Little Old Canarsie
John Denton

In the early part of the 19th century, the Golden City amusement park was erected along Jamaica Bay at the Canarsie shore. When you entered this park, its paths were made of ground-up oyster and clam shells, which were very nice to walk on - even on a rainy day.

On the right side of the entrance was a giant roller coaster ride, and alongside of that the Penny Arcade owned by a fellow named Charles Palish and the Tunnel of Love, which burned down in the first fire around the early teens and was replaced with a merry-go-round managed by Charles Bebensee for a while and later by Fred Miller.

On the left, the first thing to catch your eye was the whip ride and the office where the girls who cashiered had to bring in the receipts of the day. Photos show the office with surrounding shrubs and trees near the dock where the fishing boats anchored. The other photos show the whip ride and in the Fenter the airplane ride, which sailed around just like a real airplane.

In the rear, the fun house and the boat ride took you through dark tunnels where all sorts of spooks and devils scared you. In back of the airplane ride was the hot dog stand owned by Murray.

Scattered through the park were many games such as ring the hoople over dancing dolls where you would get a prize if you got the hoople over the dolls and also kill the kats where you would get a prize if you knock the cats over with baseballs at three chances for a nickel.

As the years went by, other attractions came in, such as Al Camin and his wall of death ride where they rode their motorcycles on a flat wall - how that thing shook when they went around and around! All the spectators were up on top to look down at them and we were more scared than the riders. They also built a fight arena on the right side of the park where many great amateur and professional boys of the day came to appear in the ring.

Buck O'Brien brought many of the boys he trained down there for the amateur nights. In the pro nights, we saw Canarsie's Casper (Geppy) La Rosa, Vincent Pimpinella from Bay Ridge and Harold Green from Brownsville and more great fighters I can't recall.

Among the Canarsie boys who worked in the park at various times were Bob Herman, who took care of the electrical work on various rides and Bob Buckley and Irving Weinberg, who operated the airplane ride.

Taking care of the cat game and dancing doll game were Jasper DiMartino and Brother Joe. Among the cashiers were Louise (Myers) Nessel and Frank Finn's wife and Miss Margolies. There was also the head cashier for the last management, Molly Green.

The park was torn down in 1939 to make room for the Belt Parkway and was supposed to be relocated where the Seaview movies and shopping center used to be, but the Civic Association protested that they didn't want it anymore as it was drawing a bad element to Canarsie, so they had Parks Commissioner Moses get behind it and they had an injunction issued.