Coney Island

So Kevin and I ventured to Coney Island today, which turned out to be one of the most amazing experiences that I've had up here so far. It was a nice ride, to start with - past my station, the N train goes above ground, and starts to get swallowed up by the odd jungle that surrounds New York City. Each successive station gets more rundown, unkempt and open air, and as the houses grow taller and start spacing out, the city starts taking on a whole other distinctive flavor.

One point of interest is that Coney Island is the home of Little Russia - basically all of the shops behind the boardwalk were Russian owned, complete with Russian symbols and very Russian people manning the counters. The best example was the cafe we walked into, hoping to get my first coffee of the day (the most vital one, mind you). "Could I get an iced coffee?" I say. "Coffee, coffee?" says the woman behind the counter in very broken, Russian-accented English. "Umm, yes ma'am?" "Iced?" she asks. "Yes ma'am." She pulls out a cold-cup and motions towards a large urn, but doesn't put any ice in it, then pulls out a tub of half-and-half and motions to pour into it. "No, no," I say, "black is fine." "No milk?" "No ma'am." She looks confused, but pulls out another carton that I think must be sugar. "No sugar," I say, but she looks confused again and says, "ice?" "Oh, yeah, sorry, ice would be great." She gives me half a cup of ice. "Okay? Okay?" she keeps asking, and I'm like, "yes?" I fill my cup with the cooled coffee, and then wait for several minutes for her to get me a straw. I pay up, refuse her again as she offers me sugar, only to find out that the coffee she'd given me was definitely not regular coffee. I actually don't know what it was - it was flavored or something. I was totally not down for that.

I wonder if the fact that so much of my blog revolves around coffee - and getting it, not getting it, or getting it done wrong - is a good thing or a bad thing? Or just a facet of my personality at the moment that is completely impossible to get around?

Coney is a really fascinating study, though. I can't entirely put my finger on what attracts me to it, although it is certainly that it seems stuck in a time long past. It's a carnival that's completely out of its era, but marches stoically on as its world changes around it. It's certainly a run-down place, in many senses - the old amusement parks are still functioning, if clearly ravaged by many years of less than favorable upkeep. The boardwalk is still beautiful, the beaches are still clean, and the water is still so blue, but the evidence of the passing years is strong, and brings up this wave of nostalgia for me. I'm not exactly sure why - in some sense, it reminds me a lot of Sea Isle City, and all the weeks I spent there as a child. The place is legitimately inspiring, though, and I can really understand why so many movies take place there. It's a place stuck in time, a place rife with spirits of old things and old gods somehow. I walked that boardwalk well aware of the many other, older people who did so. So interesting.

We had two shows today, but it was the second one that was the exciting one. At a certain point, the character Lem slips a bracelet off of Virginia's wrist - this is basically one of the most important parts of the plot, as the bracelet is the hinge on which the conflict turns. But when Lem yanked on the bracelet (because this guy does nothing at all subtly), the wire snapped and the "pearls" went literally everywhere. Julia, Simon and I had to cover our mouths for laughing so hard, but a few minutes later, I was asked to literally run to the women's dressing room, grab a backup bracelet, and book it around the building to hand deliver it. That was exciting. The actors all worked it out really well, though, picking up the pearls that Grant couldn't get to and joking about the bracelet magically being fixed near the end of the show. That was the first really major malfunction I can remember us having, and we really took it like champs - it was impressive.