If you want to ride this wheel of life, it's roll on
We drove four hours to Brooklyn and seven hours back and it was worth every second, despite the fact that as soon as we crossed from Queens into Brooklyn, the hitherto luminous sky opened up into a spectrum of rain which would persist until well into our return to Massachusetts. All the highway safety signs on the Merritt Parkway had gotten into the act for May the Fourth: "Slow Down You Will." "Han Says Solo Down." "Buckle Up Young Skywalker." I had packed a book as is my custom for going anywhere and did not have recourse to it once.
Thanks to the lunch rush which we arrived just in time for, we did not actually get to queue for our hot dogs at Nathan's until after the animated shorts program, but when we did it was only misting, one of the pebble-dash outdoor tables under its fixed metal parasol was dry enough to take seats at, the dogs were delicious, the seagulls were jealous, and an eleventh birthday party was being celebrated within immediate earshot with enthusiastic shrieks and a cake-topper sparkler that went off like a Catherine wheel. "I wish I was eleven!" a young man sitting behind us with his burger called. "It was 2011! Everything was good!" We would later observe with satisfaction that the birthday child and friends who had pleaded to ride the Thunderbolt had been tall enough to do so and loved it.
We had gone to the 25th Annual Coney Island Film Festival specifically for Steve Havelka and Nat Strange's The Animated Adventures of Pokey the Penguin (2025), adapted from the webcomic which I have been reading since college and whose writers via the better powers of the internet are friends of![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch's. Fortunately we had no difficulty finding nice things to say about their cinematic debut, a five-minute delight of shyster shenanigans including an accidentally combination cathedral and DMV and an international offer cautioned to be void in Lemuria. It loses nothing and in fact gains an inventive layer of detail in the translation to traditional animation from all-caps MS Paint, e.g. a beet instead of a carrot for the nose of a fast-talking snowman who could outbooze W. C. Fields. Steal a seat if it comes to a film festival near you. Other particularly compelling shorts were the work of Peter Ahern, Alisa Stern and Scott Ampleford, Jay Marks, Rob Hadley and Patrick Breen, and Briar Chung.
In the gift shop afterward, Rob presented me with the most appropriate of the Mermaid Parade T-shirts and I inflicted on him the playscript of Jonny Porkpie's A Day on the Boardwalk, A Night at the Stripshow (2024), which turned gratifyingly out to be a double with its predecessor in Marx-tribute burlesque, The Bawdy House (2007). I would return for the museum and its cavalcade of irreplaceable ephemera alone. Rob ordered a lager in a hellishly decorated can among the wall-to-wall, not to mention floor-to-ceiling kitsch of the Freak Bar and drank it regarded by a small stuffed alligator in a tiara and lei.
Deno's had closed for manifestly inclement weather by the time we had finished our much-needed hot dogs and thus we will need to return for the Wonder Wheel, but we walked through the attractions of Luna Park in the rain and resisted the siren spiel of the arcade, although I have learned that if I ever want to ring-toss for an anthropomorphic package of ramen or a plushie can of Spam, I know now where to do it.
I never had the chance to ride the Parachute Jump on account of Steeplechase Park closing in 1964, but it remains a monumental piece of public art even when desaturated by overcast. My grandparents never took me to Coney Island, but I associate it with them, Brooklyn-born long before gentrification. Old Orchard Beach where I learned to play skeeball was always, by slightly resigned comparison, referred to in their household as Schlock City.
We rode the Cyclone. It had been a full decade since we were on a roller coaster together and longer since our first time on the Cyclone—I was medically prohibited from the entire concept for about three years and then there were additional complications such as this pandemic. Open-air, I rejoiced in its weightless plunges and crests and the mule-kicks of its banked turns through the intricate wickerwork of its own timber and steel and its pops of sneaky air time. The car behind us screamed happily from the second we tipped over the top of the lift hill. The rain which had been pelting healthily for much of the afternoon held off for the duration of our ride and resumed as soon as we fizzed off the train, grinning our heads off all the way back to the car. What I love about coasters is the illusion of aerobatics. The notion that one could actually kill me held no attraction and this one doesn't even seem to have racked up my back.
