In Little Odessa, everything seemed just a little old-fashioned. The atmosphere was calm, reassuring and a million miles from the 42nd Street bedlam where we had earlier descended into the subway to catch the train to Brooklyn. Nightclubs such as The National seemed all geared up for a wedding reception and, apart from the Russian population and the "el" train, this might have been Co Kilburn. Tonight in the red velvet and strip lighting, people of all ages would dance together under the mirror balls and maybe down a vodka or a mineral. We were on Brighton Beach Avenue on our way to Coney Island and, sure enough, turning onto the boardwalk there it was - beautiful Bundoran.
The Coney Island of today (or what's left of it) was an accidental conspiracy between transport and democracy. The boardwalks and the beaches had always been the preserve of the well-to-do who dined and danced at places such as Stauch's, but the completion of the subway in 1920 suddenly meant that Coney Island could be an accessible, escapist dreamland for all New Yorkers, whatever their station. The barbed wire was removed from the private beaches and, while the place had already been attracting up to half a million people in the early 1900s, with the completion of the subway there could be as many as a million day-trippers arriving on a single holiday.
All of them were herded together, body to body, like sun-gazing sea-lions. The liberating train fare from New York was only five cents, and so began The Nickel Empire. These days, Coney Island demands a certain generosity of the imagination. The Nickel Empire is literally in ruins and there is that uncomfortable feeling that some other empire is impatiently awaiting its moment - ready for the very last ride to crumble. Many of the thrills and the concessions are now boarded up, never to reopen, and nostalgic New Yorkers rightly fear the worst - this time-warped ruin could well end up as something like Disneyland New York. Certainly such a complex might be cleaner, snazzier and would employ people with better teeth, but surely this sad and beautiful relic really ought to be preserved? Coney Island, a surreal and near-forgotten world, is as moving a place as you will ever visit - a decaying fantasy of kewpie dolls, cockroach-racing, Hula Hula Land, The Boomerang, The Lindy Loop, The Human Pool Table, The Thunderbolt and The Cyclone.
And yet Coney Island is not quite dead yet, and the first stop has to be a hot dog at Nathan's - maybe even two or three hot dogs and certainly the best fries in New York. Although Nathan's is the home of the hot dog, it was actually invented at Feltman's, which once served 40,000 dogs on a single day. But while Feltman's charged 10 cents each, Nathan's offered this Coney Island speciality for just a nickel - their particular record being 55,000 dogs sold on Decoration Day 1954! Nathan Handwerker was a smart marketer, once reputedly hiring down-and-outs dressed as doctors complete with white coats and stethoscopes to hang around the counter eating his hot dogs. A sign proclaimed "If doctors eat our hot dogs, you know they're good!"
The other Coney Island delicacy is clams. Clam bars and clam bakes were once the social focus of the resort and they're still available for the more adventurous tourist. Maybe it was the faded signs or the ancient stands, but any attempt at seafood on a sweltering June day didn't seem entirely wise. But then our party was not a wise one either, particularly the female wing of it, which insisted on riding The Cyclone. The two men remained (appropriately enough) among the weeds and maintaining that our refusal to ride The Cyclone had less to do with cowardice than with basic engineering and physics. A septuagenarian wooden roller-coaster which seemed to be held together only by odd bits of board and its own fearsome reputation was no place for two grown men. The two grown women couldn't be stopped, but one of them later regretted it. Imagine that first 86foot drop on a bellyful of clams, three hot dogs and an eggcream.
Perhaps the most breathtaking sight in Coney Island is yet another famed roller-coaster - The Thunderbolt. In an overgrown field beside the Riegelmann Boardwalk, this massive structure stands alone, broken, rusted and covered with ivy and weeds. It is an eerie and spectacular ruin, something from a futuristic movie in which you might also expect to find the Statue of Liberty buried sideways on the beach. The Thunderbolt has, sure enough, made numerous movie appearances - most famously as the site of the house where the young Alvy Singer lived underneath the roller-coaster, in Woody Allen's Annie Hall. The house, too, is now derelict, boarded up and covered with vines and razor wire. A tattered Stars and Stripes pokes out the window.
Another Coney Island feature of old was the freak show. For a nickel, visitors could gape both at skilled performers and at unfortunate human beings with deformities of varying degrees that allowed them to be seen as somehow less human. Among the famous attractions was Laurello - The Man With The Revolving Head - and "The Pinheads" Pipo and Zipo, who were actually suffering from a condition known as microcephaly. Some performers are still around with The Coney Island Circus Sideshow, which promises The Blockhead, Indestructible Indio The Escape Artist and Pain-Proof Man, Zenobia The Bearded Lady, The Elastic Lady, Electra The High Voltage Lady and Baby Dee The Human Hermaphrodite. The Coney Island Circus Sideshow has been awarded grants from The National Endowment for the Arts and The New York City Department of Cultural affairs - but even so . . . The closest I came was when I paid 50 cents to see the "World's Smallest Horse". The shabby wooden hut could not have been more miserable. The words "$1000 Reward If Not Alive" referred to the tiny horse which was sitting there looking very unhappy indeed. Yes it was a very small horse. And yes, it was alive. And 50 cents a look. But apart from the little horse, I left Coney Island rather unwillingly. There was more to explore and enough rifle ranges, candy apples and bumping cars with slogans such as "Bump Your Ass Off" to keep me happy for a fortnight. But it was time to leave those particular relics and move on to a different kind of Brooklyn. The Romanov jewels were in the Brooklyn Museum, there was a fine walk to be had through Brooklyn Heights and we'd be just in time to see the classic night skyline from the Promenade.
My Donegal Brooklynite friend, known as The Shaughraun, was delighted we had eaten at Nathan's, that some of us had ridden the Cyclone and that we had witnessed the very last days of Coney Island. "Today has been like some kind of Fellini film," he said, "and Coney Island is like a mouthful of rotten teeth."