Out and Back

I really heart NY

I worked in Connecticut for a couple of days this week. I flew into Newark, rented a car, and drove the 60 miles or so to Danbury, where my client was. Today I drove back so I could fly home. The sun was going down when I hit the Saw Mill Parkway, and by the time I got to the Bronx and began making my way towards the GWB and New Jersey, it was dark. I looked back over my shoulder at the lights of Manhattan as I crossed the bridge and said "Hi, New York!"

I was half-tempted, in my travel-crazed, sleep-deprived state, to blow off my flight home and just drive to Coney Island instead. I'll be working in Yonkers later this month... maybe I'll make it down then.

Montana

I spent a few days in Whitefish, Montana last week, not too far from Glacier National Park.  I was there for work, and as I wrote in an email to my brother, being there did me a lot of good.  I needed to remind myself what real mountains look like. The photo at left is the view from my room at Grouse Mountain Lodge.

It was cold and snowy but I didn't mind bundling up to venture out.  The people I met were friendly, and when they asked me where I was from I would say I lived in South Carolina but that I was from Seattle originally.  As soon as "Seattle" left my lips there was a smile or a nod of recognition, like we had an understanding.  I was suddenly less foreign.

The trip from South Carolina to Montana was a long haul... Greenville to Memphis to Minneapolis to Kalispell.  I was worried because I only had twenty minutes to make my connection in Memphis, but I made it without a hitch, only to discover in Minneapolis that my flight to Kalispell was delayed by two hours.  It was one of those maddening situations where the plane was there but the crew wasn't.  (They were stuck on a delayed flight from Canada.)  As soon as the gate agent announced that fact, a harried mother hollered out, "Just give me the keys, I'll fly the plane!"  One of her sons was a skateboarder, and as I walked past him on the moving walkway (I made several treks up and down the terminal in an effort to kill time) he noticed my sneakers (Etnies) and complimented me on them.  I guess Etnies are popular with skater boys, so I felt pretty cool.

Right: my tired Etnies. Haven't worn them since last winter, it's been nothing but flip-flops for me since April.

Sacrificing sleep

I am a busy girl.  Lately, when I haven't been on the road for work, I've been working at home and barely finding any time for myself to cram into the 24 hours I'm allotted each day.  I've started sacrificing sleep, much to my husband's annoyance (he positively hates it when I come to bed after he's already settled in for the night.)  No matter how quiet I try to be, I always seem to wake him up.  At least when I'm on the road I can stay up late and go to bed without bothering anyone.

My whole sleep/wake cycle has skewed forward about three or four hours.  Instead of going to bed at 10 or 11, I'm lucky to be in by 1 or 2.  I'm trying to wean myself off of this wacky schedule, but it's hard.  I've always been a bit of a night owl, but, oddly enough, the time of day I love the most is really, really early morning.  As in, you'd still call it nighttime if you didn't know what time it was.  I especially love the hours between 3 and 6 a.m. when, if I'm up, I can literally watch daybreak.

I remember one Saturday night/Sunday morning, back in my single days, when I got a typical middle-of-the-night phone call from this guy I slept with a lot in college, sort of fell in love with, and who still occasionally crosses my mind at weird, inopportune moments.  We hadn't talked in a while so we were on the phone for at least two hours that night/morning/whatever, and when we finally hung up I was so wide awake I didn't even want to think about going back to bed.  So I got dressed, went to this divey diner near my place for eggs, hashbrowns, toast, and nasty coffee, and then took a long drive.  It was still pitch black outside when I left and the stars were out, but by the time I got home it was daylight.  The best part of the drive was witnessing the moment-by-moment transition from night to morning as I made my way down the rural two-lane highway.

I love it when the sun is rising but you can still see stars.

New photo albums to the left

Uploaded the pictures from June's trips to Indiana, Michigan, and Florida.  Check 'em out to the left.

Here's a thought...

