Coney Island

August 23, 2023

I have been to New York city quite a few times for both work and pleasure. On this trip, I wanted to do something that I hadn’t done before.  As I looked at things to do, I saw Coney Island.   I had never been to Coney Island and yet I have seen it on TV and in the movies over and over again.  I loved the TV series Mr. Robot and the F Society was based there.  A few weeks earlier, I saw the last episode of  The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel where they all went to Coney Island.  I googled directions on how to get there and then took the Q Train through Brooklyn to get there.

The train ride was about an hour and as we went through Brooklyn, I thought of my mother who grew up there.   When I asked her questions about her childhood, she would always say that she didn’t remember much of her childhood.  I always wondered if that was true, she seemed to have very fond memories of my grandfather and how he would take her into the city.  She loved sharing the memories but besides those memories, she didn’t talk much about her childhood.

I couldn’t help but wonder, had she been to Coney Island?  I don’t remember her ever mentioning it but I found it hard to believe that she would have grown up in Brooklyn and didn’t go to Coney Island.  I will have to check with my siblings to see if they remember her mentioning it.

As we left the train station, I immediately spotted Nathans hot dog stand.  I had seen more than a few specials about Nathan’s and how he and his wife opened a hot dog stand on Coney Island and turned it into one of the most famous brands. It was too early for lunch but checked out the menu to see what I wanted after we finished walking around the boardwalk.

We walked up and down the boardwalk and I looked for the F Society building from Mr. Robot, I never did find it but we didn’t go into the amusement park itself.   As a kid, I loved amusement parks but as an adult, the idea of being tossed and bounced around isn’t so appealing.  After a lot of walking we headed back to Nathan’s where I had a chili-cheese dog and crinkle fries.