Coney Isle

The train stays above ground for the most part on the long ride down to Coney Island.  The helter-skelter mess of incongruent triangles and leaning squares painted in graffiti keeps my gaze busy.  The Jewish graveyard spreads from each side of the tracks - each headstone has a small patch of snow on top of it, each body quietly shivering beneath it.

Coney Island boardwalk: my first glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean since I've been in New York.  As I walk eastward, the ocean and a snow-dusted, seagull congested beach spreads out to my left.  To my right, a faded, peculiar mix of shapes and colors.  In it's heyday, during the light hearted days of the 1920's, Coney Island was a loud, bustling series of amusements.  Even Gatsby asks Nick Carraway to join him here.  The Wonder Wheel, the Parachute tower, cotton candy, freak shows, sideshows, peep shows, puppet shows, bumper cars, balloons - it was the place to be.  I can only imagine what it must have looked like from afar - ships out on the Atlantic must have seen the lights of New York City in the background, and then the twirling, flashing rainbow of lights in the foreground, reflecting itself in the water.  An age of excess and happiness before a decade of downspirals.  I've always been a little wary of amusement parks, circus folk, and the dirty fingernails of the booze-stinking men who help you onto a Ferris wheel.  It was the pivotal scene in the movie Big that put me over the edge - at the age of 8 I was officially afraid of amusement parks.  But to be at one that hasn't really been open for over 50 years, (sure, some people still come down here for bumper cars and to eat 49 hot dogs on the 4th of July) is even more eerie.  The colorful metal rusting and creaking, the low income housing surrounding the once-bright signs to "shoot the freak" and to "free fall at Deno's!," the strange silence of it all gives me minor goosebumps.  The only sound is the occasional call of a gull and the placid movement of cold waves.  I can definitely feel the nostalgia, and think that the condos they are planning on planting here would be out of place, but I also feel pretty disconnected.  The history isn't mine.  I take a few pictures of men on the pier fishing with their hoods up and their teeth chattering, watch a man poke at garbage and put it in a bag, think about having a hot dog from Nathan's, and help a woman from somewhere far away find her way up into Manhattan.  I wonder if she thought this was Ellis rather than Coney? 

I was inspired to go to this island (which is actually a peninsula) because of a Death Cab For Cutie song aptly named "Coney Island," which goes:

Sitting on a carousel ride

without any music or lights,

everything is closed at Coney Island

and I could not help from smiling.

I can hear the Atlantic echo back,

rollercoaster screams from summers past.

And everything was closed at Coney Island

and I could not help from smiling.

Brooklyn will fill the beach eventually,

and everyone will go except me.