We went to Coney Island today. We took the subway, of course, which is such a wonderful thing about NY. You can get on the subway and in 50 minutes you're at the beach! And you're not wanting for entertainment on the way.
We had not one, but two mariachi serenades on the subway on the way out. This has got to be a good gig. These guys got on, they played for about 90 seconds, or maybe 2 minutes, and collected about $12 that I could see. They just walk from car to car doing this all day, or maybe until they get thrown off. The second group didn't fare quite so well, however, since everyone who was likely to pay had paid the first pair. 
Our first view as we stepped off the subway was pretty incredible. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't this! It's a huge area, with many individual businesses. Coney Island isn't a theme park, like say, Disneyland; it's more of a bunch of independent entrepreneurs vying to see who can come up with the tackiest establishment. The competition is fierce. 
What a hoot! We'd never been there before, and I'd never been to a beach like this before. The people are wall to wall, surf to subway. There was a sort of pathway down to the water made out of some sort of woven material. At first I thought it was really nice, because it was something you could walk on without getting sand in your shoes. Later I realized that it's probably just there to maintain a walkway through the millions of people on the beach. They are camped out cheek to cheek exactly the way they are crammed into NYC. People who are right next to each other do the same thing they do on the subways: they create a mental image of privacy and act like there is a 15-foot perimeter around their space.
We walked along the beach, did the mandatory wading in the water -- which was relatively warm -- not Hawaii, but not Santa Cruz by a long shot. We had brought our airline blanket to sit on, so we squeezed our two bums onto this little blanket and sat clutching our valuables and watching people sunburn parts of skin that haven't seen sunlight since the Nixon administration. We, of course, looked super cool in our street clothes with our pants rolled up to wade in the water, and slathered with enough lotion to look like pastries mit schlag. And I still got the tops of my feet sunburned!
They were having a sand sculpture contest today, so we ambled by to look at the sculptures.
Unfortunately the contest goes through tomorrow at 5 and most of them were in kind of starting stages. This was the most completed one. About the time we were looking at these, John said, "I think we should think about going back." This was about 2:35. I was okay with this idea, since I was getting quite a bit of sun, so, instead of arguing, I agreed. We walked through the flea market on our way back to the subway, and I took a couple of pictures. He said, "you can go inside if you want" but believe it or not, I didn't really want to. As we were climbing the steps of the subway at 2:45, I felt some raindrops.
By the time we stepped onto the train, the rain was coming down in buckets. I'm not good at listening to John, but today I was certainly glad I had. By the time we got back to Manhattan, the weather was warm and lovely. We got off at Times Square and went over and got tickets for the matinee of Hair tomorrow.
Martha is back from her workshop today, so we all went out to dinner at a place called Acqua on Amsterdam. Sat out on the sidewalk and it was just lovely. The food was really good, too.
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