Coney Island

and all the other fatal shorn-up fragments

of the immigrant’s dream come too true

               and mislaid

                                 among the sunbathers

That's an excerpt from one of the poems in Lawrence Ferlinghetti's Coney Island of the Mind, a fitting fragment to recall as we stood on the beach at Coney Island on a surreal October day. The photo of the sunbathers was taken by my daughter.

My own childhood memories are of a more festive and lively Coney Island, but even in those days, there was something decadent and scary about the place. There were carnival barkers and freak shows along the boardwalk, and a more three-dimensional version of that big frightening face above from whose grin there emanated a loud and sinister laugh...although I am pulling this up from so long ago, I hardly know anymore if this is a remnant of my imagination or if it really existed.

And above you see the iconic Parachute Jump, Brooklyn's own Eiffel Tower. Originally built for the 1939 World's Fair, it stands over 250 feet tall and in its heyday attracted as many as half a million riders annually. Maybe "riders" isn't the correct term. Basically people paid for the privilege of experiencing a sense of free-fall flying...strapped to a two-person canvas seat suspended from a parachute for a thirty-second descent. Fun.

Now this is the sort of signage I remember. I'm pretty sure that homely mermaid has been floating around in her margarita glass for at least fifty years.

Ah, Coney Island. I remember crowded beaches, and corn on the cob, and walking beneath the boardwalk sometimes...where it was cool, and the sand was shaded in the pattern of the slats of board above.

My brothers ran away once, after a fight with the insufferable little sister that was me, and Coney Island is where they went. Years later I saw a movie called The Little Fugitive that reminded me of the day they must have had. You can still see it on Netflix, I think, and if you ever want to get a sense of Brooklyn and Coney Island as it was in the 40s and 50s, this odd little film conveys it as well as any I have seen.

The fading remnants of attractions can still be seen on either side of the blue door above. Linguists and fortune-tellers are among the more charming. There were also cruel and creepy things, as you can imagine.

And there is the turtle man, who is now part of a mural that greets you at the Coney Island station (end of the line) but years ago...before my time, even...he would have been one of the "freaks" on exhibit. To me, there is something so inexplicably sad about this image. He seems to belong nowhere, and despite his shell, he is terribly exposed and lost and vulnerable.

Exactly as I have been feeling.

Subscribe