Regular readers know I was in Los Angeles last week for a few days.  I freakin' loved it, but I wasn't sure why.  It's smoggy, the traffic is wretched, and there are more overpriced eateries and fake boobs than you can shake a stick at.  Why would I love such a place?

Then it hit me.

Los Angeles is the Coney Island of the west.  Hear me out for a second before you start insisting that I'm wrong, that that title rightfully belongs to Las Vegas.

First of all, there is no place like Coney Island so I do recognize the faint sacrilege in even comparing L.A. to it.  All the same, though, here's my reasoning:

* Both are a bit sketchy in places.  I swear there are sections of Sunset that are interchangeable with Stillwell.

* Both are filled with people of all stripes, from all walks of life... some of whom are freakier than others.

* Both are near the ocean.

* Both are full of interesting sights, sounds, smells, and architecture.

* Hardly any shade to be found in either place on a sunny day.

* Both places have served as filming locations for movies, TV, and music videos. (OK, so maybe L.A. has a slight edge here.)

* L.A. may not have a bunch of amusement rides, but try cruising down Mulholland as fast as your car can safely go on a road that curvy and see how it compares to a spin on the Cyclone.  Also, L.A. has its own knockoff of the Wonder Wheel.

* Q Train?  101 at rush hour?  Same difference.

* Nathan's?  In-N-Out Burger?  Yeah.  (C.I. still wins in this category, though, because there's nothing in L.A. that even comes close to Totonno's.)

* Lola Staar would fit right in on Melrose Avenue, I think.

Maybe my argument is a little weak, but the only place on the west coast I've ever been that makes me feel like I'm not really that far away from my beloved Coney is Los Angeles.  Both places are infused with that same sense of popular history, and both places make you feel like there's nowhere else on earth quite like where you are right now.

(And unfortunately, perhaps Coney will soon be catching up to L.A. on the overpriced condominium front, as well.) *sigh*

Life's a Beach

OK, so it isn't Coney Island.....

and I'm not driving an El Camino....

But darn it, I've got me a Chevy and I'm at the beach!  How bad can life be?

Check out the album at left for more images....

What a morning

I watched The Hours over the weekend and it moved me enough to dig out my copy of Mrs. Dalloway, the Virginia Woolf novel that inspired Michael Cunningham's novel and, in turn, the movie.

This early sentence struck me:

And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning -- fresh as if issued to children on a beach.

I went right to these photos, taken last year at Coney Island.  (The first one was taken in April and the second one was taken in August.)

Late for school

As we drove home from the Motorama this past Saturday, hubby and I decided to poke around some of the back roads and explore some areas that we hadn't seen before.  As we drove along, we spotted a sign for a town called Cateechee.  Anyone with half a brain knows that you don't pass up the chance to check out a town with a name like that, so we turned off and headed on in.  One of the first things we noticed in this sleepy, run-down little town was an old, abandoned school building.  I was so glad I had my camera with me:

I took this shot from the car -- there were No Trespassing signs all over the place and there was an ominous looking man staring at us from his porch across the street, so we didn't linger too long.

I've always wondered why school buildings get abandoned like this.  This seems to be a trend nowadays: old neighborhood schools are abandoned and new schools are built on the fringes of suburbs.  The kids are bused out to the new school, sometimes traveling 30 minutes to an hour each way.  And we wonder why childhood obesity is a problem... back in the day, kids could walk to school, and now they have to sit on their butts on a bus for a couple of hours every day.

Another important piece of this is the fact that a school can serve as the center of its community.  When you take that away, the community becomes unmoored.  Cateechee was a good example of this.  The whole town had this weird, bleak feeling about it.  It was clear that the area was somewhat depressed economically.  (Turns out we were right -- when we got home we did a little googling and found out that Cateechee had once been a mill town.)  The mill -- or what's left of it -- sits down in a valley, covered in kudzu.  We saw it from the car but we didn't know what we were looking at.  As we drove out of the town, my husband commented that the whole area felt rather spooky to him, and I concurred.  Not only have they lost their livelihood, they've lost their school as well.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has some good information on the threat against neighborhood schools.  Check it out here.

