Returning to Dreamland: Coney Island
This video is of a reading – in sterling Brooklynese – of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poem, Coney Island of the Mind. It was created and posted on YouTube by BooUrns28 and includes some of his own thoughts and memories.
“One belongs to Coney Island instantly . . . “
Lugging bags with bathing suits, the requisite portable radio, beach blanket and towels, we’d hop on the BMT, endure summer’s outrageous heat and humidity, and head for Stillwell Avenue and Coney Island, carnival of the weird and wonderful, “circus of the soul”.
The raucous Coney Island rides and bazaar shows were never to my taste, but the boardwalk, the people-watching, the beach, riding the waves, the cupie dolls, the hot dogs and French fries, and holding out for Surf Avenue and Shatzkin’s potato knishes . . . oh, those Shatzkin’s knishes with yellow mustard . . . these were fascinations. When I went with family, we always had lovely, sweet, pastel-colored cotton candy. It was fun to watch it being prepared. White-paper cones were dipped into a huge metal vat to catch and hold the sugar as it spun into sticky, cottony threads. It was made to order. As a high school sophomore, I went to Coney Island with my steady, Mike. He won a stuffed teddy bear for me at one of the ball-toss games, the stuff of romantic old movies. The teddy stayed long after Mike was gone.
Coney Island is so much a part of American iconography and honky-tonk subculture that it’s probably on your radar even if you’ve never been there. It’s the stuff of artists rendering in everything from photography and fine arts, to books and poems, and movies.
If you go to the sidebar to your right and scroll to videos and from there to Coney Island, 1952 and click on it, it will take you to a short film, In Memoriam, Coney Island 1952, which was an International Venice Film Festival Prizewinner. The narrator is Henry Morgan. This movie catches the flavor of the place, as I knew it with its incredible crowds and all that is odd, funny, vulgar and, somehow, wonderful. The movie is at Weird Video.com, self-described as “Rare & authentic 16mm films of cultural, historical and ironical significance.” It’s a fun site, by the way. Go exploring there . . .
(The detailed description of moving within the blog is provided for those dear friends who are just getting used to such things! I love you . . . Forge on.)
Today’s post on Musing by Moonlight:
Elder Power
http://musingbymoonlight.wordpress.com/
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