What's notable about the ride, though, is also its location. It's on the site of a kinder, gentler wooden coaster that was also called the Thunderbolt. That ride dated from Coney's early midcentury heyday and was shutdown in the 1970s but remained standing until Mayor Giuliani illegally knocked it down in the middle of the night. That Thunderbolt was famously featured in Woody Allen's classic ANNIE HALL as the childhood home of Alvy Singer, who family fictionally lived in the odd house that jammed under the corner of the ride.
I was always fascinated by that house on my trips to Coney when I first arrived in NYC. The TIMES article says it was destroyed by fire but just the interior--from the outside it did look like a house someone could live in. Surely, once the ride shut down for the evening, you could get some shuteye but I imagine hanging out there during the day would have been close to the famous scene in Allen's film.
