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IT'S FRIDAY, IT'S SUMMER, AND by all accounts, hungry customers should be shoving each other to place orders at the counter of Gyro Corner, one of Coney Island's most popular food stands.
Instead, it's raining, there are no customers and manager Mike Leledakas is contemplating shutting down for the day. "I'll wait a couple of hours until it really starts coming down," he says, squinting into the midmorning drizzle. "Last year, the weather was like this all the time."
Thankfully, the rainy day is unusual for what has been a generally sunny summer. For Coney Island's amusement park owners and concession-stand operators, food sales and receipts have been up as much as 50% across the board. The rain is an unwelcome reminder of last summer, when wet weather and a shutdown in subway service kept the crowds at home.
"We took two strikes, one from the weather and one from the trains," says Dennis Vourderis,...