We Take Ourselves Out to the Ball Game
Kaitlyn: I need to be careful so you don’t think I’m speaking hyperbolically. These are my real feelings: Coney Island is heaven on earth. I think if “they” ever touched it—if they ever tore things down and put boring things in their place—that would be it for me. My heart would be broken. The boardwalk, the ocean, the hot dogs, the old women running the ring-toss and balloon-dart games who are still allowed to smoke cigarettes while they’re working, while they’re handling money and prizes for children: This is what keeps us alive and kicking. Catching a first sight of the Wonder Wheel from a mile away as the Q train crawls south above 15th Street—as Stephanie wrote in a famous tweet, “That’s the stuff.”
Recently, our friend Abbey was visiting from Los Angeles to attend and also to box up the rest of the things she had left behind in New York. I was nervous to talk to her, because I take it hard when people move to California. But she said she had something specific in mind. She needed a change of scenery for just long enough that she would be able to come back to New York and see it again with fresh eyes and a new sense of wonder. She had calculated that this would take one to three years. “When you come back, you should go straight to Coney Island,” I told
