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CONEY ISLAND
Coney Island is a place that never ceases to amaze me. I love the colors of this place and vibrant it is. The cuban revolutionary poet José Martí wrote a whole chronicle when he visited the place more than one hundred years ago. Here I share a little fragment: A Cuban View of Coney Island from letters from new york by José Martí “…what comings and goings! What spendings of money! What opportunities for every pleasure! What absolute absence of any visible sadness or poverty! Everything is out in the open: the noisy groups, the vast dining rooms, the peculiar courtship of the North Americans – almost wholly devoid of the elements that comprise the bashful, tender, and elevated courtship of our lands – the theater, the photographer, the bathhouse – all of it out in the open. Some weigh themselves, because for the North Americans it is a matter of positive joy or real grief to weigh a pound more or less; others, for fifty cents, receive from the hands of a robust German girl an envelope containing their fortune; others, with incomprehensible delight, drink unpalatable mineral waters from glasses as long and narrow as artillery shells. “Some ride in spacious carriages that take them at twilight’s tender hour from Manhattan to Brighton; one man, who has been out rowing with a laughing lady friend, beaches his boat, and she, resting a determined hand on his shoulder, leaps, happy as a little girl, onto the lively beach. A group watches in open-mouthed admiration as an artist cuts from black paper, which he then pastes onto white cardboard, the silhouette of anyone who wants to have so singular a portrait of himself made; another group celebrates the skill of a lady who, in a little stall no more than three quarters of a yard wide, creates curious flowers out of fish skins. “With great bursts of laughter others applaud the skill of someone who has succeeded in bouncing a ball off the nose of an unfortunate man of color, who, in exchange for a paltry day’s wage, stands day and night with his head poking through a piece of cloth, dodging the pitches with ridiculous movements and extravagant grimaces. Others, even some who are bearded and venerable, sit gravely atop a wooden tiger, a hippogriff*, a boa constrictor, all ranged in a circle like horses, which revolve for a few minutes around a central mast while a handful of self-styled musicians play off-key sonatas. Those with less money eat crabs and oysters on the beach, or cakes and meats at the free tables some of the large hotels provide for such meals; those with money throw away enormous sums on the purplish infusions that pass for wine, and on strange, leaden dishes that our palates, preferring lighter and more artistic fare, would surely reject.” × 28
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