On summer Sunday afternoon had the urge to take the Q train to its terminus: Brighton Beach. There is something exceptionally satisfying about taking the subway to the beach, beach towel draped around your soldiers as if to announce to the sad, sorry commuters around you, that I am going to the beach. I am seizing the day and soon I will be digging my toes into the sand.
Well, not really in the sand per se. I don’t really like the sand or the beach. I feel like you HAVE to relax when your on the beach, which makes me anxious. It made me anxious just thinking about it actually, which it turn, made me hungry and so disembarking, I headed down to Brighton Beach Boulevard for a knish and seltzer. When in Rome, you know. Paper bag in hand, I found a spot on a cement retainer wall that overlooked the beach. What a view!
As I was enjoying my delicious pocket of potato and pillowy dough, a city employee asked me how my day was going while sweeping up cigarette butts from the sand. “Pretty good,” I said, and feeling in a sharing mood, “but I wanted to go to that amusement park,” and pointed yonder towards the rides. “Oh Lunatic Park?” he asked. Now, it’s actually called Luna Park, but obviously, his being the far superior name for it, I didn’t interject. “Yeah,” opens tomorrow,” he continued, “but the Cyclone’s going.”
“Wha?!” I stuffed the rest of the knish in my mouth and wished him good-bye.
Hastily walking down the board walk, I soon heard the rumble of climbing roller coaster cars, then, the scream. That could have been me already! Expecting a long line of preteens with cotton candy ahead, I almost broke into a jog. Yet, to my surprise, there was no one. I waltzed right in.
It’d been years since I’d been on a roller coaster, and perched above the drop I thought, “oh yeah, this is why,” then I screamed for awhile. The whole time really.
I look good in that one. Right?
Lorissa Rinehart 