Coney-catching Coney-catching Coney-catching is Elizabethan slang for theft through trickery. It comes from the word "coney" (sometimes spelled "conny"), meaning a rabbit raised for the table and thus tame. A coney-catcher was a thief or con man. It was a practice in medieval and Renaissance England in which devious people on the street would try to con or cheat vulnerable or gullible pedestrians. The term appears in "The Taming of the Shrew" and "The Merry Wives of Windsor" by William Shakespeare, and in the John Florio translation of Montaigne's essay, "Of the Cannibals." The term was first used in print by
Coney Island commercial and amusement area, and recommended tha property north of Surf Avenue and west of Abe Stark's land could be rezoned for other uses including residential to lure developers into the area. Astroland owner Carol Hill Albert, whose husband's family had owned the park since 1962, sold the site to Thor in November 2006 for an undisclosed amount. In January 2007, Thor released renderings for a new amusement park to be built on the Astroland site called Coney Island Park. Thor proposed a $1.5 billion renovation and expansion of the Coney Island amusement area to include hotels, shopping, movies, an