Thursday, April 10, 2008

Krassner's Coney Days

In many ways, the blogs of today are the heirs of the underground press of the 1960s and 70s. Accordingly, as a blog about Coney Island, we are pleased to share the Brooklyn Daily Eagle's report that Paul Krassner (the "father of the underground press)" derives much of his characteristic zaniness and irreverence from his childhood experiences in Coney Island:

"Every summer, my parents would make a big deal that we would be going to our summer place in Coney Island," he said. "They would rent an apartment there for the summer, which was weird, because we lived in Astoria." […]

Krassner also would hang out at the funhouse, watching women's skirts getting blown over their heads by a compressed air blast that came from a hole in the floor.

It could be said that Krassner got his start in show biz at Steeplechase, when he turned the tables on the clown-suited dwarf whose job was to zap visitors in the buttocks with a cattle prod.


read the rest of the story about Krassner's antics- at Steeplechase and elsewhere- on the
Brooklyn Daile Eagle's website


On This Day in History: April 9 Satirical Mad Man [Brooklyn Daily Eagle]




- post by Ben Nadler

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