So yesterday afternoon, after watchined Death Wish on AMC, we decided it was time to go to Coney Island again. This had nothing to do with Bronson or vigilante justice and everything to do with my weird obsession with the place. You grow up outside of New York and you see it in movies like The Warriors and you develop a certain expectation for what it should be like in your head. During the summer, Alison (knowing first hand how much I like aquariums) decided while I was visiting we should take the train to Brooklyn and go to the NY Aquarium, which is right beside Coney's strip. We got there just in time for the Aquarium to close but we still decided to wander empty Coney in the dark (apparantly it's not the hottest tourist attraction in the off season). At any rate, despite the cold and that everything was shut down save for Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs and the Coney Island Clam Bar (friendly bar tenders and good beer!) we had fun and I said that once I moved here I wanted to go back just to take pictures of it in the off season. It looks kind of spooky, it's pretty barren and while you'll note a few other curious types wandering around, you can see that by New York standards, it's empty. As such, it gives off a really strange vibe. You get the feel for what it'd be like in the summer, you can picture the Wonder Wheel and Cyclone all lit up but with very few people around, it almost feels like a ghost town...
A lot of the signs around look like they were made in about five minutes with a paint brush and the left over paint foudn in someone's garage...
The hot dogs here are seriously really really really good. The hobos who hang out by the front door and ask for change... not so much.
This was my favorite part of the boardwalk. SHOOT THE FREAK! LIVE HUMAN TARGET! For only a few dollars you too can shoot some poor S.O.B. with a paintball gun apparantly. I wonder who came up with the business plan for this one and how they sold it to the bank?
'Yeah, I need a loan so I can rent a back alley on Coney Island. I'm gonna have a buddy run around and hide behind garbage cans and let tourists shoot at him'
A few more misc. shots of the boardwalk and some random strange signs and fixturs surrounding the park...
The shrimp on the right hand side of teh sign is wearing a fake moustache and a hat. For some reason this appeals to me.
Neither Alison or myself could figure out who Joey is but apparantly this dude, who is not at all an Italian stereotype(!!) wants to show him something... possibly the fact that he can spin a clam on his finger... or possibly a tasty gyro. No one seems to know.
We started to lose the light not too shortly after we got there so I didn't get to take as many shots as I wanted nor did I get too fancy, just did the whole point and shoot thing and didn't even bother to use the tripod or change lenses. We're definitely going to have to go back once it opens up though, I'd love to see it all lit up before it gets torn down and bulldozed. They're building condos there later this year supposedly and only leaving the ferris wheel and the roller coaster.
3 comments:
Dude, they HAVE TO leave "Shoot the Freak," too! I wanna start that here except, in my version, the freak doesn't know he's the freak - you just assign someone with that designation for the day. That's the kind of surprise that's the spice o' life.
And can we make a request of Manowar to cover this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC6XvBbgLuE
I think they wrote it!
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