Outside in Coney Island

The Wonder Wheel was built in 1920 and has been turning on the same spot ever since, with swinging cars on the inner ring and fixed ones on the outer. Entry to the park is free and you buy rides one at a time, so a single turn on the wheel is ten dollars and about four minutes. The Vourderis family has run it since 1983.

Opens late March for weekends, then daily from Memorial Day weekend to early September, roughly 11am to 10pm. Weekends into the fall. Shut from late autumn to March

The operating amusement park that took over the old Astroland footprint in 2010 and now runs most of the rides between West 10th and West 16th, including the Cyclone and the Thunderbolt. You buy credits at a kiosk or a wristband and walk on, and a single ride is cheap enough to do one thing and leave. The season runs from late March to the end of October and the schedule thins out sharply once school starts.

Seasonal. Daily 11am to 10pm in summer, later Fri and Sat. From mid September it is weekends only plus Halloween Harvest dates, with weekday opens as late as 4pm. Closed November to late March

Two and a half miles of boardwalk opened in 1923, running from West 37th Street past Coney Island and Brighton Beach to Manhattan Beach. The beach below it is public and free and the water is open to swimmers when lifeguards are on duty in summer. Walking east from Coney Island to Brighton Beach Avenue takes about twenty-five minutes and the crowd changes completely about halfway.

Open all year, all hours. Beach swimming only when lifeguards are on duty, late May to early September, 10am to 6pm

A line of city piers along Emmons Avenue where the party boats tie up, so at most hours of the day there is a crew hosing down a deck or a mate selling tickets for the next trip. The Ocean Avenue footbridge crosses the water to Manhattan Beach and reopened after its rebuild, which makes a short loop out of a walk that used to dead end. Benches face the boats and nobody asks you to buy anything to sit on one.

Open daily, dawn to 1am under Parks rules. Boat departures cluster around 7am mornings and 7pm evenings in season

A thousand feet of pier straight out into the Atlantic at West 17th Street, rebuilt after Hurricane Sandy and reopened in 2013. People fish off the end at all hours and the lamps stay on. From the far end you get the whole Coney Island shorefront behind you, which is the one view that makes sense of the place.

Open all year. Gates generally open early morning to late evening, hours not formally posted

Opened in 1927 at Surf Avenue and West 10th, a city landmark and on the National Register, and still built of wood. The ride is about a minute and three quarters and it is rough in a way modern coasters are not. It sits inside Luna Park but takes a single ticket, so you can ride it and leave without doing the rest of the park.

Late March to late October. Daily from Memorial Day weekend to early September, roughly 11am to 10pm. Weekends either side. Shut November to March