Coney Island

Coney Island is a peninsula and former island of southernmost Brooklyn, New York City, USA, with a famous beach lying on the Atlantic Ocean.

The communities

The neighborhoods on Coney Island, running from west to east are Sea Gate (a private community), Coney Island proper (called West Brighton until the 20th century), Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach and Oriental Beach.

Related Topics:
Brighton Beach - Manhattan Beach - Oriental Beach

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Sea Gate is one of a handful of neighborhoods in New York City where the streets are owned by the residents and not the city; it and the Breezy Point Cooperative are the only city neighborhoods cordoned off by a fence and gate houses.

Related Topics:
New York City - Breezy Point Cooperative

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Its main subway station is called Stillwell Avenue and can be reached by the {{NYCS D}}, {{NYCS F}}, {{NYCS N}} and {{NYCS Q}} train lines of the New York City subway system. The three main avenues in the Coney Island community (as opposed to the island itself), are (north to south) Neptune Ave., which crosses to the mainland to become Emmons Ave., Mermaid Ave. and Surf Ave., which becomes Ocean Parkway and then runs north towards Brooklyn's Prospect Park.

Related Topics:
Subway station - Stillwell Avenue - New York City - Subway system - Surf Ave. - Prospect Park

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The cross streets in the Coney Island neighborhood proper are numbered with "West" prepended to their numbers, running from West 1st Street to West 37th Street at the border of Sea Gate.

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The majority of the population of Coney Island resides in approximately thirty 18 to 24 story towers, mostly comprised of various forms of public housing. In between the towers are many blocks that are filled with burned out and vacant buildings. Since the 1990's, however, there has been a steady revitalization of the area. Many townhouses were built on empty lots, popular franchises have set up shop, and Keyspan Park was built to serve as the home for the Cyclone, a minor league baseball team in the New York Mets' farm system. Once home to many Jewish and Italian-American residents, most of those living on Coney Island today are African American or Hispanic. In recent decades a large influx of Russian immigrants from the former Soviet Union, many of them Jewish, have also established a community on the island and neighboring Brighton Beach, with many shop signs now in both Russian and English, earning the nickname "Little Odessa".

Related Topics:
Jew - Italian-American - African American - Hispanic - Russian - Soviet Union - Brighton Beach - Russian - English - Odessa

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Perhaps the most famous, fictional, residents of Coney Island come from Walter Hill's 1979 cult film "The Warriors". Based on Sol Yurick's novel, the film charts the progress of a street gang called "The Warriors" as they travel from their Coney Island turf up to a meeting in the bronx and return home to Coney Island.

Related Topics:
Walter Hill - The Warriors

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