why I love Coney Island
So, the Houston Astros are celebrating some kind of anniversary - probably fifty years of the franchise. They've been posting pictures all month - they show up on my facespace every morning. I went gaga over this one, from, guessing by the cars, about forty years ago:
In the late '60s, prompted by the space race and NASA's headquarters in Houston, they built the Astrodome, the first domed baseball stadium, allegedly inspired by the awnings once installed in the Roman Colosseum. They declared it the "eighth wonder of the world" and built an amusement park next door, AstroWorld.
When I was a kid, I assumed every major city had a massive theme park as its center, visible from the freeway, accessible to all. As a teenager, my friend's dad would drop us off with illegally-obtained passes around opening time, scalp tickets outside, and then pick us up after dark. We'd roam all day - ride every ride, get sick on funnel cakes, shoplift goodies from the gift shops - which didn't just sell AstroWorld shit, they were actually one of the only places in town where a kid could find a Nirvana poster or a Pearl Jam T-shirt. That only made sense this morning, when I did a little research and realized the park was bought out by Time Warner sometime in the '90s. (Their selection of pins were always out of date, though. I remember sporting a Nelson button in '94.)
This is what AstroWorld looked like:
Somebody told me years ago that the park had been torn down. I forgot. I forget lots of shit. I looked up AstroWorld after I saw that picture, and the words, "demolished in 2006," actually made me cry.
The trifecta - AstroWorld, the Dome, NASA, that was my city when I was a kid. Now, the Astrodome is best known for housing Katrina victims after the clusterfuck at the Superdome in New Orleans. I think they still hold the rodeo there. Annual flea markets. When I was a kid, I saw at least a hundred games there - tickets were only two dollars. It was fully-functioning when they decided to replace it. Seats were still comfortable, nothing was falling apart, somebody with money just wanted something new. So, they built Enron Field, which was only named Enron Field for a year or two before the name was eternally tainted by Kenneth Lay. Now, it's called Minute Maid Park.
Minute Maid Park has a retractable roof that's almost never open for the same reasons they built a domed stadium in Houston in the first place - it's fucking hot (ninety to a hundred degrees, all summer), 100% humidity is a given, and flash downpours are the norm. It's got a train that goes around the top of the stadium when the 'Stros hit a home run. This is all to tie-in with their monorail plans or whatever - I don't know, I don't live there anymore.
I've always complained that Houston has no character - everything has to be new, and everything can be new because they've got all the space in the world to expand until they reach San Antonio. Even as a kid, I knew I wanted to live somewhere with buildings older than my parents, but I clung to the landmarks that appeared untouchable, the icons that identified my home as unique. We had the Dome, and we were the city that would someday colonize the moon. And now - the buildings, the dreams, they're all gone, up some rich man's ten gallon hat. I don't have a hometown anymore.
- - -
So, when I'm in New York, and I say, "I wanna go to Coney Island," what I really mean is, "I wanna go to AstroWorld," and an hour to the tip of Brooklyn on the train never seems very far.
In the late '60s, prompted by the space race and NASA's headquarters in Houston, they built the Astrodome, the first domed baseball stadium, allegedly inspired by the awnings once installed in the Roman Colosseum. They declared it the "eighth wonder of the world" and built an amusement park next door, AstroWorld.
When I was a kid, I assumed every major city had a massive theme park as its center, visible from the freeway, accessible to all. As a teenager, my friend's dad would drop us off with illegally-obtained passes around opening time, scalp tickets outside, and then pick us up after dark. We'd roam all day - ride every ride, get sick on funnel cakes, shoplift goodies from the gift shops - which didn't just sell AstroWorld shit, they were actually one of the only places in town where a kid could find a Nirvana poster or a Pearl Jam T-shirt. That only made sense this morning, when I did a little research and realized the park was bought out by Time Warner sometime in the '90s. (Their selection of pins were always out of date, though. I remember sporting a Nelson button in '94.)
This is what AstroWorld looked like:
Somebody told me years ago that the park had been torn down. I forgot. I forget lots of shit. I looked up AstroWorld after I saw that picture, and the words, "demolished in 2006," actually made me cry.
The trifecta - AstroWorld, the Dome, NASA, that was my city when I was a kid. Now, the Astrodome is best known for housing Katrina victims after the clusterfuck at the Superdome in New Orleans. I think they still hold the rodeo there. Annual flea markets. When I was a kid, I saw at least a hundred games there - tickets were only two dollars. It was fully-functioning when they decided to replace it. Seats were still comfortable, nothing was falling apart, somebody with money just wanted something new. So, they built Enron Field, which was only named Enron Field for a year or two before the name was eternally tainted by Kenneth Lay. Now, it's called Minute Maid Park.
Minute Maid Park has a retractable roof that's almost never open for the same reasons they built a domed stadium in Houston in the first place - it's fucking hot (ninety to a hundred degrees, all summer), 100% humidity is a given, and flash downpours are the norm. It's got a train that goes around the top of the stadium when the 'Stros hit a home run. This is all to tie-in with their monorail plans or whatever - I don't know, I don't live there anymore.
I've always complained that Houston has no character - everything has to be new, and everything can be new because they've got all the space in the world to expand until they reach San Antonio. Even as a kid, I knew I wanted to live somewhere with buildings older than my parents, but I clung to the landmarks that appeared untouchable, the icons that identified my home as unique. We had the Dome, and we were the city that would someday colonize the moon. And now - the buildings, the dreams, they're all gone, up some rich man's ten gallon hat. I don't have a hometown anymore.
- - -
So, when I'm in New York, and I say, "I wanna go to Coney Island," what I really mean is, "I wanna go to AstroWorld," and an hour to the tip of Brooklyn on the train never seems very far.