As a Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn baby, Astroland wasn't an amusement park to me, but rather a daily part of life. If we went anywhere, we surely passed the park, and Saturdays were often spent on the boardwalk of Coney Island. It is strange, to be a beach-community child in the biggest, loudest city in America. It doesn't make sense, that I grew up in Brooklyn, but most times in a bathing suit, body caked in sand like a veal cutlet, feet slapping as I ran across the boardwalk's storm-worn wooden planks.
My first hot dog was a Nathan's hot dog. My grandfather, now deceased, helped to build the Parachute Jump when he was young, living in a colorful and exciting New York that makes me jealous to imagine. Whenever traveling on the Belt Parkway I see the parachute jump from the road and laugh at what a powerful mark my family seems to leave on everything it touches, on the landscape of the world itself. The good and the bad.
The Wonder Wheel, I was sure was the center of the universe. When I sat on the rickety old, colorful metal seats, soaring above the beach next to mom or as the case may be, Dad, I imagined that it was the place where my divorced family by some miracle might be able to mend itself. It was there, high above Brooklyn that I felt my world connected. Mom and Dad were both allowed on the Wonder Wheel. Goodbye, Astroland.
