Dropping Bombs On Your Mom

Today I went out to Coney Island, I was out on business and afterward I took a stroll down to the boardwalk. The whole sky was grey, rain was alternating between a fine mist and a steady drizzle; just light enough that you wouldn’t get anything more than damp by walking around in it. The neighborhood of Brighton Beach looks very much like a Sydney suburb, the brick buildings stacked up into awkward blocks all on a march toward the water. It struck me as very odd that in the midst of this decade’s real estate frenzy this area hadn’t been completely razed for glass and steel luxury high rises. Here it is, 45 minutes from Manhattan with a city beach and a quaint boardwalk, but just blocks away from that beach are all the hallmarks of a poor Brooklyn ’hood: strangely understocked bodegas, stores selling the national costume of Pakistan, shop signage in Cyrillic or Arabic scripts.

I felt like a strange intruder in a hand made Zegna suit, fresh from a sales call, out of place with the Poors. Guys that would have hardballed me had I walked down the street in a T shirt walked by as if we were invisible to one another. When I got down the beach I enjoyed its emptiness; it was a weekday, and a rainy overcast one at that. The whole place was silent and most of the shops were shuttered, scenes like this always make me feel like I’m being let in on a secret. I sat down in Ruby’s and had a hotdog in the place where they were invented; I washed it down with a cold American beer, afterward I walked to Stillwell Ave and hopped the D back to West 4th.