Bellevue the new Brooklyn? Huh?

This article appeared in yesterday's Seattle Times... although it's been years since I lived in my hometown, I still like to keep up with the news and get the headlines by email every morning.

I read this piece with interest because it compares Bellevue, the "quintessential whitebread suburb" where I grew up, to Brooklyn, of all places.... the borough I would love to call home someday.  Freaky.  Here's a snippet:

Bellevue is a "cosmoburb" — a place tagged as a white suburb that is no longer either white or suburban. Bellevue now is less white than Seattle and has nearly as high a share of foreign-born residents (32 percent) as Brooklyn (38 percent).

Yet people can't bring themselves to call it a real city. At the Wikipedia online encyclopedia, the folks writing Bellevue's entry first labeled it a suburb, then a city, then back to suburb. After a big argument, they settled on the '90s term "edge city."

So what is Bellevue?

Whatever it is, it ain't no bedroom community. It's so brash it's demanding a subway tunnel. There's even research out debunking the notion that places like Bellevue are socially isolating. A UC Irvine study says burbs are more social than high-density cities.

Figures. Everything we thought we knew about suburbs is wrong. And just as we're figuring that out, they aren't suburbs anymore.

Wow.  I guess I'm not surprised.  Domino's has put out a "Brooklyn-style pizza" (which I tried the other week... bleah, don't waste your time) so I guess it only makes sense that one can now find a "Brooklyn-style neighborhood" out on the west coast.  As fascinating as all this is, I think I'd still rather eat the real pizza and live in the real Brooklyn.

Changes afoot in Coney Island

The rumblings of change in Coney Island are getting louder.  According to this article in the New York Daily News, the new owner of the properties along West 12th Street is notifying tenants that their leases are up and that it's time to vacate.  Fortunately (so far) it looks like places like Ruby's and Cha Cha's will be staying put.

I am holding my breath to see what is going to happen.  The Coney Island Development Corporation has an exciting and potentially very positive strategic plan for revitalizing the area, and my only hope is that the revitalization will both honor the history of Coney Island and embrace a more positive future.  I fear a massive gentrification of the area, to be honest, but I am more hopeful than anything that a balance can be struck that honors the wishes, expectations, etc. of ALL of Coney Island's stakeholders.

I just can't imagine going to Coney Island for a long weekend at a fancy spa hotel type place, nor can I imagine it all glitzed out like Las Vegas or Atlantic City.  It was the Atlantic City of its day back around the turn of the century, yes, but that was before neon lights and all the crazy stuff you see in those kinds of towns today.  Coney Island in its heyday was still beautifully ephemeral.  Everything was made of spit and cardboard and a stray spark from bad electrical wiring or an unextinguished cigarette could turn the whole amusement area into a pile of ashes in minutes.  It has always been a place for entrepreneurs and prospectors, from Fred Thompson to George C. Tilyou all the way up to Dick Zigun and the Coney Island USA crew.  It will never be a place for chain stores and big box retailers... it's for the little guy, and it should stay that way.

Keep your fingers crossed.

Goodbye my Coney Island baby

I hopped the 6 a.m. bus to New York on Saturday morning, just to spend a few hours in Manhattan and Brooklyn.  I won't be able to do that so easily for much longer, so I needed to say my goodbyes.

Coney Island was so quiet.  I got there around 11 a.m., before most of the food stands and souvenir shops and amusements were open.  The picture to the left is one I took with my cell phone camera, so it's a little bit on the low-res side.  It was a cool, overcast morning.... the beach was almost completely deserted except for a few morning walkers and an old man in a Speedo.  The usual characters populated the boardwalk, including a guy who thanked me for my smile as I passed him.  There were also some guys riding up and down the boardwalk on recumbent bikes with big signs advertising the opening of a new Best Buy in Bay Ridge.  An NYPD cruiser came by, too, its weight making the boardwalk rumble as it passed.

