NYC Comedian Gives Informative Tour of Coney Island

Tom Delgado, a self-described “Nicaraguan-American Comedian Tour Guide Bro”, took his viewers on an informative and amusing walking expedition to the iconic New York City amusement park at Coney Island.

Tom Delgado shows you around New York’s Coney Island, the Brooklyn neighborhood that birthed the modern theme park.

Aside from not knowing about the Mr. Robot connection, Delgado provided a fairly extensive history of the place, the people who founded such places as Feltman’s and Nathan’s Hot Dogs, Luna Park, Dreamland, and Steeplechase Park. He also visited The Cyclone, The Parachute Jump, and The Wonder Wheel before heading off to the famous Riegelmann Boardwalk. He also talks about how the neighborhood was deliberately depressed by those in power.

The original Boardwalk was …originally built by a man named Edward Riegelmann, who was a Brooklyn politician. The purpose was to draw lines in the sand literally to keep the amusements from encroaching. It was expanded by a guy named Robert Moses actually to encroach on the amusements. Because he hated them so much, in 1941, he also brought in tons and tons of housing projects. Because he didn’t like this area, he didn’t like the amusements, and he also didn’t like poor people in the city … it also brought the neighborhood down.

He further explains that the neighborhood became so tough that by the 1970s, films like The Warriors, which was based on a true story, were made. Yet, in the 1980s, Coney Island and neighboring Brighton Beach began revitalizing, starting with the famous “Mermaid Parade”.

So the neighborhood started to kind of slowly decline. By the 1970s it was not in good shape and you have things like the Warriors … people in the neighborhood start to try to revitalize it. The Mermaid Parade was started in 1983 by a guy named Dick Zigun who’s the unofficial mayor of Coney Island and then fast forward to today and you have developers coming in. Because what happens is developers come into a neighborhood where it’s where it’s very depressed to make all that profit by building it up.