Last night, I took my first trip of the season out to Coney Island to see the Friday night fireworks. I hadn’t been there since the renovations, and was surprised to see that besides a few refurbished rides, some clean bathrooms, more trashcans, and cashiers with computers, there were not many drastic changes.
The fireworks began at 9:30 and the boardwalk was packed well in advance. It was definitely overcrowded but it was also so crowded because of obesity. I would slide to pass a person only to bump off some slab of fat protruding from a right underarm. Is this the way of the future? Perhaps it’s not overpopulation that will crowd the earth, but a physically larger population, instead.
I hadn’t seen fireworks in a long time and this display was reassuring—not spectacular (though my sister, who stood alongside the launch site, was amazed), but not disappointing. They were marred, however, by the dj in a gazebo who never stopped playing his thumping music. He added his own comments throughout, such as: Brooklyn in da house?; We gonna be here all night!; and Alright ladies, saddle up. What were we preparing to ride? Fireworks? Music? Men, specifically the dj? Two teenage boys in front of me were moving in a way so that I assumed they were pretending to be shot by each rocket’s blast (some of the fireworks did indeed seem like the blitzkrieg), but I soon realized that they were just dancing. Later, after the fireworks had finished, when people were beginning to move out, a woman next to us walked away and left her sunglasses behind. My father picked them up and called after her, “Dear.”
“It’s Coney Island,” I said, “No one answers to dear.”
