Some of the best times to be had in New York City come from unexpected places. Deviating from a pre-made plan often leads to amazing, singularly New York experiences.
Sometimes this means leaving the apartment to lounge on a summer patio only to wind up with a paid invitation to Peter Luger's Steakhouse. Sometimes it's a beer after a kickball game on the Lower East Side turning into a forty person flip cup game and ending at a random Chinese restaurant with ten perfectly charming strangers. Sometimes a mostly pretentious thesis show at the New York Institute of Photography filled with a lot of desire but little self-editing leads to a fantastic view of the Manhattan skyline from the room of an art studio in Queens.
Sure, maybe some nights involve stumbling home after trolling several bars looking for one that shows an inkling of entertaining life, and occasionally a day of wandering New York's myriad streets yields nothing more than aching feet. But it's a fact of life that boring days happen. It's a luxury in this city to be able to turn them into something more without even trying.
Yesterday was Brooklyn's annual mermaid parade at Coney Island. It's an extravaganza feature classic cars, costumes, nudity and revelry in celebration of... something about mermaids? Involving American muscle cars? And naked people?
Ambiguous purpose aside, I expected a fairly raucous time surrounded by loud, rambunctious revelers taking in one of the more unique parades around. What I got instead was a fairly standard group of parade watchers commenting mildly on each group/float while the sun etched the summer's first burn into my shoulders. The mild reactions were greatly disappointing and my small crew soon resigned ourselves to a search for food and drink. At Coney Island, a place populated with no shortage of food and drink stands, this usually wouldn't be a problem but due to the parade and our lack of knowledge about the route a long an sun-beaten walk around the Cyclones baseball stadium and down the boardwalk resulted in nothing more than more parade, more cut off streets and some cops standing on a bridge like Gandalf the Grey attempting to hold back a mob of hot and thirsty Brooklyn balrogs. We quickly retreated to a small gezebo to escape the heat, replenish our energy with bread and cheese and possibly to wait out the parade blocking us from carnival food and beer. When it became clear that the parade would outlast our patience we made off down the boardwalk in search of relief from the noise, the incredible press of people and our by now homicidal thirst.
A short walk later (as we watched the crowd change from ironically horribly dressed hipsters to sincerely horribly dressed locals) we made our way to Brighton Beach and began to see promising signs of sustenance. After passing an enthusiastic dog playing with a ball and three identically overpriced beachfront restaurants we came upon what I have to describe as the greatest gem of a hole-in-the-wall I've ever seen in several visits to the boardwalk. A little ramshackle set-up with no name seemed to grow off of the side of one of the Russian ocean-side triplets to offer burgers, hot dogs, pierogies, bottles of Russian beer and small bottles of vodka. As we walked up old Russian men - already drunk on beer and some horribly fluorescent shots of watermelon and vodka - sat around plastic tables and smiled boozy smiles at us speaking a language none of understood.
In other words, it was the best place ever.
Seating perhaps 20 peoples - mostly serving walking traffic and customers just in off the sand - we vultured a table and passed an hour sipping Baltika in the shade. Now, New York has plenty of Big Moments. Concerts in world-famous halls, monuments, Historically Significant neighborhoods and some of the best restaurants in the world. I've been through my fair share and enjoyed every moment of them. These small moments, however, spent sitting in the shade pulling on a pint of a smooth pilsner that was brown-bagged by the same guy that sold it to me while lazily watching people walk up and down the boardwalk are the ones that really grab me. These moments are not fleeting; they pass softly and slowly, begging to be savored and I could have sat in that chair gazing out over that beach and into those waves for hours.
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