What will happen to the boardwalk when the condos come, and the shopping malls, and the theaters? Where will Sideshows by the Seashore be, the last place where you can experience unusual, analog performers with their imperfect bodies, undulating, Ray Bradbury tattoo illustrations, gasoline-thirsty throats, bizarre feats no one else dares to do, and physical triumphs no one else has been cursed and gifted with, showing all off in a genuine, traditional ten-in-one circus sideshow? Where will Satina the snake charmer slither to, or Otis Jordan, the frog boy, roll and light a cigarette with his lips, or Zenobia, the bearded lady, give it a good tug, or Helen Melon, who is "so big and so fat that it takes four men to hug her and a boxcar to lug her!" be hugged? What place for them in our digital age of bodily perfection and propriety? YouTube? No. You can't take the hammer to pound that way-too-long nail into the Human Blockhead on YouTube. You can't touch Satina's way-too-big snake, either, or smell the alcohol swabs as the Human Pincushion sticks needles into his bare flesh.
Fast-forward. Stop. Begin recording. One last breath, one last ride. Coney Island's ghosts, Astroland, and Deno's Wonder Wheel Park will depart at the end of the 2008 season.
Read more about dark ride amusements at Laff In the Dark, the World of Dark Ride and Funhouse Amusements.
Read Bill Luca's Spook-A-Rama article, Still Spooky After Fifty Years.
Read more about Sideshows by the Seashore.
Article comments