--- title: Coney Island: Celebrating a Tough, Unpretentious, Welcoming Place description: On the anniversary of the opening of Coney Island's Cyclone roller coaster, LIFE.com celebrates a tough, unpretentious, welcoming place. canonical: https://time.com/3877583/coney-island-celebrating-a-tough-unpretentious-welcoming-place/ author: Ben Cosgrove article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-06-25T19:16:39.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:03:51.640Z og:title: Coney Island: Celebrating a Tough, Unpretentious, Welcoming Place og:description: On the anniversary of the opening of Coney Island's Cyclone roller coaster, LIFE.com celebrates a tough, unpretentious, welcoming place. og:url: https://time.com/3877583/coney-island-celebrating-a-tough-unpretentious-welcoming-place/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4f7e94f927054be0/69884a62428a9e9c26cccaa2/1140892.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1500 og:image:height: 844 og:image:alt: Coney Island, 1952 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Coney Island: Celebrating a Tough, Unpretentious, Welcoming Place twitter:description: On the anniversary of the opening of Coney Island's Cyclone roller coaster, LIFE.com celebrates a tough, unpretentious, welcoming place. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4f7e94f927054be0/69884a62428a9e9c26cccaa2/1140892.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # LIFE at Coney Island: Sea and the City > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays to 40,000 subscribers as of August 2026. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Jun 25, 2013 7:16 PM UTC  Coney Island parachute jump and beach, 1952. Coney Island parachute jump and beach, 1952. Margaret Bourke-White—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Jun 25, 2013 7:16 PM UTC The boardwalk. Nathan’s Famous hot dogs. The Cyclone. The blue-gray waters of the Atlantic. Not too many places in America so readily evoke the evanescent pleasures of summer as the gloriously shabby environs of Coney Island. Running for nearly three miles along the southern coast of Brooklyn, “America’s Playground” (or “Sodom by the Sea,” as it was also once known) has been part of New York City lore for more than 150 years. Packed from Memorial Day to Labor Day with sun worshipers, bathers, entertainers, people-watchers, pickpockets, partiers and other assorted characters — and with loners, Polar Bear Club members, beachcombers and birders the rest of the year — Coney Island has outlasted countless other amusement parks and summer destinations around the country, enduring boom times and years of decay and blight, alike, with a tough, unpretentious and welcoming spirit. [**\[MORE: See the gallery, “LIFE Goes Surfing.”\]**](http://life.time.com/sports/international-surfing-day-classic-photos-of-surfers-from-hawaii-to-peru/#1) Here, as summer 2013 gets into full swing and on the anniversary (June 26, 1920) of the opening of the legendary Cyclone roller coaster — beneath which, as all films buffs know, lived Alvy Singer’s family in _Annie Hall_ — LIFE presents one of Margaret Bourke-White’s famous aerial photographs of Coney Island from the 1950s. It might not evince the white-sand glamour of the Côte d’Azur, or the laid-back, effortless beauty of a place like, say, Malibu, but in Bourke-White’s portrait of Coney Island one senses the energy positively pulsing from the place. One gets the sense that, even at the beach, New Yorkers are constantly _doing_ something. [ **\[MORE: See the gallery, “Air America: Picturing the U.S. From Above.”\]**](http://life.time.com/culture/air-america-picturing-the-united-states-from-above/#1)  Coney Island parachute jump and beach, 1952. 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