The fall of Astroland

I’m not a huge fan of Coney Island. For one thing, it takes 40 minutes to get there on the yellow line. For another, I don’t eat hot dogs, not even Nathan’s Famous Hotdogs (gifted though they are with capital letters). Finally, it gives me the same sad stomach I get at casinos when I watch empty lives pass in front of insatiable slot machines.

But, Sunday was the last day of the last season of Astroland, a traveling carnival without the traveling, and I wanted to be there when it fell. Besides, it was a beautiful day for a trip to the beach.

I’m glad I went.

Beer at Ruby’s on the boardwalk. Kids diving off the pier into the green Atlantic as an international contingent crabbed and fished around them. A show by Circus Amok (more on them in a later post). A little time shirtless on a bench, face to Sol like an old-age pensioner or Russian expat. The flume rides and bumper cars and carnie tricks and skeeball arcades and sticky kids jacked up on sno cone syrup.

All OK.

Even the decay of “Shoot the Geek” -- an arcade game where a 20 spot buys you 75 shots with a paintball gun at a living, breathing human being just trying to make a living, while a professional asshole taunts you over the public address system -- seemed charming.

I was nostalgic for something that holds no memories for me. Astroland is falling before the developers’ bulldozer, and I wondered what the masses were going to do next summer without the relatively inexpensive escape of bad food, puke-inducing swirly rides and the outside chance of winning that special someone with a giant, stuffed piece of crap you won with ball-tossing, watergun-squirting, sledge-swinging skills you secretly always knew you had.

Where are the sheep to go? What are the shearers to do?

These are bigger questions for distant days. Sunday, it was all about grabbing that last gasp and riding that last Bobsled.

New York is the high-culture Mecca of the Americas (arguably, but you’d lose). Coney Island was all about wrangling the madness of the masses. Next summer, they will be released upon the city. Be afraid, be very afraid.