Hysterical Coney Island

"Do we want to simply retreat to our studios and make art, or do we want to jump in and try to do something about this?"


Hysterical Coney Island is a unique, personal story of how two artists and their colleagues made an impact on the cultural life of New York City, and helped pull America's great historic amusement beach out of a nosedive. It is a chronicle of a "handmade" time in the worlds of art and amusement that will never be seen again.

As the 1970s came to an end, Coney Island was at its worst- the old timers were retiring or dying, and the beloved Pavilion of Fun at Steeplechase Park had been torn down by speculator Fred Trump in his race against the Landmarks Commission.

The authors, both native Brooklyn visual artists, formed the Coney Island Hysterical Society in 1981 as a response to this community in crisis. In concert with Dick Zigun's Coney Island USA, the Hysterical Society struck a spark that would grow to become what historian Charles Denson calls "The Artists' Renaissance" in Coney Island.

With contributions from Playwright Harvey Fierstein, Historian Richard Snow, and critic/curators Ann Aptaker and Aaron Beebe, Hysterical Coney Island is a personal account of the authors' years working in both Coney Island and in the studio- work that took on greater depth and resonance for having been seasoned in the daily life of Coney Island itself.