Gerry Menditto speaks here about the job of maintaining the Cyclone which just happens to be my all-time favorite rollercoaster ever. This short video is part of Thirteen’s NY On The Clock video series that profiles important people in and around NYC.
Gerry Menditto has been the operator of the Cyclone since the 70’s and has helped keep the 82-year-old rollercoaster from fading away. He’s done a good job too because the Cyclone is still one of the most thrilling rides you can get in the NYC area.
I love this video that The Retroist posted of Coney Island in 1952. It was a very different place back then with much more energy, activity, and vacationers. Nowadays, Coney Island seems like a local beach slum (even more so now that Astroland is pretty much gone).
Coney Island’s Cyclone rollercoaster opens today despite the fact that the adjacent Astroland amusement park is now all packed up.
I can’t say there’s much else to do in Coney Island except maybe eat at Nathan’s and visit the Aquarium nearby. But hey, Cyclone is worth the visit I suppose.
I’ve heard about the Dreamland amusement park before but I’ve never really seen many pictures of the place before it burnt down in 1911. Turns out, the Library of Congress has tons of photos of Dreamland, two of which are shown here.
In the image above taken in 1910 (#LC-USZ62-119613), Dreamland is shown in its full glory with the Dreamland Tower in the center. Less than a year after the above photo was taken, a blaze went through the entire amusement park and destroyed it. The results of this fire can be seen below (#LC-USZ62-64286).
Like many old photos in the LoC archives, these two are available for download in hi-res. Unfortunately, I’ve realized that I cannot link to LoC pages so you’ll have to go to their site and plug in the catalog #’s provided above to see the images.
