[FIPS WAS THERE…] CONEY ISLAND

New Yorkers are malcontents. New Yorkers are nostalgic. New Yorkers are progressive. Because New York City changes all the time, things are never as good as they used to be, or ever as good as they could be. In the 70s and 80s NYC was a crime-ridden dump. Graffiti everywhere, broken windows, apparently, and the legendary Squeegee Men who intimated and gauged drivers at stop lights all over the city.  I guess at that time everyone either looked back fondly to glory days of happy hippies dancing barefoot in Central Park, or looked forward to a magical day in the future when some rain would come in and wash all the scum off the street.

In the 90s, when Giuliani started “cleaning” up the place, people appreciated the drop in crime rates, but also became nostalgic for the tough and seedy nature that had been characteristic of the place; you know, The Midnight Cowboy and Mean Streets days that everybody hated when they were living them in the 70s. “Gee, how sad there are no more XXX strip shows in Times Square! It’s like Disney World now.” Complaints about the mall-ification of NYC became a trending topic.

Well, STEP RIGHT UP, FOLKS, have I got a [freak] show for you!

Coney. Fucking. Island.

A pleasant, approximate 40-minute subway ride from Park Slope, and you have landed in Old/New New York, with something for every sensibility.

Want some corporate family fun? Luna Park is now staffed with friendly, tidy-looking youths in matching logo’ed polo shirts, and every carnival game has a winner! You no longer buy a strip of classic tear-off tickets, you purchase a plastic card that they swipe every time you ride a ride or play a game. One day, I even left a couple of 13-year-old boys in the park with strict instructions to meet back at a designated spot, while I sat on the beach and read a magazine. Try that in the good old days, and they probably would’ve been mugged for that strip of tickets. 

But not to worry, seediness seekers! There is still a sword swallower on the boardwalk! And a completely creepy haunted house that I wouldn’t dare enter. And at the non-Luna Park affiliated rides, carnies with missing teeth, smoking on the job, wearing whatever they damn well please (whatever exposes the highest surface space of tattoos), and not really giving a shit whether you’re strapped in properly. There are carnival games that no one can win.

And then there’s the iconic Nathan’s, which I imagine serves both masters.

Not to mention, there’s a beach, a pretty nice beach, at that. But the beach, too, has its split personality. Water’s pretty clean, and doesn’t stink. The white soft sand stretches deep and wide and is largely free of garbage, but there is the hidden danger of broken glass, so don’t get too cocky, and wear your flip-flops.

Eventually, of course, all vacations must come to an end. Time to get back on the D train, back to Gentrified Park Slope, where the streets are tree-lined, the shops are boutique-y and expensive, and you can procure high-end dumplings from food carts. BUT … you needn’t live without seediness, neighbors! There’s still hidden pockets of old Park Slope realness to be found: you can smell the Gowanus as you exit the subway at Union Street of a summer evening, some blocks are known to have “a rat problem,” and that musty Lisa Polanksi rag-bin  store  on 7^th avenue is somehow still open. 

So keep your smug-face on, Brooklyn, because even with your not-so-new-anymore status as a destination for things cool, hip, unique, Jay-Z-sanctioned, and artisanal, you remain largely un-mall-fied, and compared to the Disneyland Main Street USA that Times Square has become, you’re still kind of a shithole. And I mean that in a good way, you big Shithole.