If you know Coney Island, you know shut down wreck known as the Shore Hotel. In its final days it was a notorious hot sheets/crack joint type of place. In any case, L Magazine had a wonderful recollection of the place when it was open that we found courtesy of the Coney Island Message Board:<blockquote>Me and my girlfriend spent the night at the Shore Hotel a couple years ago, in a grimy green-walled room on a bed with springs compressed unevenly from years of by-the-hour use, with my underwear hanging under the bare fluorescent bulb to cut its dirty glare. We went to hang out on the beach and eavesdrop on a concert at the baseball stadium, have a bunch of drinks at Ruby’s on the boardwalk, and hole up in a cheap hotel for a one-night vacation. It was romance, Coney style. Yes, there’s a hotel out there — not the kind you’d have a honeymoon in, unless the trick you’re with is the marrying type. I’m not talking about the former Shore Theater, the looming building with the enormous sign across from the Stillwell Avenue station, but the tiny hotel above the Kennedy Fried Chicken on Surf Avenue, with an entrance down the dumpster-lined alley called Henderson Walk. The second and third floors are a single room occupancy hotel, like those that used to be up and down the Bowery in Manhattan (the midway behind the Shore just happens to be called the Bowery)…</blockquote>Kids, they don’t make ’em like they used to. Could be Joe Sitt’s first hotel in Coney. Think about.