CONEY ELAND – THROUGH ENGLISH EYES

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6667, 21 July 1928, Page 5 (Supplement)

CONEY ELAND - THROUGH ENGLISH EYES

HSSijn! HE life that serves as the = oS' foundation -for the phenomenal New York fjSf City of to-day is for-eign-born, or one step LiJsii removed therefrom, write two English artists, Jan and Cora Gordon, who recently toured the United States by car. It underlies most of the Industry of the city, it constitutes a great proportion of the multitudes in streets and subways and it plays at Coney Island, speaking its native tdngues.

You may have hobnobbed with the Four Hundred, talked art in the Village. suppered in Suburbia, dined in the night clubs, Wall-Streeted, rub-ber-necked in the Bowery and China- ■ town. But if you have not seen the Great Majority at play at Coney Island ypu have not seen New York. They do not all fit snugly into the mold of commerce, these newcomers with the European slant of mind. They still must have their fun, and they find it in ways unsuspected by the ordinary American. Even if they are poor in the goods of the world, their numerous feast days and holidays give them much innocent distraction. The straitjacket of hard commercial competition 1 imposes now and then the need to kick about, to loosen spiritual limbs, and Coney Island is the place at which the kicking can be done. Mingle, with the crowds on a national holiday; and you may be surprised to find how little English is spoken there. These people come from that great mass of foreigners who do the rough work for New. York: the semi-digested. They come here to shake themselves loose for a moment from the mechanical colossus that has gripped them. j - I

The packed masses stream slowly along the main street; they chew gum; they gaze up at the tempting advertisements of the variety shows, estimating in nickels and dimes the worth of the gaudy banners: “The Man With the Elephant’s Skin.” ■ ; ;• ,

“The Half Man-Half Woman.” “The Fish-Woman." “The Man With the Bear’s Hide.” “The Bearded Beauty.” All those grotesque aberrations of the glandular system. -..iV... ; Horror and half-horror fascinate the mind that has lost its simplicity. The waxwork show poses ah a portrayer of example: it writes up improving texts over scenes 'of crude realism, pretending to aim at virtue when its real attraction is ugliness. Tong fueds among the Chinese. Inquisition Implements and effigies , pf highwaymen are ranged in sepulchral gloom. At the end, brilliantly illuminated, is a set portraying the murder of the moment. The victim lies rigid; the slayer stands at the bedside pallid from his action, but lifting, the weapon for another blow; his .paramour clutches her pink silk kimono to her throat, and stares with expressionless glass eyes. Writ large over the scene Is this moral warning; • “ . “Crime Does Not Pay." Before this tableau we found two holiday makers from Harlem agape. For a moment we thought that they might be deceptive adjuncts to the show. As specimens they were almost too perfect. Not. young* they were dressed in the height of dandyism. The man had on a grey bowler hat with a natty black band* a light suit of sporting cut, check trousers,

a£id carried a cane; in his buttonhole he wore a big flower; a golden watch chain spanned the wide hemisphere of his waistcoat; His companion was no less striking in a dress of that vib--1 that is worn only by women who' are colour blind, and her, shoes were grey with much filagree leather done in varied tints. Entranced, and horrified in the crude waxworks t£ey gasped but. their amazement. Possibly they had read and talked for weeks of the sordid crime. But mere words, not even th, eloquent photographs of the tabloid press, had really crystallised their; powers of understanding. Now, with the very thing in front of them in viyid wax, the real aspects of the affair shocked them to their depths. “Gosh! God!’ f muttered the man. “Look at them now, I ask you. Just to think folks could be so wicked! And her with her pretty hair, so sweet and kindlike; standing there that-a-way. Gosh! To think there is folks that does things like that kind of wickedness! And her in pink silk so Innercentlike, not saying nothing at all. It ain’t like what you thinks hardly can be, is it? Why, if you didn’t see it Just that way with your own eye you never would believe it. But sinners like them don’t escape, no,‘sir, they don’t. Crime don’t pay; and that’s the truth.” Two blocks away from • the main street stretches the Boardwalk, where the polyglot families parade oh foot or roll along in chairs, watching the halfnude sand-soiled mob swirl over the beach below like human confetti. This sprawling, semi-nude multitude is of a class that in Europe is 'not given to public bathing and does, not sport with Amaryllis, even on the shore, at least after -the years of childhood are past. It would never take a long Journey of several miles to -roll on thb beach; smear Itself over with muddy- sand

and even risk its life in the waves—for indeed Coney Island has its tragedies. In: spite of the brawny llfe-saverg trained to shrewd handling of the unlucky bather, now and again some rash .person will elude their vigilance and be swept off to sea. But Coney Island whirls on. No accident beyond the Boardwalk can stop the mad me* - cbanisms of the sideshow parks. Hera gaiety is capitalised. The amusement Industry, cares nothing .for your tragedy; Itwahts your money only. - On with the dance, let joy be unconfined. , Girls, their silken dresses exchanged for parti-coloured rompers, slide shrieking 'down the chutes, spreadeagle > into hollow polished bowls. Whisk centrlfugally from spinning discs, drop from the crazy heights of the sky-shooter, playing with the last emotion.;left to a population neither wholly sentimental nor really sophls* tloated; playing with thb fear of in- ’ Jury.,: Herb Is rough-house for tho victims ot standardisation. - ! These machines of Joy, although guaranteed to be as safe as care and supervision can make them, do, nevertheless, owe their success to the fact . that they seem to spin about on the nm of danger; the scare without the risk. You know, as you drop yourself over the edge of the' chute, that no harm can happen to you, and yet in fact you do give yourself into the power of ■ something over which you , have hb, control. Late at night we returned to, New ; York. Behind us Coney Island- Still flared: against the sky. Steeplechase . Park, Wonderland, the Sky-shooter, all the,, pmchdhlsms and all the shows : were Still hard at work. On the beach ' the bathers - had . dressed and were . spooning in pairs, lumps of darker ; darkness in ; the gloom, . Many,'; indeed, would sleep there In the balmy coolness .and regain heated New York -. at early dawn. , '