You can visit a foreign country for $2. Or at least, you can feel like you’re in a foreign country for $2. After exiting the B train at the Brighton Beach, you’re thrust into a world of Cyrillic signs, pulsing techno from passing cars, borsch, and the ostentatious spandex clothes of the early nineties. (Apparently, always en vogue in Russia). I don’t understand why tourists opt for Chinatown instead of Little Odessa during their visits. Sure, I haven’t see any stern-visaged former Communists peddling knockoff bags. But I truly feel steeped in otherness there, and not in a hey-other-come-buy-sunglasses-I-make-special-deal-for-you-only kind of way.
Cade and I went to Brighton Beach to take pictures, because Brighton Beach is not beautiful. It’s a village that lives under the dirty roar of elevated subway tracks. Paint peels in huge, rusty chunks that shake off into the open-air veggie stands, onto the large meat-filled pastries sold for $1. The beach is riddled with the detritus of vagrants that lap at malt liquor like waves at the shore. Still, it sustains more wildlife than the significantly cleaner beaches where I’m from. When Cade and I visited over the summer and went swimming (I’ve accepted that now my kids will probably be mutants), we encountered a live horseshoe crab and multiple fiddler crabs. I was delighted, because 1) I’m easily amused and haven’t seen much of the world and 2) I’m a science geek at heart.
The fog hovered over Astroland, the amusement park on Coney Island, and Cade agreed to walk over with me. Its last season of operation has just started. Coney Island, as a whole, is a kind of oceanic ghost town. The only association my generation has with it is Requiem for a Dream, which is pretty damn disturbing. Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” on the contrary, makes me all warm and fuzzy. Oh, and didn’t Alvy from Annie Hall grow up on Coney Island? I digress.
The sad thing about Coney Island is that it used to be a happening place. Throngs of people flocked to the boardwalks. Nathan’s Famous Hotdogs were created and peddled to the droves. People thought the Wonder Wheel was a well, wonder. In these days of Six Flags and plastic unlimited ride-programmed wrist straps, Coney Island is the withered up, practically immobile grandparent of amusement parks. I think this deathbed status makes it all the more important for visiting, and its decay kind of beautiful.
Your photos are mad and please me very well. Greetings from Germany. Can times in my Blog look, he is unfortunately only on German.
Hi, Dennis. Thanks for visiting! I’m German, too.