Latest as of April 19
Coney Island may have a new face in the coming years, according to today's New York Times. Land developers are buying up stalls that housed arcades and hot dog stands for a new shopping center that would be complete with an indoor swimming pool. This is another example of mall-ization, although whether this is necessarily a bad thing is up for debate.
I have to make it clear that I have only been to Coney Island once in my life, during a bright, crisp winter day in February when I decided to bicycle all the way from my apartment on the upper West Side, a ride that took two hours but resulted in my finally seeing the fabled boardwalk that I'd heard vague mention of all of my life, the namesake of many a chili covered hot dog I ate way back in my Midwestern high school cafeteria.
No more than a few casual strollers wandered the boardwalk that afternoon. Hearty souls who, like me, dared the cold temperatures just to enjoy a bit of bright sun and shatter the dreariness of a long New York winter. I'd always imagined that Coney Island was a shady anachronism, populated by freak shows with bearded ladies and sword swallowers. My hunch, I believe, was dead on. Even though I didn't actually see any of these types during the course of the afternoon, the hot dog stands and arcades, all boarded up for winter, and the motionless ferris wheel, nevertheless made it plainly obvious that had I come on a summer day or, even better, a hot Saturday evening, I would have seen exactly the creatures, and heard the very sounds, of Coney Island lore.
But, what I hadn't counted on was the utter grayness of the place. The beach was wide and the sand soft and light brown, but landward, opposite the broad, wood-plank boardwalk were huge apartment blocks, lined up in rows, that looked like they belonged to some Iron Curtain country save for the fact that they had been constructed of brick rather than cement. The sensation of being dreadfully close to a gulag was reinforced by the fact that I was one of the few people on the boardwalk that didn't speak Russian as a first language. My overall sense was that I really had left the USA for some bleak eastern block excuse for a tourist destination, mixed in with what I identified as a real sense of culture shock.
Coney Island may be completely different during the summer. I imagine the wide open, barren boardwalk would be rich with the smell of hamburgers and fries and coconut suntan oil, colorful lights from the ferris wheel, screams of children playing on the beach, whistles from groups of young men looking to score. An unsavory, whimsical place, one that has so far been spared sterilization, a fate that, I am told, has terminally altered even Las Vegas. Coney Island has become the type of place that any upstanding middle-class parent concerned about the correct moral development of a child would avoid at all costs. Once upon a time this place must have held a real appeal. These days, for many, it's rogue charisma probably holds all the allure of a trip to the local land fill.
Which brings me around to the question I never answered: Is the proposed development of Coney Island, replete with chain restaurants and air conditioned hallways, a good thing? Mall-ization will surely bring out the masses (as Las Vegas' castrated reconfiguration has demonstrated). It would even make me more likely to take a trip there on a Saturday night - the mall and the shops would be appealing, while the current hot dogs and the fat dancing ladies would seem more like a gimmic, good for one visit and then, maybe, another when friends come to town, an attraction that they must see, but they wouldn't want to live there, if you catch my drift.
So, would it be better for Coney Island to remain as a link to yester-year's preference for seedy entertainment, or modernize and draw the crowds as well as money, which could even be further invested in the place to make look a whole lot less like...summer in Siberia?
I have to make it clear that I have only been to Coney Island once in my life, during a bright, crisp winter day in February when I decided to bicycle all the way from my apartment on the upper West Side, a ride that took two hours but resulted in my finally seeing the fabled boardwalk that I'd heard vague mention of all of my life, the namesake of many a chili covered hot dog I ate way back in my Midwestern high school cafeteria.
No more than a few casual strollers wandered the boardwalk that afternoon. Hearty souls who, like me, dared the cold temperatures just to enjoy a bit of bright sun and shatter the dreariness of a long New York winter. I'd always imagined that Coney Island was a shady anachronism, populated by freak shows with bearded ladies and sword swallowers. My hunch, I believe, was dead on. Even though I didn't actually see any of these types during the course of the afternoon, the hot dog stands and arcades, all boarded up for winter, and the motionless ferris wheel, nevertheless made it plainly obvious that had I come on a summer day or, even better, a hot Saturday evening, I would have seen exactly the creatures, and heard the very sounds, of Coney Island lore.
But, what I hadn't counted on was the utter grayness of the place. The beach was wide and the sand soft and light brown, but landward, opposite the broad, wood-plank boardwalk were huge apartment blocks, lined up in rows, that looked like they belonged to some Iron Curtain country save for the fact that they had been constructed of brick rather than cement. The sensation of being dreadfully close to a gulag was reinforced by the fact that I was one of the few people on the boardwalk that didn't speak Russian as a first language. My overall sense was that I really had left the USA for some bleak eastern block excuse for a tourist destination, mixed in with what I identified as a real sense of culture shock.
Coney Island may be completely different during the summer. I imagine the wide open, barren boardwalk would be rich with the smell of hamburgers and fries and coconut suntan oil, colorful lights from the ferris wheel, screams of children playing on the beach, whistles from groups of young men looking to score. An unsavory, whimsical place, one that has so far been spared sterilization, a fate that, I am told, has terminally altered even Las Vegas. Coney Island has become the type of place that any upstanding middle-class parent concerned about the correct moral development of a child would avoid at all costs. Once upon a time this place must have held a real appeal. These days, for many, it's rogue charisma probably holds all the allure of a trip to the local land fill.
Which brings me around to the question I never answered: Is the proposed development of Coney Island, replete with chain restaurants and air conditioned hallways, a good thing? Mall-ization will surely bring out the masses (as Las Vegas' castrated reconfiguration has demonstrated). It would even make me more likely to take a trip there on a Saturday night - the mall and the shops would be appealing, while the current hot dogs and the fat dancing ladies would seem more like a gimmic, good for one visit and then, maybe, another when friends come to town, an attraction that they must see, but they wouldn't want to live there, if you catch my drift.
So, would it be better for Coney Island to remain as a link to yester-year's preference for seedy entertainment, or modernize and draw the crowds as well as money, which could even be further invested in the place to make look a whole lot less like...summer in Siberia?
posted by CatZoo at 8:08 PM
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