Thursday 28th August 2014 Home Brooklyn
“Has anyone been to Coney Island and been on the ride the Cyclone? Scariest ride in the world. You know why? Not because of any advances in technology, but because it was built 100 years ago out of wood by drunk people!”
Occasionally I like to go there line up and yell “This is my 500th ride on the cyclone!” Then I get in the very last carriage, and as it starts the slow journey to the top of this 400ft hill, we here “Clank..clank..clank”. That’s when I like to yell out, “What the hell is that NOISE!!”
Comedian John Gay, Greenwich Village Comedy Club last night
Had a cracking night in Greenwich Village last night way past Lateline times! Couldn’t get tickets to the Comedy Cellar but there are plenty of other venues and comedians hawking off tickets to their show. We bought 2 tickets to a show at the Greenwich Village Comedy Club from a comic on a street corner and headed down the street. Another comic pulled us into a bar and then into a back room where he and many others were doing 10 minute “bits”. Stayed for half an hour then went to get a feed before the 9.30pm show we had tickets to.
Right next to the club was a small traditional Italian restaurant straight out of Goodfellas, below street level and older male waiters who spoke a hybrid Italian/English New York dialect. All of them dressed immaculately in white shirts and black waistcoats, with customer service standards you could only dream of. I noted to Lynda that there isn’t a lot of career waiters/waitresses in Australia but in NYC there is an opportunity to make a decent living if you’re good. All the waiters were in their 50’s and a credit to their profession!
Now the food. I am a creature of habit when it comes to Italian. If Spaghetti Marinara is on the menu. It’s case closed. I was given 6 of the biggest and juiciest king prawns I’ve ever seen, sitting on a bed of home made linguini covered delicately in an Italian Napoli sauce that has its origins going back 300 years in Calabria! I was sucking the pasta up into my mouth so quickly I was spraying Lynda and some other unsuspecting diners with sauce and even managed to get some on my glasses! A truly magical gastronomic experience. Perhaps not so good for those adjacent to the carnage.
Got to the show and sat with a couple of huge fat businessmen from Philly who were really nice and bought us a drink. The tables sat 6 and they crammed us into this small basement so there was no time for airs and graces. The show was obviously very intimate, had a great MC and all up over a dozen comics performed over 2 ½ hours. Great value for $10 and there was table service for drinks also. Some of the comics were quite brilliant and a couple were so so but were treated respectfully by the audience. All up there were plenty of “wet yourself” moments where we were crying and gasping for breath so that’s all you want. Terrific night and will now book the Comic Lounge. Off to Coney Island today to test our courage on the cyclone. I am seriously scared of heights so this should be interesting. I’ve packed spare jocks just in case.
“What sets New Yorkers apart from everyone else is that they can ignore more weird shit than anyone else! Say for instance a naked man, holding a decapitated head pulled up alongside a New Yorker on the street? The New Yorker just looks away slightly and says to themselves, “Not my penis, not my head, not my business” – John Gay last night
5pm. Had an amazing day at Coney Island today. Hot again and thousands out and about. Hard to believe there is actually a really nice beach 50 mins from Manhattan. The boardwalk and the fairground attractions are awesome and full of cheesy nostalgia. We went to the famous freak show and watched a dwarf hammer a nail into his nose followed by an ice pick He was called the Blockhead, followed by snake charmers and fire swallowers. The freak community has been going at Coney Island historically for over 100 years and it’s hanging in there as a not for profit organization. Fantastic people and an important part of Coney Island. The Cyclone didn’t disappoint. Scared the bejeezus out of us! Just the sheer terror of knowing it’s so dilapidated you think it won’t stop! When it hits a corner it tears half a dozen vertebrate out of your upper lumbar region! I suddenly had a 6 pack for the first time in 20 years hanging onto the metal bar which had 100 years of finger indentations in it as this noisy carriage careered out of control. The carriages themselves only just fit me and Lynda in it, reason being when it was made in 1927, it was the onset of the depression so no one had food and were subsequently skinny. Compare that to today. Lynda and I could barely breathe. Lynda clambered in gracefully then I got in and it changed the dimensions dramatically. We were squeezed in so tight, they needed a crow bar, a quart of olive oil, and 2 of their biggest attendants to get us out at the end!
Met our first celebrity in NYC, an Australian! Sam Simmons who wrote and performed in a favourite cult comedy on the ABC a couple of years ago “Problems”, was playing a sideshow attraction called Frog Hop! He and his partner were loving Coney Island as well having come direct from The Edinburgh Festival. Said he was in town to meet David Letterman to talk about a show or something.
Heading off to the East Village tonight to pay homage to some of my old punk roots and then hopefully get up the Empire State for a night view. Have a great weekend back home, Cheers Willow & Lynda.
