The Collected Coney Island Series

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Part 1

"Chaos broke loose as the park burned. As the one-armed Captain Bonavita strove to save his big cats with only the swiftly encroaching flames for illumination, some of the terrified animals escaped. A lion named Black Prince rushed into the streets, among crowds of onlookers, and was shot by police. By morning, the fire was out, and Dreamland was reduced to a soggy, smoldering mess"
- From the Wikipedia entry on Dreamland

Coney Island has long been a horrible reflection of American values.  Decades before Disneyland opened, Robert Moses referred to Coney Island as "tawdry".  It is and was always a horrible depressing place, not unlike the dingy carnivals that still schlep from town to town to this very day.

Among the amusements were domesticated elephants. The rogue Topsey the Elephant was killed when she was electrocuted with alternating current by Thomas Edison.
- From the Wikipedia entry on Luna Park

Topsey was executed for killing a handler who thought it would be nice to feed her a lit cigarette.  But anyway, Coney Island was dreary in 1906, and it's even worse today...Yet Luna Park is being rebuilt, so someone must like hot concrete, gaudy lights, and blaring music, with things like Aini crawling sleeping on the sidewalk in a puddle of his own vomit.

Coney Island is sort of what would happen if you allowed the Soviets to build an amusement park for you.  Only with lower safety standards than the Soviets would have allowed.  Steeplechase Park, for example, featured a ride on horses on rails at high speed over a quarter mile, with plenty of rises and dips.  There were of course no safety straps or anything like that.  It was hold onto the slick metal horse or go splat.  He also operated a ride in which participants were run in a troughed conveyor at high speeds, which led to the predicable amount of maimings.

Steeplechase burned during the 1907 season, destroying most of the park. The morning after the fire, owner George Tilyou posted a sign outside the park. It read:

"To enquiring friends: I have troubles today that I had not yesterday. I had troubles yesterday which I have not today. On this site will be built a bigger, better, Steeplechase Park. Admission to the burning ruins -- Ten cents."

(bolding mine)

Steeplechase was later sold to Fred Trump, father of Donald Trump...Fred held a party where invited guests could heave bricks through windows, etc.  Apparently, there was a lot of enthusiasm involved.  When Fred couldn't build a casino there, he sold it to the city.  The parachute tower still stands to this day, because nobody can figure out how to demolish it.  Yes, they had a parachute tower.

It all ended - at least as a major enterprise - in 1964, with every single park suffering several major fires.  It has been a wasteland ever since, though since 2003, there has been interest in bringing the horror back, for reasons that defy explanation.  51,000 people currently live on Coney Island, with an average income of $21K/year, though Aini is surely hauling that average down.  Given the cost of living in the NYC area, basically, they want to build another gaudy monstrosity in crack central.

Welcome to the 21st century.  We're doing all the dumb shit they did in the 20th century, only dumber.

Part 2

Coney Island isn't just decaying hulks of amusement rides and horror-inducing "cute" animal motifs that stare at you with rusty mouths and gaping eye sockets.  It's not just the ghost of Topsey the Elephant, or Captain Jack Bonavita, still trying to save his lions from the flames.

It's not just awful, soul-killing projects where children exist to sell drugs to each other.  It's not just the ghost of Abraham "Kid Twist" Reles staring up with hate-filled eyes at the 6th window of the Half Moon Hotel, waiting patiently for his revenge on the rest of Murder, Inc, (after being shoved out that window while under police protection), all of whom have been dead for half a century.

It's not just the bloodstains on the Shore Parkway sidewalk, where Jimmy Eppolito and his son were gunned down by the DeMeo crew, half a block from the ruins of a deserted high school.  It's not just the haunted remains of the Saint Lucia, the infamous restaurant where mafia gangs sat to decide who lived and who died.  It's not just the Russian mob that moved in more recently, to teach the Italians and Sicilians a thing or two about violence and depravity.

