Coney Island: Chapter Three

I’ve always loved amusment parks: Mirabilandia, Italy was the first, most wonderful park my parents ever took me to. I was sixteen (obviously going on seventeen) and bought myself a taxidermied sea horse that I later turned into a necklace.

But there is something very strange about the american amusement parks in particular: they seem to fit anywhere – in horror movies, romantic comedies, dramas, animations, even in that absolutely chilling “Perchance to dream” Twilight Zone episode, the gorilla & Charlize Theron movie, in SNL Merryville Brothers sketches and of course in Michael Jackson’s “Leave me alone” video.

I’ve always dreamed of experiencing Coney Island with childlike eyes, unspoiled by cinematic artifices and my own imagination. Just being there, on the beach, in an amusement park, at a freak show and in New York – all at once – (it took my mind awhile to finally grasp that such a thing might indeed be possible) with seagulls flying in circles above me and sand in my shoes, my bag, my hair and my pockets, eating a hot-dog and gazing at the ocean, completely lost in the ever changing color, intermitent lights.

We got there – the last stop of an F train, on a windy Saturday afternoon, in April, having traveled all the way from Manhattan to Brooklyn mostly through low-class grafitti painted neighborhoods. Although week-end, it wasn’t yet summer, so the park got closed at 8PM, too early for me to watch from the pier as the lights changed colors in the distance, as if mocking the night’s sobriety, but enough to breathe in the ocean air and wander around innocent, hopeful and undecided about which ride would be the perfect one to hop on, for the first and perhaps last time.

The Cyclone, Thunderbolt, Tea Party, the Caroussel, Lynn’s Trapeze, Zenobio, I’ve seen them all before, but never have they been so real, so palpable.

I was actually there, with sand in my shoes, stars in my eyes and the algae smelling ocean breeze puffing my hair.

The desperate screams, a mix of panic and pleasure, distorted by the high rollercoaster speeds were real, the seagulls flying above our heads were real, the immensity of the ocean was real, but I had to make sure, so I put my hands in the water and licked it off my finger.

Otherwise, what would have been the point of my being there if I had left before knowing what the Adriatic Ocean tasted like and if it was nearly as salty as the Black Sea? (it was actually disgustingly sweet, not at all what I had expected it to be).