It doesn’t get anymore New York City than July 4 at Coney Island. Independence Day by our seaside trumpets the great melting pot, which is our city that we’ve grown to love. You get five boroughs converging onto the boardwalk. Yes, we have a great beach culture in NYC, and the best thing is: we can all take a subway there to enjoy it. In fact, when the train lines were first built in the 1800s, Coney Island was described as, “Heaven at the end of a subway ride.”
So, while Trump was having his divisive “Salute to America” military parade in the rain, we got to watch Joey Chestnut shove hotdogs down his gullet to reclaim his crown in the Nathan’s Hotdog Eating Championship (71 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes), frolic in the
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Up until World War II, Coney Island was the largest amusement area in the United States. The Cyclone was opened in 1927 and that’s still around, and scary, because if feels like it could fall apart at any moment. The tales of Coney Island are of mythical proportions. For one thing, it’s where the warriors ended up at the end of the movie The Warriors, after a hard night of battling such NYC gangs as The Furies. Also, the name was originally Conyne Eylandt, which came from the colonial Dutch, meaning “Rabbit Island.”
In case, you missed it, let’ stroll past the Cyclone, the Wonder Wheel, Luna Park and the Coney Island Freak Show for a true NYC experience. My Coney Island day was spent in 80-plus-degree heat, literally rubbing elbows with my fellow New Yorkers, on the shores of Brooklyn; right in the middle of the dog days of summer. Yes, here are some of the sites from July 4 at Coney Island—where New York City comes out to be it’s New York City best.
