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The image in the center spread of Charlene's album was taken by her on a visit to Coney Island. In the essay below, she recounts the visit. "Armed with an ancient 35 mm camera, we went out on a cloudy day spitting rain toward Coney Island, hugging the New York beachline as we drove. This was before the waves of gentrification had started in Rockaway and the beach was deserted and the parking lots empty. Mile after mile of straggly grass and sand filled the streets that led to nowhere — all that is left of the acres of beach houses torn down in the
The most arresting thing that day were the bones of an old roller-coaster at the far end of the boardwalk — a hulking wooden carcass rotting for years in the sun and wind. A huge spiky metal fence surrounded it, but I managed to get a few good shots of trees and vines climbing the first steep rise, the boarded up building where the coaster cars would return, the rusty streaks like blood running down the face of the sign: Thunderbolt. Nothing to me so much captured the feel of Coney Island — a once glorious and magical place; colored lights, noise and laughter, screams from the rides, the scent of cotton candy and hot dogs and the grit of sand and sun — still echoing in the deserted, whistling presence of the Thunderbolt. Years have gone by since that day and the Thunderbolt has vanished in a wave of progress, making place for a new ballpark which promises a future generation the joys of sunscreen and hotdogs and sticky cotton candy… I managed a return to the site of the Thunderbolt right after its demise and kicked through the sand for a while, looking for shards of its great bones. I returned home with bits of plank from the wooden slats and a heavy piece of the track rail. In the middle of the sandy waste was an un-movably heavy train car — its horsehair upholstery leaking great tufts through rotted red leather, its once varnished sides peeling away its name, still emitting like an electric charge the memories of its last riders — terrified, thrilled, exuberant…" |