As I paced, trying to think of an appropriate way to say goodbye (at least for now) to the place I love so much, I noticed that the old mural (the one with those lines of poetry that so struck me the last time I was there) had been painted over.  A new mural was in its place, with images of Coney Island and some quotations about it, including George C. Tilyou's famous words:

If Paris is France, then Coney Island, between June and September, is the world.

I decided that I should go onto the beach (something I've never done) and put my feet in the water.  I slipped my sandals off and carried them in my hand as I walked down the steps that led from the boardwalk to the sand.  I made my way gingerly toward the water, slaloming between the metal trash cans and trying to avoid stepping on beach glass and cigarette butts.  My feet followed the ruts left by the truck which had (presumably) groomed the sand the night before, and the damp sand squished between my toes in a satisfying way.  I reached the water and wandered in up to my calves, and a bigger-than-I-was-expecting wave came up and splashed the hems of my jeans.  I didn't mind, though.  I walked up the beach toward the pier, letting the water wash over my feet and legs as I went.  The lifeguards, orange dots up and down the beach, seemed to be sleeping.

As I walked, I thought about baptism and about healing waters.  People flock from all over to the grotto at Lourdes in France to seek the water's healing properties.  In Bath, England, you can still have a taste of the ancient water that was once thought to have important health benefits.  (I've tasted it, and it's nasty... sulphurous and sour.)  I think my personal healing waters will always be the Atlantic ocean.... where it touches the sand in Brooklyn.

After rinsing off my feet, I stopped by the Lola Staar souvenir shop on the boardwalk.  I bought some neat postcards, an "I Heart Coney Island" bumper sticker, a fridge magnet, and a snowglobe.  After paying for my stuff, I shared a few minutes' conversation with Lola (aka Dianna Carlin) herself.  She asked if I was visiting from somewhere, and I told her that I live in Pennsylvania but that I have been coming to Coney Island for almost ten years.  I told her about my upcoming move and that this was likely to be my last visit for awhile.  She nodded sympathetically and said, "Well, you can always look at your snowglobe whenever you miss Coney Island."

I wandered through the amusement area on my way back to the subway station, and who should I see sauntering along Surf Avenue, tattooed arms coming out of his "Sodom by the Sea" T-Shirt (another Lola Staar creation), but Dick Zigun, the head honcho at Coney Island USA and the unofficial mayor of Coney Island.  Dick is a guy I admire, the way some New Yorkers admire Giuliani.  I almost stopped him so I could introduce myself, but I didn't want to bother him.  It was the closest I've come to a celebrity sighting in New York in a long time, and it was cool to see him in his natural habitat, walking, in the flesh, down the street.  Next time, Dick, I'll buy you a hot dog and a beer.

I headed back to the subway station and rode the N train back to Manhattan for a few more hours of sightseeing and walking around, but the grit in my sandals and a quote from that new mural stayed with me for the rest of the day:

Coney Islanders have sand in their shoes.  Once it gets in, it never gets out.

A piece of my childhood

When I was a kid, there was nothing better than a trip to the Fun Forest at Seattle Center.  My parents would take me there during the summer, and those of us on the elementary school safety patrol got to go there for a day every spring as a reward for our service. 

I remember the Fun Forest very fondly.  When I was a child, it seemed like there were hundreds of rides.  There were old-timey cars that you could drive around a track through a pretty little forested area, a "Snoopy and the Red Baron" ride with airplanes that could be raised or lowered with the pull of a lever, a Yo Yo, and a beautiful blue Octopus ride with brightly colored cars that spun wildly.  There was the Rainbow Chaser, which was the first "kiddie coaster" I ever rode, and the Galaxi, which was my first "big" coaster.  I can also remember a Huss Enterprise, a couple of Ferris Wheels (one big and one small), a Zipper, a Matterhorn, and even a skyway.