I can never fully articulate my love affair with Coney Island. I started shooting the portraits that would become “The Beach” during the long and sweaty August after I’d left the boyfriend who spent all my money. I was saved by friends with space on their futon, friends who were on a tight budget themselves, and I quickly learned that quitting cigarettes and quitting food at the same time is incredibly painful. Coney Island saved my spirit. I wandered up and down the beach every weekend sheepishly asking strangers if I could take their picture, and I soon found myself fully immersed in the worlds of new friends, immersed in their sorrows and joys instead of my own. New York isn’t the best place to have your life fall apart. Everything’s expensive, and we need to be so guarded and private and competitive to survive. But on Coney Island, I experienced a sort of generosity I had never before seen in this city. I was invited onto towels and blankets and offered endless amounts of food and beer. And stories. Wonderful sad, touching, harrowing, funny, happy, beautiful stories. Four years have passed since then. I still wander up and down the beach each summer. Every year I’m terrified it will all be over soon, that Coney Island’s fading amusement parks will give way to hotels and Disneyfication. Everything I love about Coney Island is threatened by development and ignored in debates about blight and eminent domain. But this is no graveyard for lost dreams- the beach is vibrant and alive. A colorful wonderland on a hazy summer afternoon, Coney Island is as much an escapist’s dreamworld as it is gritty and urban and real. And now I shoot and shoot and shoot so some little part of its magic can never fade away.
— By Marisha Camp (from “Open Theme”)
Submit now to Pictory’s Open Themes
25th January 2012
Reblogged From pictoryblog
Notes: 71
Lea Michele Will Leave New York If We Don’t Ban Horse & Carriage Rides
Drew Grant, observer.comLea Michele, the pint-size diva of Glee and New Years Eve—Best movie of 2011? Discuss…—has given the city an ultimatum. Either this wallpaper goes, or she does. And by “wallpaper” we mean “carriages that use horses…
Oh, the horror! Will New York really miss one C-list actress? I think not.
Per the Polonia Facebook page:
I am sorry to announce that on this Christmas Eve Polonia will be closing its doors permanently. We would like to thank all of our amazing customers who have supported us this quarter of a century. As all good things, Polonia’s time has come to an end. It is time for new ventures. Keep your ears open for NYC Pierogi Factory. And again… Thank You!
Jozef and Renata Jurczyk opened Polonia in 1989. Per the Polonia website:
Jozef and Renata were both born in Poland and traveled to New York City in the early 1980’s in hopes of following The American Dream. Arriving in the US with very little money, they both worked dead end jobs until saving enough money to open their own business, a restaurant which would allow them to share their culture and memories with other New Yorkers living in this dominantly Ukrainian and Eastern European neighborhood — The East Village.
