07.17.07 5:00 AM CDT
• After After Hours
• Rocky Rakovic
After visiting Coney Island, intern Sarah Euler has been letting her thoughts drift to places far away:
When this summer is over, Coney Island, the famous visitors’ spot in Brooklyn, will go through some renovations. Though some of the main attractions will stay, Astroland, the amusement park that’s home to famous Cyclone rollercoaster, will close. Proposals have an indoor amusement park replacing it, and condos and a hotel are in the works. There are mixed views about the change and an online petition has already started to “Save Coney Island.” Now I don’t know a lot about Coney Island, but although it might be run-down and at times unsightly, it has its own character and charisma that no place else shares. It makes me think of two other places that are completely different from ol’ Coney, but which also have a unique, tourist-trappy charm.
Nestled in the Great Smokey Mountains, Gatlinburg, Tennessee is very picturesque, but a lot of the people who walk its streets are far from it. On just one stroll around the big intersection, called Rebel Corner, you will soon see every sartorial cliché available to a Tennessean: overalls, sleeveless tees, John Deere cap, and some accessory adorned with the Confederate flag. This may be unfortunate if this is the only stop visitors make in the Volunteer state. Still, the people in Gatlinburg take pride in living in a place that shares a piece of history, even if it has become commercialized. (Pictured: the Gatlinburg mall.)
With attractions like a ferris wheel, an arcade and hot dog vendors, Old Orchard Beach, Maine looks like a seaside carnival. But like Coney Island, the rides are worn and in the summer, the beach is always overpopulated. Perhaps it’s the continuous music on the historic pier or the many seaside shops on Old Orchard Street that keeps both Mainers and others coming back to this beach every year. There’s just something about the atmosphere of the run-down beachside town that kept drawing people back.
So, if you can, visit one of these places—or go back and see that special place of your own. You never know when your favorite piece of nostalgia might fall victim to someone’s master plan.
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Comments on this entry:
So true, in fact you can never really 'go back' which is why i like to look for the "Coney island" of each country I visit. England is particularly great as they have Margate, Ramsgate, Brighton, Southend on Sea and of course Blackpool. Next trip to France I'm doing St Tropez but trying to find the parts that are still "bling free" as I'm told if you go into the villiage and look with quiet patience it's still 1958.