After we had eaten our fill at Chelsea Food Market on Saturday, Mr. Pom was waxing nostalgic (or just feeling youthful after the extra-strong cappuccinos) and declared that we would next take a ride on the Staten Island Ferry.
Why? Just because. He’s that kinda guy.
Mr. Pom loves to drive in the city and though we had nothing going on in Staten Island (I’d say: who does, but I don’t want to get flamed!) , he wanted to be out on the open water in the sunshine, and then get to drive across the very high and scary Verrazano Narrows Bridge (featured in Saturday Night Fever, which I thought was on the Brooklyn Bridge but he was right and I was wrong. So rare.)
Took awhile for us to get our bearings to drive from Chelsea over to the ferry. When we got there we circled a few times, no easy feat with the one way streets and roads blocked for security. “Where’s the loading ramp for cars? Oops. Not here – that’s Homeland Security”
Well, duh, they banned cars from the ferry since 9/11. (Last time we were on the ferry: we weren’t married: you do the math.) We wanted to ride the ferry, but we didn’t want to pay for parking, then pay for a round trip ticket for 3 on the ferry (it’s not that much fun), so we were in quandary.
“Let’s go to that beach in Brooklyn,” The Teen piped up from the back seat.
Beach in Brooklyn? All I can think of is that Neil Simon play….what is she talking about?
“Coney Island!” Mr. Pom said (he and The Teen are of one mind. Scary)
Last time we’d try to take her there, we’d been in gridlock traffic on a summer Sunday afternoon and got off The Belt Parkway and had gelato in Little Italy instead. So with the help of GPS, we made our way to Coney Island in record time. There are gorgeous views of Manhattan on the drive over, but every time we tried to pull off the road to take a picture, we’d end up behind box cars in the rail yards.
Coney Island. What can I say? It’s everything like you’ve imagined and nothing like you’d imagine.
In winter, the stores along the boardwalk are boarded up, but the crazy signs and goofy promotions are still prominent.
The kiddie rides are eerily shuttered and raincovers are windblown and flapping in the onshore wind. Eaten cobs of corn are piled neatly on one ride and we suspected it is a raccoon’s nest.
But the sun is out and there are a lot of strollers bundled up in track suits or fur hats and boots. The faces are broad, Slavic faces, faces that look used to the cold and prefer winter weather. Older couples in woolen coats with shopping bags walk slowly along next to younger couples bundled up in fur-trimmed hoodies and nuzzling each other behind the privacy of their hoods.
Kids and dog run free, yapping at each other’s heels, on wide open expanses of beach that normally would be bumper to bumper blankets in the sand. The gulls cry as loudly as ever and patient fishermen set traps and poles and smoke cigarettes and drink from Styrofoam cups. Odd bits of languages are filtered by the wind and snatches of foreign words follow their speakers as the ocean wind whips everything behind us like a broom.
We decide to walk to the next pier past the few open stands selling slices of pizza and buttered corn in the summers and doing a good business now in coffee and knishes. Knots of regulars sit at tables or smoke cigars in huddles, gesturing with coffee cups to each other and passing neighbors.
We are the tourists as we walk in the sun and we smile at those faces that meet our eyes. An older lady rides by on a fancy bike with a broad seat that has a back and wide tires and my daughter says, “Get one like that, Mom.”
On the pier, it is colder but we challenge each other to make it to the end. Nets lie on benches, some prepped with raw chicken or fish, some in various stages of mending. Two high school age girls take pictures for a class project and one fishermen promises to let them know when he is ready to throw the net over the pier. I ready my camera, but miss the moment and are left with only a shot of the water closing over the net without the graceful arc of the fisherman’s arm and the corresponding lift of the net like a salute before descending into war.
From the end of the pier, we have a panoramic view of the boardwalk and the infamous image of The Cyclone, the Ferris Wheel, and the parachute drop. Looking back at the boardwalk and beach, we can imagine hot summer days filled wit the smell of coconut oil and the grease frying funnel cakes, boom boxes pounding louder than the surf, kids’ shrieks as waves slap them in the face, mother’s cries to not go so far out, teen agers smoking on blankets and tattoos emblazoned across young and old, and ice chest feasts of pastrami on rye and bags of chips and cold grapes and icy beers.
But for today, we must imagine it all and walk to the end of the earth, or at least to the end of the pier and wonder who lives in the apartments at the very end, around the curve that must take the wind, summer and winter, and wonder how many nations are represented by the strollers, the cigar smokers, the coffee drinkers, the guy jumping rope, the boy band having their photo op against a graffitied building, the women cleaning the bathrooms, the homeless guy trying to stay out of the wind, the elderly couple in matching sealskin hats and coats, the women riding the pale blue bike, the lovers posing next to the fake palm tree sprinklers, and ourselves, of course, tourists and visitors more so than the Russian voices that visit us on the wind like snatches of Radio Free Europe. Time to walk back with the sun lowering at our back, the wind biting our faces, the gulls crying good bye, the waves rolling as they will summer and winter with and without us forever and ever.