Tricia Vita

I recently recorded an oral history interview with William Boyle, the author of eight books set in and around the Southern Brooklyn neighborhood of Gravesend, where he was born and raised. His first novel, Gravesend, was published in 2013 and his newest, Saint of the Narrows Street, was named one of the best books of 2025 by Publishers Weekly. His work is frequently described as character-driven, literary crime fiction and Brooklyn Noir.

As a boy, he loved listening to stories told by his Italian grandparents and their friends and would tape record and transcribe those conversations, which gave him an ear for dialogue. "I have and probably will continue to write about my block in various kind of ways," says Boyle, "I think a lot of times I'm writing about the same house, my grandparents' house, and I'm just dressing it up in different ways for different characters."

You can listen to the full interview in the Coney Island History Project oral history archive.

Happy National Roller Coaster Day! I recently recorded an oral history with award-winning roller coaster designer Mike Boodley. Fifty years ago this week, when Mike was 17, he broke a world record for consecutive roller coaster rides by riding the Coney Island Cyclone 1,001 times over 45 hours. He shares vivid memories of his August 14, 1975 ride, how it came about, and the people who cheered him on and rode with him.

Other topics in the interview include Mike's boyhood fascination with wooden coasters and dream of designing them; co-founding Great Coasters International; the influence of Coney Island's Tornado and other Prior & Church coasters on his coaster designs; and memories of Astroland's flamboyant publicist Milton Berger, whose career advice when he was a teen stuck with him.

You can listen to the full interview in the Coney Island History Project oral history archive.

Happy National Hot Dog Day! I recently recorded an oral history with Randy Profeta, the great grandson of Coney Island sign painter Harry Wildman (1875-1930). He shares stories of Wildman & Company's work for Feltmans, Nathan's, Steeplechase and other attractions. In this early photo of Nathan's, you can see the store's logo created by Wildman for Nathan Handwerker, and his signature, which we circled in red. Family lore also credits Harry Wildman with the creation of the Steeplechase Face, the park's grinning logo. In addition to newspaper clippings and an interview with his grandmother, "a lot of what we have is, in essence, anecdotal," says Profeta. "I mean it's information that has passed from generation to generation."

You can listen to the full interview in the Coney Island History Project oral history archive.

You're invited! The culminating event for my SU-CASA "Tell Us Your Stories" workshop will be a book and audio party in Goddard Riverside Older Adult Center's Art Room. Participants in the reminiscence, oral history, and storytelling series will perform live readings and introduce audio clips of their stories about earliest memories, childhood pastimes, home and family, and more.

A limited edition book of their work will be distributed at the event and guests will be invited to share their own reminiscences over light refreshments.

A preview of the workshop's audio stories is now available for listening on my SoundCloud page.

WHEN: Friday, June 21st, from 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM

WHERE: Goddard Riverside Older Adult Center, 593 Columbus Avenue at West 88th Street, New York, NY 10024

Excited to share this article in Brooklyn Paper about Coney Island Stories, a new podcast which I co-produced with Charles Denson and Ali Lemer. It's now available for listening via Apple, Spotify, and other podcast app, as well as the History Project's website. When we started to have to work from home because of the pandemic, there was time to actually create the podcast. I wrote the scripts trying to find common themes to bring together from the Coney Island History Project's oral history archive. New episodes coming in 2021!