We think Coney Island in the winter time is quite beautiful in a stark, bleak kind of way, but then again we don’t run a boardwalk storefront. The Times’ Nicholas Confessore (great name, huh?) paints a vivid picture of the area, though we half-expected to read of tumbleweeds rolling down the street:

On Stillwell Avenue, bumper cars were arranged in neat rows, unridden. Near the Boardwalk, skeletal plastic frames and a few shreds of tarp were all that remained of the tents and tables that sell toys and trinkets during the summer. The crack of baseball bats in the cages is months away, and a ghostly whistle — the wind rushing through the trusses and cables of Deno’s Wonder Wheel a block away — seemed to emanate from everywhere at once. A man bundled against the cold stabbed a wire coat hanger into the guts of the soda machines lining the street, hoping to pry change loose.

Amid the desolation is one eternal optimist: Jospeh Sitt. The ambitious developer, whose plans for CI we covered in November, is looking to build a billion-dollar hotel and residential complex along the Boardwalk between 12th and 21st Streets. “I utilize the Boardwalk all year round,” said Mr. Sitt, who jogs along the sea every morning. “And it’s a terrible, terrible shame that that place goes to sleep for six months a year.”
Cold and Lonely Coney [NY Times]