Coney Island

Where it sits. Coney Island is the western end of the barrier peninsula that closes the bottom of Brooklyn, facing the open Atlantic across a broad sand beach with Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach to the east and Coney Island Creek behind it to the north. It was a true island until the creek silted and was partly filled. The beach is entirely artificial in its maintenance: the sand that would naturally replenish it is intercepted by the jetty at Breezy Point, so it is held in place by roughly two dozen groynes and topped up by periodic nourishment programmes.

The story behind it. Between about 1880 and the Second World War this was the largest amusement district in the United States, drawing millions a year and, on the busiest summer days, more than a million people in a single day. Three great parks competed: Steeplechase Park, opened by George C. Tilyou in 1897, whose leering Funny Face logo survives everywhere; Luna Park, opened in 1903 on the site of the earlier Sea Lion Park, with its Trip to the Moon ride and an electric skyline; and Dreamland, opened 1904 with a million light bulbs, which burned to the ground in 1911 and was never rebuilt. Nathan Handwerker began selling five-cent hot dogs in 1916 and built a chain out of it. The Riegelmann Boardwalk, laid in 1922 and 1923, spread the crowds along the shore instead of jamming Surf Avenue. Robert Moses spent the 1950s trying to convert the amusement zone to housing; Steeplechase closed after the 1964 season and the site sat derelict for decades. The revival was slow and partial: Astroland ran from 1962 to 2008, a new Luna Park opened in 2010, and the first new roller coasters in eighty years arrived in 2011.

What survives. The Wonder Wheel of 1920 stands 150 feet high, carries 144 riders and mixes stationary cars with cars that slide along interior tracks as the wheel turns, which is why half its passengers scream and the other half do not; it became a city landmark in 1989. The Cyclone, a wooden coaster of 1927 with a first drop of about 85 feet, was landmarked in 1988 and still rides like something built before safety engineering was a discipline. The Parachute Jump, moved here from the 1939 World's Fair in 1941, has carried nobody since 1968 and now functions purely as a 250-foot sculpture, lit at night. Add the New York Aquarium, the Coney Island sideshow, the minor-league Brooklyn Cyclones at their small stadium on the old Steeplechase ground, the June Mermaid Parade and the hot dog eating contest each 4 July.

On screen. Coney Island's best-known film is Walter Hill's The Warriors (1979), in which the gang spends the entire night fighting its way home from the Bronx to this beach; the final confrontation plays out at dawn on the sand and boardwalk within sight of the Wonder Wheel, and the taunt delivered with bottles on the fingers was filmed here. Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977) gives Alvy Singer a childhood house shaking beneath a roller coaster — a real arrangement, since a house stood under the structure of the original wooden Thunderbolt, which ran from 1925 to 1982 and was demolished in 2000. Little Fugitive (1953), shot by Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin and Ray Ashley with a concealed hand-held camera as a small boy roams the beach alone, was cited by François Truffaut as an influence on the French New Wave. Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream (2000) uses the boardwalk and the pier at the eastern end. Allen returned for Wonder Wheel (2017), set in the Coney Island of the 1950s. The location goes back to the beginning of cinema: Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton made the two-reeler Coney Island here in 1917.

Getting there and timing. The D, F, N and Q all terminate at Coney Island–Stillwell Avenue, roughly 45 to 60 minutes from Midtown, under a 2005 train shed roofed with photovoltaic glass. The rides run weekends from around Easter and daily through the summer, then close for the winter. The boardwalk, beach and Nathan's stay open all year, and the off-season is when the place is most itself: grey light, shuttered stalls, Russian-speaking Brighton Beach a walk east along the boards, and the Polar Bear Club swimming on 1 January. Summer Friday nights bring fireworks over the water.

What to combine it with. Brighton Beach, a fifteen-minute walk east along the boardwalk, has been the centre of Russian-speaking New York since the 1970s and its food is reason enough for the trip on its own. The New York Aquarium sits directly on the boardwalk between the two. For anyone tracing the amusement district's history rather than riding it, the Coney Island History Project keeps a small free exhibition under the Wonder Wheel's ramp, and the Child's Restaurant building of 1923 on the boardwalk, with its terracotta ships and seashells, is the best surviving piece of the resort's architecture.