In a moment of social uncertainty, I did not exchange contact information with the photographer who asked if he could take my picture on the boardwalk and so unless he posts it somewhere public, I expect never to see his picture of me standing in the blowing rain under the sprigged coral umbrella that Rob rescued about six years ago from the unclaimed properties of the theater's lost and found, but earlier in the afternoon Rob had taken a portrait of his own; he entitled it "Three Mermaids."
Between the zero sleep which I had gotten last night and the snail's pace at which we were leaving the city between construction and weather, I went out like a light before we even made it off of I-678 and woke up somewhere around New Haven with the fortunate results that I could take over driving once we hit the Pike in torrential rain and Rob was done. I did not collide with the FedEx truck which kept weaving across the lanes obscured in spray and reflection and I hung a prudent distance back from the sedan which was doing even more of the same. The fact that we could park in front of our own apartment was super-lagniappe. I expect to be toast tomorrow, but I regret nothing of this flash trip. I do not intend it to be another six years before I am in New York again.
Thanks to the lunch rush which we arrived just in time for, we did not actually get to queue for our hot dogs at Nathan's until after the animated shorts program, but when we did it was only misting, one of the pebble-dash outdoor tables under its fixed metal parasol was dry enough to take seats at, the dogs were delicious, the seagulls were jealous, and an eleventh birthday party was being celebrated within immediate earshot with enthusiastic shrieks and a cake-topper sparkler that went off like a Catherine wheel. "I wish I was eleven!" a young man sitting behind us with his burger called. "It was 2011! Everything was good!" We would later observe with satisfaction that the birthday child and friends who had pleaded to ride the Thunderbolt had been tall enough to do so and loved it.
We had gone to the 25th Annual Coney Island Film Festival specifically for Steve Havelka and Nat Strange's The Animated Adventures of Pokey the Penguin (2025), adapted from the webcomic which I have been reading since college and whose writers via the better powers of the internet are friends of
spatch's. Fortunately we had no difficulty finding nice things to say about their cinematic debut, a five-minute delight of shyster shenanigans including an accidentally combination cathedral and DMV and an international offer cautioned to be void in Lemuria. It loses nothing and in fact gains an inventive layer of detail in the translation to traditional animation from all-caps MS Paint, e.g. a beet instead of a carrot for the nose of a fast-talking snowman who could outbooze W. C. Fields. Steal a seat if it comes to a film festival near you. Other particularly compelling shorts were the work of Peter Ahern, Alisa Stern and Scott Ampleford, Jay Marks, Rob Hadley and Patrick Breen, and Briar Chung.
In the gift shop afterward, Rob presented me with the most appropriate of the Mermaid Parade T-shirts and I inflicted on him the playscript of Jonny Porkpie's A Day on the Boardwalk, A Night at the Stripshow (2024), which turned gratifyingly out to be a double with its predecessor in Marx-tribute burlesque, The Bawdy House (2007). I would return for the museum and its cavalcade of irreplaceable ephemera alone. Rob ordered a lager in a hellishly decorated can among the wall-to-wall, not to mention floor-to-ceiling kitsch of the Freak Bar and drank it regarded by a small stuffed alligator in a tiara and lei.
Deno's had closed for manifestly inclement weather by the time we had finished our much-needed hot dogs and thus we will need to return for the Wonder Wheel, but we walked through the attractions of Luna Park in the rain and resisted the siren spiel of the arcade, although I have learned that if I ever want to ring-toss for an anthropomorphic package of ramen or a plushie can of Spam, I know now where to do it.
