Coney Island Dreams

Coney Island Dreams

Little did my friend Roxy know that it wasn’t just a magazine that she gave me to read last Saturday, but a recurring nostalgic day dream. She was just being her usual thoughtful self, passing on an article about my old neighborhood. But it takes very little for me to begin thinking of Coney Island and that article was a treasure cave of Coney Island delights of the mind. (My profound apologies to Ferlinghetti)

Though I always say that I grew up in Coney Island it’s not 100% true. We didn’t move there until I was twelve so I had already done a fair amount of growing and secondly our apartment wasn’t actually in Coney Island, but near it. But though I only lived in the neighborhood for eight years, all of my growing up memories begin and end there. And the Wonderwheel, the Cyclone and the Parachute Jump dominated my bedroom window, lighting up my summer nights. Growing up in their honky tonk shadow was grand.

Living just blocks away from the beach, the boardwalk, and an amusement park had to be the best childhood a kid could have. At the first warm hint of summer I could grab my blanket, suntan lotion and a couple of friends and head for the boardwalk. It was heaven, sheer adolescent heaven.

Now as I read that Coney Island’s days are numbered, destined to become yet another condo heaven, I feel as if I should get myself back down there before they destroy everything that I remember. And there is so very much. I remember my first glimpse of Brighton Beach bliss when we first moved to the area. Mom and I had just gotten off at the Ocean Parkway stop of the D train and we stood there transfixed at the sight of the ocean. The ocean was an hour’s travel and another world from the Eastern Parkway neighborhood that we had just come from. We had entered the subway from a baked-hot June street and emerged to an ocean breeze. And then later on, standing on the terrace of our apartment, I had my first glimpse of our Cyclone-Wonderwheel view and I was star struck.

Though I grew everyday accustomed to the view, I never tired of it. I would sit sleepless at my window at three in the morning, gazing at the lights of the turning Wonderwheel, listening to the distant sounds of people having a good time. I even remember the smell of the hotdogs mixed with popcorn and cotton candy. Though there was always plenty of junk food to indulge in, we locals stuck to Nathan’s Famous hotdogs and french fries, the grease saturating the cardboard containers they were served in, ketchup dripping down the sides.

The cotton candy vendors never stopped spinning and the ice cream came hard and soft serve. I think that you could search from one end of the boardwalk to the other and never find a single place that sold “healthy” food. It was all glorious junk and we licked our fingers without worrying about calories.

One afternoon Steve and I planned to go on some of the rides and then stop at Nathan’s for lunch. We decided to try a new ride in Astroland. It consisted of two cars suspended on long metal rods that turned around a central base, passing each other as they spun round and round from the ground to the air and back to the ground like the hands of some demented clock. Add to that the fact that as you were up in the air you were upside down and that made it downright horrifying. Scared as I was I still screamed delightedly, not realizing that Shatz had grown quieter as the ride went on. Years later, when Lisa and Mariel came along, I would learn that silence on a ride was not a good sign.

Finally it stopped and we staggered out. I babbled on about how wild the ride was and still Steve was quiet. Suddenly I realized how silent he was and looked over to see the strangest expression on his face, in fact I could have sworn he had turned green. I managed to get him over to a bench and after a few minutes he told me that he had never felt so nauseous in his life. It was then that we learned that he could do rides that went up and down and sometimes round and round but never upside down. After a while I looked over at my poor sick boyfriend and said, “I guess this means we won’t be going to Nathan’s?”

We last visited Coney Island when Lisa and Mariel were kids. Even then we saw signs of gentrification creeping into our adolescent playground. The streets were clean, there was no longer an “under the boardwalk” since they had filled the underside with sand, and a volleyball tournament was taking place on the beach. Volleyball in Coney Island--right then we knew that the end was near.

And now a New York Real Estate Company has bought nearly three quarters of the land around the amusement park and plans to build condos and a glitzy new batch of whitewashed amusements ala Disney. The earthy uniqueness, the gritty, sand-between-your-toes, grease-on-your-fingers-deliciousness will be gone leaving just a wisp of regret and the smoke of nostalgia-aching dreams.