Coney Island is a peninsula (and formerly an island) located in southernmost Brooklyn, New York City, USA, with a famous beach lying on the Atlantic Ocean. The eponymous neighborhood is a community of 60,000 people in the western part of the peninsula, with Seagate to its west, and Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach to its east. To the north is Gravesend. The area was formerly a major resort and home of amusement parks, reaching its peak in popularity in the early 20th century but declining after World War II. In recent years, the area has been revitalized by the opening of KeySpan Park, home to the successful Brooklyn Cyclones minor league baseball team.

Beginning with the period after the Civil War, Coney Island became a resort, as excursion railroads and the Coney Island & Brooklyn Railroad streetcar line reached the area in the 1860s and 1870s. With the rail lines, steamship lines and access to the beach came major hotels and public and private beaches, followed by horse racing, amusement parks, and less reputable entertainments, including Three-card Monte and other gambling entrepreneurs, and prostitution. When the steam railroads were electrified and connected to Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge by the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company at the beginning of the 20th century, Coney Island began to turn more rapidly from a resort to an accessible location for day-trippers seeking to escape the summer heat in New York City's tenements. The first carousel at Coney Island was built in 1876 by Charles I. D. Looff, a Danish woodcarver. It was installed at Vandeveer's bath-house complex at West 6th Street and Surf Avenue. The complex was later called Balmer's Pavilion. The carousel consisted of hand-carved horses and animals standing two abreast. A small coach was mounted on the platform for people to sit in who didn't want to ride the horses. The ride was illuminated with kerosene lanterns (Thomas Edison did not announce his first light bulb until three years later, in 1879). Music was provided by two musicians, a drummer and a flute player. A metal ring-arm hung on a pole outside the ride feeding small, iron rings for eager riders to grab. A tent-top protected the riders from the weather. The fare was five cents. Nathan's Famous' original hot dog stand opened on Coney Island in 1916, and quickly became a landmark there. An annual hot dog eating contest has been held there since its opening, but has only attracted broad attention as well as international television coverage during the last decade. Since 2001 the contest has been won every year by Takeru Kobayashi of Japan who downed 53 3/4 hot dogs (with buns) in the allotted 12 minutes on July 4, 2006. The world record of 53 1/2 hot dogs in 12 minutes was earlier set by Kobayashi, who weighed only 144 pounds (~65 kg) at contest time.

Coney Island still maintains a broad sandy beach from West 37th Street at Sea Gate through the Coney Island and Brighton Beach to the beginning of the community of Manhattan Beach, a distance of approximately two-and-a-half miles (~4.0 km). The beach is continuous and is served for its entire length by the broad Riegelmann boardwalk, reputed to be the world's longest, and the subject of the famous song "Under the Boardwalk," first popularized in 1964. A number of amusements are directly accessible from the north side of the boardwalk, as is the New York Aquarium and a variety of food shops and arcades.

The neighborhoods on Coney Island, running eastward are Sea Gate (a private community), Coney Island proper (called West Brighton until the 20th century), Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach and Oriental Beach.

ts main subway station is called Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue and is reached by the D, F, N and Q train lines of the New York City Subway. The three main avenues in the Coney Island community (as opposed to the island itself), are (north to south) Neptune, which crosses to the mainland to become Emmons Avenue, Mermaid, and Surf, which becomes Ocean Parkway and then runs north towards Brooklyn's Prospect Park.

Coney Island, like other parts of New York City, is served by the New York City Department of Education. The Coney Island neighborhood is zoned to PS 100 The Coney Island School (K-5) and IS 303 Herbert S. Eisenberg (6-8). There are no zoned high schools.

Nearby high schools include:

* Rachel Carson's School of Coastal Studies

* John Dewey High School

* Leon Goldstein High School for Sciences

* William E. Grady Vocational High School

* Abraham Lincoln High School