No Bar talk today. I’m treating myself.
My day didn’t really get started in Brooklyn, but at the Highline Ballroom in Manhattan where I went to a service of the Church of Stop Shopping. Rev. Billy gave a wonderful sermon about pushing back against the forces that seek to commoditize our lives and devour our public space. Fight the monoculture. Changellujah. Freakallujah.
At the service, the church saint-ified Dick Zigun, the mayor of Coney Island, who talked about the perils of rezoning, how the weirdness of the place is in danger of falling into the hands of real estate developers. It was a beautiful, urgent gathering of people.
On the F train headed back to Brooklyn, I started thinking about the fragility of so many of the odd places in this city, like Coney Island, that I hold dear. At W4 Station, a D train was across the platform. I hesitated, then bolted across the platform to the Stillwell Ave-bound D train.
And so I spent the late afternoon hours wandering around the boardwalk, which was bustling with people of all shapes, sizes, and colors. Some had shirts, some didn’t. Some were on bikes, some on foot, some glided past without me seeing how they were moving. Shoot the Freak was there, of course, and while there was a large crowd to watch, apparently none of them wanted to actually pick up the gun and shoot.
Sirens blazed, bells rang, children screamed; the entire shore was cacophonic. The mighty ocean was hardly noticed amidst the commotion.
I’m a fan of simple answers to simple questions, which stand in stark contrast to the convoluted projections and predictions that are the lifeblood of treacherous real estate developers. My simple question here is: what’s wrong with Coney Island? My simple answer is “nothing.”
Soon I grew hungry, and went to board the Manhattan-bound D only a few stops to go to L&B Spumoni Garden for a delicious square slice and small cup of layered spumoni. As I sat on a plastic bench in a crowd of people all eating the same thing I was, an ice cream truck rolled by with hip-hop music blaring harshly out of crudely mounted speakers on the side of the truck. The truck lingered, then lurched off the block.
I sucked the last of my melting spumoni out of its crumpled paper cup, and proceeded through Bensonhurst, down Avenue U to the F train that would take me home. I marveled at what a wonderful city this is, and at my fortune for living here. The hip-hop ice cream truck then barreled down the avenue, weaving past double-parked cars and into oncoming traffic. The song was different, but the music was unmistakably the same.
As dusk approached, I walked up the stairs to the F train, boarded near the conductor’s position, and started my journey home.