No, Coney Island is far more than all of this.  Its history is a funhouse mirror of our nation's history, almost as if you took America and boiled it down until nothing was left but grime.  It horrifies us because we can't pretend that it isn't, and we can't look away.  It reminds us that not everyone's kid grows up to be a success, that for every kid that makes it, there's three that die in the projects, or lie on the sidewalk of Surf Avenue, hiccupping vomit all over the "cat girl" tattoos and implants on their faces.  It reminds us of The Slide, and what happens to the unfortunates that reach the bottom (or, in Aini's case, those who race for it).

Coney Island is that little piece of us that wants to go laugh at the freaks, consumed with the notion of our superiority.  It's that little piece of us that likes to look at the hookers and the pimps and the bloodstains and the garbage, so that we may feel a little cleaner ourselves...As if seeing these horrible things displayed on the outside can make us feel better about the shitty compromises and neglect that we keep on the inside.

And this is why there will always be a Coney Island, a circle of hell right in The City, where gaudy shit is mistaken for class and filth is mistaken for entertainment, where monsters dressed as humans torment broken down kings of the jungle, where our failed kids go to mutilate themselves in the name of their microculture.

Eat it up, America.  It's been what's for dinner for 146 years.

Part 3

The very worst thing about Coney Island is that it – like Tucson – reflects all of America, because it is a funhouse mirror reflecting all of our foibles and petty bullshit back in a way that we can't ignore.  Who went to go see elephants pushed down slides?  We did.  Who went to watch lions get tormented in public?  Oh, yeah, America did.  You get my drift.

Funhouse mirrors are interesting, because they sometimes show you more Truth than you're really interested in seeing.  The first mirror shows you as a fresh-faced 8 year old, excited at the world.  The second shows you at 16, with a huge head and a skinny body.  The next one shows you in military gear, with a gaping look of horror on your face.  Then there's the one that makes you look old...A bit thicker around the middle, more grey hair than you're comfortable with, etc.  You KNOW you're still that 8 year old kid, but hoo boy, does that mirror make you look like a horse broken down in the harness.

And you can never forget what you see in those mirrors...You can never really leave the funhouse.  Everything around you looks distorted; it's all a caricature of itself.  The fat bastards that run the country really ARE fat, chinless & neck-less, jowls quivering with greed & glee.  The religious nuts really ARE all perverts, each of them in turn being caught with fat little boys in places like Costa Rica or Los Angeles.  Then they get on TV and sob about how they let everyone down, but they'll change, oh yes, they'll change.  And overbite yahoos nationwide make grunting noises and send them cheques. 

I ask you:  Does this look like a rational world to you?  Does this look like 10,000 years of progress?  Or maybe we're just all stuck in some horrible funhouse somewhere, lost in an endless maze of nightmares, while the real world - the sane world - moves along, occasionally wondering what happened to us?

Or maybe – and this is the part that gets me thinking – maybe  the whole country is stuck in that funhouse, and we're just seeing reflections from the entrance, and hearing sounds of horror whispering out of endless glass hallways.  Maybe the whole world's been stuck in there since Gavril Princip opened the funhouse door and ordered a few million dumpsters to haul off the mangled results, out back.

And maybe the world's talked itself into believing that the funhouse is the only Right & Proper place to be, because they're rather taken with the distorted and menacing appearance of Jesus and Mohammed and George Washington and Patrick Henry and all the other Gods they've chosen for themselves.

If that is the case, then the world needs a good, old-fashioned Coney Island fire.

Just sayin'.

Part 4

Coney Island may have started out as a place, but it's become a state of mind.  It's that person who thinks watching Faces of Death is entertainment.  It's the jackass who HAW HAWs at someone else's break up.  It's the fat fucking face of Po'buckerism all over America, in every bar, workplace, chat room, whatever, all around us.  The really fun part is that people think they're being bad or rebellious when they do this sort of shit, while in reality, they're just part of The Machine.

