Saturday, April 11, 2009

A Visitor's View

To whom it may concern,

I didn't grow up in Coney Island but as a child I had always been fascinated by the place (especially Astroland). My aunt and uncle did live in one of those buildings until 1974 when they moved out to Shirley. My father and aunt grew up there but I didn't really know anything about their childhood.

I just recently did an assignment for a class I'm taking where I had to do a 30 minute presentation on any topic and I chose Coney Island. I got my presentation prepared but something was just missing to make the presentation alive. Then I stumbled on your site and I saw what makes Coney Island such a fascinating place. Yes, they did have all those interesting amusement attractions, Nathan's, the Wonder Wheel, etc. What made it exciting was the people that lived there to talk about it, such as Joey DePinto, Debbie Durso, Stu Berg, Elliot Popkin, Stu Goldberg and the many wonderful people I saw in the photos. I thought of all of you and my presentation came to life. I'm usually a very monotone person when I speak, but not when I did my presentation.

Thank you all for growing up in a place where you can speak fondly about it through good and sad times as people who don't know you can see what a fascinating life it was.

Sincerely,
Donald Katz
4/11/2009