(Photo by Danny Clinch)

Coney Island is my favorite place in New York.
It is a wonder wheel world.

I've been there several times and I have stirring memories of the port of crazy hope. I've seen the Mermaid Parade, I caught the inaugural season of the Brooklyn Cyclones minor league baseball team and I heard an ex-girl friend who had relocated to Brooklyn say she would have married me.
You see strange mirrors at Coney Island.

One time I was at my friend Jill Richmond's (former member of the Aquanettas, the greatest New York City surf-rock band) wedding in Hoboken, N.J. and took the train from New Jersey to Coney Island. I recommend that journey for anyone who wants to get a quick feel of New York.
Singer-songwriter Garland Jeffreys was born in 1943 in the Coney Island neighborhood......

Sun-Times portrait by John J. Kim

Art Hoyle has had seven horns stolen.
And the music keeps playing.

"Three out of my home, two out of a rental car and two out of my own car," the former Chess Records session player said last week during his first visit to the historic Chicago studio in 44 years.

The 82-year-old horn player looked down at his Olds Recording trumpet and Yamaha flugelhorn.

"These, I left in the middle of State Street when I was playing at Andy's (jazz club) one summer night in the 1990s," he said. "I turned around to talk to (club owner) Penny Tyler and her husband and I thought I put them in the trunk. I had left them on the curb where I had my car parked. I jumped back in the car and drove back. Nothing there. The guy who used to stand outside Andy's listening to music had them. The doorman at Andy's told me he had the horns. I got the guy's number."

The fan lived in a near north rooming house, an S.R.O. on the down low.........