Step right up folks! Step right up! Shoot the Freak! Ride the wheel! Come get your hotdogs! Let me read your fortune! Step right up... These are the cries you would probably hear walking down the boardwalk at Coney Island, Brooklyn thirty or forty years ago. Now you'll hear the empty sound of a crushed Coke tin rattling along the ground or the odd emaciated pigeon scraw. You'll here the squeek of rusty metal signs blowing back and forth in the wind and read signs like 'Going out of Business', 'Last Summer in Business' etc etc. When walking around Coney Island, you can't help but feel you're in some abandoned English sea-side town like Blackpool.
This was much more eery than Blackpool. Blackpool stills attracts drunken stags and tarty hens. It still attracts old grannies looking for afternoon tea and scones and naughty teens skipping school, smoking ciggies under the peer. Coney Island seemed to attract nobody. There was hardly anyone around; the beach was pretty much deserted. Graffiti covered every surface, everything tired and shut down. It reeked of the stench of dead memories. Of 1920's swimming costumes or Woody Allen's imaginary childhood in 'Annie Hall'. It seemed so sad to me and the melancholy of the place weighed down on me, seperating my experience from those who rode 'The Cyclone' and swam in the sea.
To get to Coney Island we got on the Q subway train. Even if we didn't have a destination, it was still a fantastic way to sight see. From under the ground we emerged and travelled over one of the bridges to Brooklyn. The whole of Manhattan passed by us. What a view! We ate Macdonald's and I must say it was the best quarter pounder I've had in my life (so, if that's not a reason to go I don't know what is!).
How surreal it was to run on a beach when a couple of hours before we were stepping over giants grids on a Manhattan sidewalk. If I lived in New York I would come here all the time. Quiet, relaxing and steeped in history, it's a wonder why more people (tourists really) don't come here. Aren't you slightly curious?
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