wheel' CD: Jewish Music Group; art work Steve Keene; photo Mateer. Thanks to Steve Keene for his help.
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Coney Island today, Summer 2007: The Mermaid Parade
Today the dozers have moved in and the area is under redevelopment with large swathes of democratic spaces between the icons to be replaced by condos. The Wonder Wheel and the Cyclone, maybe, just maybe, will be left hanging like elk horns on the cabin wall of the American dream. And this might be the last summer of that bigger dream - the "Coney Island of the Mind".
Today the patina of wood and peeling paint encrusted with crafted rinestones of electric light bulbs is being replaced with plastic, fibre-glass and stainless metal... it's not so much it's wrong - it's just that it ain't.
:: Mark C O'Flaherty's article: Last Ride for the Queens of Kitsch; Observer, 22, April 2007.
:: Gene Han records the 2007 Mermaid Parade on Flickr - interesting the effect of looking through a set of 188 photos of an event; The Mermaid Parade, 2007 ... Photo. Creative Commons A-N-C 2.0
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Dylan: The 'Drawn a Blank' series...2007
Bob Dylan has an exhibition of his drawings and watercolours described in a Guardian article as "life through the eyes of a laconic American ... always peering in from the edge.. One painting shows the Statue of Liberty - a mock version - in Coney Island, cradling a newspaper with the headline: "Rape is not sex."
:: Guardian article
:: exhibition
:: the book
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Save Coney Island! 2007
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Top Coney Island Music Tracks: ever.
:: Klezmatics/Woody Guthrie, 'Wonder Wheel' and 'Mermaid Avenue'
:: Death Cab For Cutie, 'Coney Island' DCFC website
:: Goodbye, My Coney Island Baby written by Les Applegate, 1948. Words and music... The Mixed Metaphor Barbershop Quartet on You Tube.
:: Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, 'Coney Island Whitefish' JJ website
:: Lou Reed, 'Coney Island Baby'
:: Fun Loving Criminals, 'Coney Island Girl'
:: Aerosmith, 'Bone To Bone' (Coney Island White Fish Boy)
:: Velvet Underground, 'Coney Island Steeplechase'
:: Tom Waits, 'Coney Island Baby'
Wikipedia has lots more songs and references in films and books at WikiConey...
:: The Simpsons featured "Goodbye, My Coney Island Baby" as one of the songs performed by Homer when he was a member of the barber-shop quartet The Be Sharps. Doh! Ray...Me?
:: "Coney Island whitefish" = slang for used condoms.
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Coney Islands: Northern Ireland
There are two Coney Islands in Northern Ireland: and some Rabbit Islands too.
1. Coney Island, Lough Neagh, is a small island in the South West corner of the biggest inland water mass in the British Isles, Lough Neagh. It has been inhabited for 8,000 years and been a famous point of pilgrimage and spiritual renewal. About 5,000 years ago the culture onthe island were reknowned for the production of highly crafted knives and swords. about Lough Neagh.
2. Coney Island, County Down a small coastal area - not actually an island - south of Strangford Lough in County Down. It is partly a bird sanctuary now. It is named after the gaelic word 'coinin' meaning rabbit. The history and location website now dead: http://www.harbour.sfu.ca/~hayward/van/glossary/coney.html :-(
Top Track
Coney Island Van Morrison, from the 1985 LP, 'Avalon Sunset'.
Morrison's Coney Island is the County Down one. Audio clip on official site
:: Listen to Liam Neilsen's spoken word version on MP3.
:: Read the Lyrics.
:: Background notes on Coney Island on Michael Hayward's really useful Van Morrison website.
3. Rabbit Island, County Fermanagh
Rabbit Island is a tiny settlement - not an actual surrounded-by-water Island - near the town of Newtownbutler and not far from the Couunty centre of Enniskillen in County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland. It is very near the border with Southern Ireland. There are also several other Rabbit Islands in the Fermanagh area mentioned in the old Parish Records. See the PRONI wesbite - PRONI is the Public Record Office for Northern Ireland.
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Coney Islands: Southern Ireland.
Coney Island, near Sligo in Southern Ireland, is a small island in the estuary on Ireland's West Coast, in County Galway. It is accessible at low tide from the mainland. The mud flats provide water feeding grounds for the Brent goose, as well as wild duck and waders.
The name 'Coney' is derived from the Gaelic word for 'rabbit' and it is believed locally that its more famous namesake in New York was named after the Irish island by a Sligo sea captain.
Coney Island is close to the islands that WB Yeats used for his poem 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' and lies close to the mountain Ben Bulben that he mentions in many of his poems and near where "...under bare Ben Bulben's head" he is buried in Drumcliffe churchyard.
There is an ancient legend that St Patrick was a given a plate of rabbit stew which turned into a cat...read on ...
:: Photos of Coney Island, Sligo by Frank L. Ludwig.
:: Photo of Coney Island, Sligo by 'Chillzone'.
Coney Island, County Clare in Ireland
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...and in Holland...
The theory, born out by the names on old maps of the area, is that the name Coney Island comes from the old Dutch "Conyne Eylandt" meaning "Rabbit Island", referring to the animals which overran the area. New York was originally a Dutch settlement called New Amsterdam.
The current Dutch usage is "konijnen eiland". Konijnen Eiland is near Elahuizen in Friesland in the Netherlands. See image on Panoramio
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...and what about in England?
Not a Coney Island in sight! ...but lots of seaside resorts established through train travel from the big industrial centres to the coast in the 19th century. Resplendent with Victorian Hotels, Fun Fairs, Big Dippers and the likes of Blackpool Tower many also show signs of decay. The Guardian newspaper has a section on Seaside Communities in England and how they have changed and their need for regeneration; it has a photo gallery, audio discussion and an interactive map. See http://www.societyguardian.co.uk/communities and choose Weathering the Storm
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Ask Professor Zebra
Coney Island, USA? Coney Islands, Ireland? Robert Frank photographer? ... or anything else about Coney Island ... and who was Weegee?
Ask Professor Zebra a question?
Hi Professor Zebra,........
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Professor Zebra's 'Coney Islands' map on Google.
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About and feedback
Coney Island USA and Coney Islands Ireland were first written and published by Marshall Mateer in June 2007. It began as a few notes to explain what "Coney Island" was to new readers of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's book of poems 'A Coney Island of the Mind'; and since then, as these things do, it has just grown. Last update was on the 1st January 2008. If you have any feedback please write to me at info@shapesoftime.net
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to these organisations and individuals for their assistance in developing Shapesoftime's Coney Island essay.
:: American Philosophical Society http://www.amphilsoc.org/
:: Thomas Yanul, photographer and photo-historian. Tom Yanul's Homepage
:: Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA, http://www.metmuseum.org
:: Kevin Walsh. Forgotten New York
:: J.K.Sinrod, citizen historian. My Coney Island Memories
:: Catherine Jones, photographer. Catherine Jones Photography
:: Gene Han, citizen photographer.Gene Han on Flickr
:: Steve Keene, artist. www.stevekeene.com
:: Charles Scribner III, Celestial Eyes: from Metamorphosis to Masterpiece, University of South Carolina, 2003.
:: Google Maps
:: Wikipedia
:: Flickr
:: British Pathe
:: Open Video Project
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... and here's another elephant building...
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16757
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