Just look around you.  Look at the cow-faced masses of people who worry about what Lindsay Lohan is up to, or who take a little extra time out to make some stranger's day just a little bit longer.  You know who I'm talking about...The jackass who purposefully tries to pace you on the highway, so you can't change lanes.  The low-foreheaded, moronic kids who "stick it to the man" by hassling any passers-by that don't look ready to beat their fucking asses.  The clerk at the DMV who lives to send people back to the end of the line.

The fact that these people live long enough to breed is, in my opinion, proof of a malevolent god.  The fact that so many of them live long enough to justify programming decisions like Dancing With the Stars is proof that primates weren't the way to go with intelligent life.  We're just a little too smart to die out, and just a little too dumb to do anything more worthwhile than tormenting anyone that comes within arm's reach.

And THAT, RIGHT FUCKING THERE, is Coney Island.  It's what made it possible, it's why the place has stayed in existence for 146 years.  It's the normal state of existence for domesticated primates (with some exceptions, which will be dealt with in part V), and it's why most people should be sewn into sacks with politicians and be thrown in the ocean.  For their own good.

Well, no, scratch that.  It's obviously not to their benefit.  It's to everyone else's benefit.  By this I mean "me", though a few of you may also be exceptions.  Christ.  Everyone get the fuck off of my planet.  I hate you all.

Part 5

Okay, I've told you all about Coney Island – or enough, anyway – to give you a pretty good idea of the banality of the human condition.  Thing is, humans aren't limited to that sort of behavior.  A certain few can rise above that, and do things that are - in one way or another – great.

Greatness, of course, comes in many shapes and sizes.  From individual heroics demonstrated by people like John Luther Jones, to people who do amazing things such as the Apollo program, or even just your garden variety single mother who works her ass off trying to properly raise 3 kids.  A person that won't tolerate bigotry quietly, or all of these OWS spags running around raising hell because the system they live in is sick to the core.  That sort of thing.

Everyone has a natural inclination to get on the bus to Coney Island.  Every person has in them the innate pettiness and banal evil to fit right in, if they allow it.  The difference between the people who DO get on the bus and the people that DON'T get on the bus is simply a matter of personal courage.

Who hasn't ever been in a situation, for example, where someone was marginalized for being Black, or Gay, or something similar?  Did you speak up?  A simple "I don't want to hear that bullshit" is all it takes to stay off the bus.  Few people will ever have to physically endanger themselves for the sake of another...But if that happened, would you stand up and intervene, or would you pretend not to see it?

Sitting idly by while someone is abused – or worse, joining in – is a ticket to Coney Island.  That's the bad news.  The good news is that you can leave Coney Island anytime you want, just by getting up on your hind legs now, even if you didn't do it before.  The past is dead, it's what you do TODAY that matters...Because you only get one life, and the ride is shorter than you'd believe.  For all you know, there might not BE a tomorrow.  So you live for today, IN today, and you do what's right.

Or get on the bus.

Or Kill Me.

[LMNO]

I must admit, I'm a sucker for an upbeat ending.

I also forgot how horrible a person Aini was.

[Pergamos]

Do you have a blog where you collect your 5 part series by any chance?  I have seen a few bits and pieces but this is the first one I have seen whole.  I'd love to see more.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Do you have a blog where you collect your 5 part series by any chance?  I have seen a few bits and pieces but this is the first one I have seen whole.  I'd love to see more.

This is a superb idea. I'd also like to see a TGRR Anthology. I would pay for a hardcopy of that shit, in a hot second.

[EK WAFFLR]

Do you have a blog where you collect your 5 part series by any chance?  I have seen a few bits and pieces but this is the first one I have seen whole.  I'd love to see more.

This is a superb idea. I'd also like to see a TGRR Anthology. I would pay for a hardcopy of that shit, in a hot second.

THIS! SO MUCH THIS