Coney Island: October

This weekend my friend JMP was in town from Ohio. While brainstorming potential adventures, I discovered that she'd never been to Coney Island. I confirmed that the parks were still open and when I read that they would be decorated for Halloween I knew we had to go. I've lost count of how many times I've been to Coney Island, but it's just so endlessly photogenic that I find so many new and interesting things every time I go.

The biggest difference between this trip and all the others is that it's no longer summer, so Coney Island wasn't crowded. Not as desolate as I kind of expected, but a lot of the rides were sitting empty. Since the worst part about most places to me is the other people, I loved being able to get up close to the rides without having snotty kids run into my photos.

All the people that were there were in the festively-decorated Luna Park, leaving Deno's Wonder Wheel Park looking like a ghost town in comparison. Some of the rides are pretty terrifying (why does Donald Duck have Satan eyes?) but I'll always prefer the weird and old to the new and bland.

I'm not really a ride person but I did make an exception for the Spook-a-Rama, one of the few remaining "dark rides" left in the country. We paid $7 for about 45 seconds of creepy skeletons, gnarly creatures and screaming ghosts. I wish it was longer, but as with most relics of a past time—and Coney Island in general—I'm just grateful that it still exists at all.