Don’t Forget About Coney! (Or, the Sideshow that has Distracted You from the Sideshow)

This is what’s going on at the Sideshow

Dynamism! Adaptability! Change! Progress! The Future!

For over a century these have been the American watchwords and I certainly consider myself one to sign on to them as virtues and hopefully to practice them. But while they have their function, they also have their limits.  Lately I’ve been thinking about the importance of memory. In recent years, the 24 hour news cycle and the success of social media have created a reality of discourse in which new, perpetually changing information is constantly washing over us, creating an odd situation where human beings are becoming more like conduits than repositories. Things flow through us; we don’t retain them. Yet to make decisions and to plan you need the information not “out there” but in your head, and that’s hard to achieve when really important stuff keeps getting pushed back by the latest humorous picture of a cat eating spaghetti or whatever the hell flew through here three seconds ago.

Obviously, I’m all about this  — I like to celebrate artists who were at the top of  the world just a twinkling ago (as the historical crow flies) but whose own grandchildren don’t even know who they were today. You could say it’s on the frivolous side, but no, ultimately, no, not really. We fill our heads with the products of popular culture morning, noon and night. What is it? What does it mean? Where did it come from? What is it turning us into? What might it be? What might it become? Is it garbage? Is it turning us into monsters? Does it ennoble us? One thing I know is we better not just sit there and TAKE what some faraway executives with corrupt or indifferent motives want to do to our heads. Personally, I hope never to be a person who doesn’t “care”. Otherwise, what’s the point of being a human being?

The idea of passive amnesia makes me crazy. Sandy Hook was three months ago and suddenly guns don’t matter any more?! The Steubenville verdict was about a week ago and where’s our resolve to teach young men not to be monsters? These things are not FIXED yet, so why the hell are we moving on? Because some TV show needs fresh content?!

THIS is the point of remembering, and this is the point of beating the same drum, even when it becomes irritating, even when it becomes tedious, even when it bores people.

Anyway in the interest of mixing the frivolous and the important, I bang the drum today for a cause I imagine is dear to most of us in New York. Hard hit by Hurricane Sandy less than six months ago (is that boring to you? Guess what? I’m not sorry!) Coney Island USA still struggles to pull itself together to open for the summer season. They’re close — but not yet there. The opening will be postponed and some annual events, like the Congress of Curious Peoples, have had to be cancelled. Their recent gala did well, but they still need to raise $18,000 to get the doors open. As a reminder of why that may be important, I recommend perusing their Freakshow Hall of Fame, with photos of some of their key performers over the last 20+ decades. It brought back memories for me — I first went there  in the late 80s when it was still Bradshaw’s Circus of World Curiosities and the star was Otis Jordan, the armless, legless Human Cigarette Factory. And Baby Dee! The transgendered person who was billed as a He-She hermaphrodite! Woman with a Beard Jennifer Miller! etc etc. I miss the sideshow already so let’s get those doors open for the 2013 season! Go to coneyisland.com to find out how to help.