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“I’m in a New York state of mind” sings Billy Joel, accompanied by a series of arpeggios and chords that have become part of modern jazz-blues history by a good right.


Sitting at a table outside the Pershing Square Café, gem-set underneath the Park Avenue Viaduct, we can’t but agree with the legendary bluesman. New York is not just a city. It is an existential condition, a real state of mind. It is not the skyscrapers in Midtown or the crazy yellow cabs that zip through the Fifth Avenue that nourish its heartbeat, nor the neon lights of Times Square reproduced on cheap postcards. You can buy ten for a dollar, but the real New York is cut off from their wrinkly corners. You breathe New York, you live New York.

The famous Grand Central Terminal, Manhattan’s most important railroad and subway hub located directly across from us, is vomiting hundreds of stories of businessmen, tourists, vagrants and roamers that arrive in the heart of the island from all over the city. The shoe shiners, like a century ago, still polish the Oxfords of those who watch the world from the top of a worn-out leather armchair. Here everybody seems to play a role in the same Story, although, once arrived at home, everyone is the protagonist of their own. We are all suffering from the New York State of Mind. But which of these stories can represent it in all of its color shades? Which tile of the mosaic does belong to us and completes the polychromatic patchwork of the Big Apple?

This time, we drift away from Manhattan, too often confused with the very city of New York. Not towards Williamsburg or Astoria, extending neighborhoods of the island made of glass and steel, but to Coney Island, two hours away from the frantic swarming around the Crysler Building. The southernmost part of Brooklyn, where New York ends and the rest of the world begins. On the subway train, the N line that starts its ride in Queens, runs through Manhattan and continues through Brooklyn South, we change our playlist. Billy Joel, we love you, but you’re still from the Bronx. Play: Lou Reed, “Coney Island Baby”.



The wagons empty out and get filled with people again, to become the moving stage for religious preachers and off-the-cuff music bands. The train runs from the underground passages of Manhattan to more common surface tracks, deepening the contrast between the city skyline we left behind and the low houses of Brooklyn, similar to yellow Legos. Brooklyn South, Shipshead Bay, Ocean Avenue. From the window, we see the pink-grey parallelepiped of Stilwell Avenue, the subway station. We are about to arrive in Coney Island. Sodom by the Beach.



So it was called by the New York Times in 1893, for its fame as the base of pick-pockets, uninhibited women, eccentrics and freaks of nature. But it was also the place where the first Luna Park was built, with the Cyclone Roller Coaster and the green and red Wonder Wheel – still functioning -, of trained elephants and knife-throwers. At the end of the 19th Century, Coney Island was the pinnacle of an astonishing era of live attractions: as the rest of the world was still lit up by candles, the nights of Coney Island were a paradise of gambling and artificial lights. Today, Coney Island’s golden age has run aground in an ocean undertow, to make room to a small museum of memorabilia and nostalgic artists that perform for some onlookers. In 2008, the Luna Park was closed to build up a new shopping mall with the aim to improving the economic condition of that ultimate New York outpost, but the devotion of its inhabitants to the boardwalk and its history convinced the authorities to abandon the project and re-establish Coney Island’s normal course, marked by overweight bathers, open-air parties, Latin American music and fireworks every Friday night.

The people from Coney Island have nothing to do with the brokers of the financial district or the fashionistas of the Upper East Side. Manhattan is far away. Here, to the glitzy parade for the 4th of July sponsored by Macy’s (the biggest fashion store in the world) people prefer the Hot-dog Eating Contest promoted by Nathan’s (the tastiest hog-dogs in the world). In 2011, for the fourth time in a row, victory went to Joey Chestnut, with 54 hot-dogs in 10 minutes. He didn’t break his record of 68 hot-dogs swollen at the same time, but the endless crowd has still exulted in the hot sun, with lots of beer and fainting. A super-blond and tanned girl, feels sick. “This is Coney Island, baby!” says a joyful voice from the mass.



Coney Island is a world apart. It lives on memories and hopes, too often unheard. It seems to be waiting for a perennial redemption or a new rebirth. It is maybe for this reason that the Mermaid Parade, a homage to Coney Island’s forgotten Mardi Gras, is an event nobody can miss. Nobody who shares the pride of being part of Coney Island’s history and artistic self-expression, which has always been a bulwark of this strip of land facing the Atlantic. The boardwalk is back to the hands of its real inhabitants, to become the runway of mermaids, tritons, sea-creatures, marching bands and antique cars, ruled over by King Neptune and the Mermaid Queen who tosses fruit into the ocean to appease the Sea Gods while the burlesque dancers at the rear of the parade play up to the spectators and the seagulls.


Today, at sunset, the boardwalk is almost deserted. The souvenir shops with their colorful murals are trying to appeal some other clients, most of whom rather sit at the tables of the small bars and fast-food restaurants which form an imaginary dividing wall between the boardwalk and the rest of the city. Even the labels of the beer bottles are a tribute to the wonders of Coney Island, like the snake-woman or the charming sword-swallower. Wonders, because here diversity means beauty, not fear. Many tourists think of Coney Island as a pathetic playground, unable to grow away from its glorious past and to turn around from the decay that is devouring it day by day.

Sitting at a tin table with the snake-woman winking to us from our bottle of beer and the sun sinking into the ocean, we do not concur with this idea. The lowered shutters have imprisoned the sweet and dense aroma of hot-dogs and candied apples inside the kiosks and allow the scent of the ocean to reach us and enthrall our senses. The people, unaware of the change that has just occurred, keep on drinking, smiling, dancing. This is Coney Island’s extraordinary charm, its spirit, its state of mind. And this pride reminds us of something.

We take the train again, direction Manhattan. There is only another place that shares this pride for its people and its history. Let’s go, up to the 125th Street: Harlem, Apollo Theater. The cradle of black music. “Long live the music” says its motto. Let’s turn the i-pod ON.

Play: Michael Jackson, “Beat it”.