Coney Island Cyclone
— — wood, paint, and an 85-foot drop.
Not only on a wall.
“The wooden coaster at the corner of Surf and West 10th, a block from the boardwalk. Opened in 1927, painted white and red, still pulled up the lift hill by a chain you can hear from the sidewalk. The first drop is eighty-five feet at about a fifty-eight-degree pitch. Riders come off rattled and grinning, walk straight to Nathan's, and look back at the structure as if checking it's still there. from the studio
Coney Island Cyclone, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Cyclone stands at Surf Avenue and West 10th Street, on the south shore of Brooklyn, a block back from the Coney Island boardwalk and the Atlantic. It opened on June 26, 1927, designed by Vernon Keenan and built by Harry C. Baker on the site of America's first coaster, the Switchback Railway. The structure is 85 feet tall at its highest point, with about 2,640 feet of track. The City of New York designated it an official landmark in 1988, and it joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. Today it operates inside Luna Park, reachable on the D, F, N, and Q trains to Coney Island–Stillwell Avenue.
The Cyclone is built of wood, not steel, and that is most of the story. The lattice frame is southern yellow pine, replaced piece by piece across the seasons so the structure as a whole keeps running while no single board is older than its last inspection. The trains are three-car articulated sets riding fixed-position wheels on a track laid in two-by-tens. The lift chain is mechanical and audible. The first drop is 85 feet at roughly 58 degrees and the top speed is about 60 miles per hour. The whole circuit lasts under two minutes.
Luna Park's main season runs from late March through October, with weekends only on the shoulders and daily operation in summer. The Cyclone usually opens for its annual first ride on Palm Sunday weekend, a tradition since the park's modern reopening in 2010. A single ride costs about fifteen dollars at the window; an unlimited wristband is the better value if you plan to ride the Wonder Wheel and the Thunderbolt as well. The boardwalk, the beach, Nathan's Famous on Surf Avenue, and the New York Aquarium are all within a five-minute walk.