Come On, Irene

Hey, everyone else is going with that hed. Why can't I?

Nina and I took a trip to Brighton Beach the weekend before the storm. I'd been to Coney Island twice already this summer, but hadn't been to the beach at all. In between consecutive, obligatory inland LIRR trips, Nina was craving some sand of the non-buried-cigarette-having variety, but without a car or advance plans we had to settle. And Brighton Beach isn't, you know, a private resort or anything, but it's not the public baths, either. We took the Q out past the Aquarium stop and walked out to Brighton 14th and down to the beach. We set up our towels down by the water near a dude who was listening to a Mets game on a portable radio and talking to himself about it. "Unbelievable," he said. "Un-fucking-believable." I stripped down to the trunks I'd put on underneath my jeans and tried to acclimate to the chilly water. Nina lay on the beach with the copy of "A Dance With Dragons" that Tom got me and made a little sand dude. It was pleasant enough, weather-wise, but it wasn't exactly sunny.

When the cloud-occluded sun began to go down for real we called it quits on the beach and looked for a place to change back into our street clothes. We skirted the Brighton Beach changing rooms, where a guy was literally pissing on the side of the building instead of using the toilets inside, but that left us only the public bathrooms on the Coney Island part of the beach if we wanted to protect our modesty. I bit the bullet and ventured inside one of those urine-soaked hell-holes, changing quickly to protect my vulnerable privates from stall creepers; Nina did the same but with less complaining. Then, using her smartphone, she looked for a place where we could get some victuals. We settled on Elza Fancy Food, a Korean-Uzbek (!) restaurant on Brighton 4th St. Once we got there the phone stayed out to help us interpret the menu, which wasn't super accessible to gringos like us. We settled on an order of plov (a kind of lamb pilaf) and some manti (dumpling). The waitress, who was attentive but spoke only halting English, also brought us some compot (fruity drink) and some of the house specialty, a spicy eggplant salad, for the road. It was all super delicious and cost practically nothing. Top marks for Elza! And to me, for being such a flexible vegetarian.

After dinner we took a walk down Surf Ave. towards Luna Park, stopping along the way to check out one of the Russian groceries, where we picked up some treats -- sesame peanuts, sugary chickpeas, and a box of dried cherry-apple tea. We considered but deferred til next time a crazy array of unfamiliar yogurt drinks, cheeses, dried fruits, cured meats, and children's cereals. Our loot in tow, we reached the Coney Island boardwalk proper and took a quick tour of the amusements. Luna Park's been built out a bit more since last year -- in addition to the log flume and the teacups they've got a part of the park now called the "Scream Zone" that's got a couple of real sadistic-looking slingshot-type rides and this thing called the Soarin' Eagle that flies you around Superman style.

After wringing our hands over all that scariness, we walked down the ramp to Deno's Wonder Wheel and visited the video arcade, where I succumbed to the allure of the "coin pusher" machines. Nina, clever little raptor that she is, figured out how to not play the game like a complete chump: Your average pusher's got two shelves, the top one of which moves in and out. The secret is to time the drop of your quarter so that it falls between the front of the moving wall of the top shelf and the mass of quarters on top of the lower shelf. That way the moving shelf will push it into the other quarters and hopefully dislodge one of 'em. In practice, however, that will not happen. The quarters will just sit there. If you're like me you will spend about five dollars in quarters learning as much.

On our way out, we walked through the scuzziest part of Coney Island, the set of rides and booths that aren't part of Luna Park or the Wonder Wheel. There was the ring toss booth with the ghoulish, half-heartedly electrified skull-clown -- wearing a sign reading "Chuckles is not a prize" (yer tellin' me!). And most notably, The Ghost Hole, the haunted house ride I've been daring myself to go on for years but for which I haven't yet mustered the company or the courage. I was feeling a little, uh, crapulent, but thought it was worth taking a slightly closer look, so we stepped up to the ticket booth. ...Where we encountered an animatronic display, enclosed in plexiglass, of a punter voiding himself at both ends simultaneously. Seriously, it was a herky-jerky mannequin on its knees in front of a toilet having diarrhea and the barfs in never-ending succession, like Prometheus getting his liver eaten by the eagle. Nina took a short video with her smartphone; the effect of the rusty water spraying out of the hindquarters of the figure's ripped jeans and all over the plexiglass panel is hard to convey with words. Apparently this thing has been around forever, but I can't remember ever seeing it. Maybe they only take it out when they really need to pique peoples' interest. Suffice it to say I didn't think I could handle The Ghost Hole itself, so we got back on the train at Stillwell and headed home.

The Thursday before the storm, I checked out the free Wavves Summerstage show at East River Park. I quite like that space -- a big concrete amphitheater might not seem like pleasant accommodations for a show, but it's actually pretty dope, especially if you're on your feet. I saw Titus Andronicus for the first time there (a concert that was rained out torrentially). And the Wavves show was even better than that one, mostly on account of the crowd, which was huge!

It was a crazy scene: Young punks with dirty faces, thrashing around in a concrete pit down by the river under a dark and threatening cloud front. There was even a Snake Plissken type dancing by himself on the concrete steps up from the stage. It would've been downright apocalyptic if it weren't so thematically sunny: The band or its management had tossed about a dozen beach balls into the crowd, and people were enthusiastically spiking them up onto the stage and off the band. Someone had also distributed a whole lot of sunglasses with neon green frames throughout the crowd. I would have donned a pair myself and waded in, but I had my bag and, well, I am an old. I could certainly appreciate the band, though: Short songs, an affinity for Pixies-style falsetto, and a drummer whose beats don't make me feel bad about my own drumming. And they played an awesome version of "Nervous Breadown" to round out an encore they played despite the insistence of the Parks Department representative that the show was over.

And then it was time for the hurricane. The city's preparations for the storm have been much discussed at this point; suffice it to say that the southwestern corner of block kissed the edge of Evacuation Zone C. I'll cop to feeling a twinge of anxiety when all the evac and windspeed buzz (120mph?!) reached its peak, but Nina and I went out and armed ourselves a gallon of water and some batteries (we already had the twist ties and black plastic garbage bags that ready.gov recommends you use should the toilet stop working) and then I felt more in control. In the mood to party through it, even. Tom O. was skeptical when I proposed a hurricane-themed get-together, but he was in due attendance at Katharine's when she made good on the idea. Tom H. fixed Pimm's Cups (No. 1 style) for us (we were joined by their downstairs neighbor, Susan) and we all played a 1970s edition of Clue salvaged from Katharine's grandmother's house while The Weather Channel played in the background with the sound off. We also ate football-shaped Oreos.

I was Mrs. White. Let it be known: I did not do shit to Mr. Body.

Come 1:30, the wind and rain started to really pick up and so Nina and I thought it best to wade home. It wasn't even so bad outside, although our umbrellas proved useless. After peeling off my sopping jeans, I got into bed; Nina stayed up. Reclining, I tried to gauge the intensity of the storm by watching the back-and-forth sway of the big tree across the street. Its upper branches waved like the arms of a sea anemone being rocked by the currents. But I fell asleep pretty quickly. I woke up at eleven o'clock the next morning, which was supposed to be the height of the storm, but apparently it had blown itself out early. When I went outside for coffee and such, there were little "packets" of leaves everywhere: The branches off the branches off the branches off the trees on our block. I think they're adapted to break off easily, in order to spare the structural integrity of the rest of the tree. Pretty clever if you ask me.