I never had the chance to ride the Parachute Jump on account of Steeplechase Park closing in 1964, but it remains a monumental piece of public art even when desaturated by overcast. My grandparents never took me to Coney Island, but I associate it with them, Brooklyn-born long before gentrification. Old Orchard Beach where I learned to play skeeball was always, by slightly resigned comparison, referred to in their household as Schlock City.
We rode the Cyclone. It had been a full decade since we were on a roller coaster together and longer since our first time on the Cyclone—I was medically prohibited from the entire concept for about three years and then there were additional complications such as this pandemic. Open-air, I rejoiced in its weightless plunges and crests and the mule-kicks of its banked turns through the intricate wickerwork of its own timber and steel and its pops of sneaky air time. The car behind us screamed happily from the second we tipped over the top of the lift hill. The rain which had been pelting healthily for much of the afternoon held off for the duration of our ride and resumed as soon as we fizzed off the train, grinning our heads off all the way back to the car. What I love about coasters is the illusion of aerobatics. The notion that one could actually kill me held no attraction and this one doesn't even seem to have racked up my back.
In a moment of social uncertainty, I did not exchange contact information with the photographer who asked if he could take my picture on the boardwalk and so unless he posts it somewhere public, I expect never to see his picture of me standing in the blowing rain under the sprigged coral umbrella that Rob rescued about six years ago from the unclaimed properties of the theater's lost and found, but earlier in the afternoon Rob had taken a portrait of his own; he entitled it "Three Mermaids."
Between the zero sleep which I had gotten last night and the snail's pace at which we were leaving the city between construction and weather, I went out like a light before we even made it off of I-678 and woke up somewhere around New Haven with the fortunate results that I could take over driving once we hit the Pike in torrential rain and Rob was done. I did not collide with the FedEx truck which kept weaving across the lanes obscured in spray and reflection and I hung a prudent distance back from the sedan which was doing even more of the same. The fact that we could park in front of our own apartment was super-lagniappe. I expect to be toast tomorrow, but I regret nothing of this flash trip. I do not intend it to be another six years before I am in New York again.
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Thank you! The drive would have been nicer without the ludicrous delays of the return, but I was glad we could do it, too.
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Understood, and serious sympathies. I hope you have excellent amusement parks near you.
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*hugs*
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Run people over in my 2001 Honda Civic I will
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You've got my vote.
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Thank you! It was such a good thing to be able to do.
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I am very much a fan of more of this.
*hugs*
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Thank you! It makes me so happy that traveling, however tiredly and cautiously, is part of my life again.
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"You can't see the bottom!"
"It's a metaphor for life!"
On-ride footage of the Cyclone in 1994! That's fantastic! Thank you!
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Thank you! I would cheerfully see their animated debut again if it came to a theater a little nearer me this time.
I love the photo of you with the mermaid. Someone knew you were coming!
Hee. Coney Island has been associated with mermaids for ages—local streets include Neptune and Mermaid Avenues—but I prefer your interpretation.
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Good job avoiding weaving trucks and sedans on the way home, too!
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Thank you!
And what you say afterward makes the why of it completely clear, as do the photos and links. I really love the photo of what looks to me like a ferris wheel budding off other ferris wheels (I guess this is the Wonder Wheel?).
It's the signage for Luna Park, modeled after the crescent pinwheels of the entrance of the original park! The Wonder Wheel itself is just visible end-on in the corner of my photo. None of my tries at it came out well, but
Love your description of riding the roller coaster--love "intricate wickerwork of timber and steel." And plushies of a container of spam?! Wonderful!
I had never seen a plushie spam tin before! Now I know!
Good job avoiding weaving trucks and sedans on the way home, too!
It seemed a waste to have such a good day in New York and then wipe out on the Pike!
*hugs*
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What a gorgeous, ethereal structure!
Thank you ^_^
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I love the both the mermaid photo and the mermaid T-shirt, which I hope to meet some day.
Nine
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I should be pleased to introduce you!
*hugs*