A Tale of Two Beaches: Coney Island vs. the Hamptons

I'm not exactly a huge beach person. Generally my only visits to beaches are when I get dragged there by a family member or friend. It's not that I hate them. It's just that I'm lazy. Really lazy. Trekking out to a beach to sit around and do nothing while I could be doing the same the at home strikes me as being far too overwhelming.

The week I went to two separate beaches. A new personal record.

The most interesting thing about my trips aren't the fact that I went to two beaches but that the two beaches, although both very "New York" in their heritage and nature, couldn't be any more different.

The Hamptons are filled with people who have more money than they know what to do with. They're not trying to keep up with the Joneses anymore, they're trying to keep up with the Rockefellers. It would be difficult for a group of towns to be more elitist. The place is like Park Avenue on crack

Coney Island, is in no way classy or elitist. It is surrounded by pretty poor section of Brooklyn and a amusement park that could easily be described as decrepit. Hell, in 2000 a roller coaster was torn down to "protect public safety."

It seems natural (to me, anyways) that these two areas should battle for the title of best New York beach. So here it is, a point by point rundown...

Category 1: The Beach itself
The Hamptons have nice clean beaches with pretty big waves that break close to the shore. How cute.

I stepped in dog shit at Coney Island while I was trying to avoid all of the broken glass. Not cute.

EDGE: The Hamptons

Category 2: Locals
The Hamptons:


Coney Island:

(by the way, Google's image searches for both "thug" and "rich snob" brought up some pretty disturbing porn)

EDGE: Coney Island


Category 3: If I wasn't in a relationship, where would I go to meet attractive females
The Hamptons:
I used Google's image search again and tried both "rich bitch" and "spoiled bitch" only to find even more porn, some of which included a tranny. I quickly gave up. I was basically looking for a girl with Gucci and Prada symbols all over everything that she owned and a scowl on her face. Not a tranny.

Coney Island:


EDGE: Neither. Not in a million years.


Category 4: People watching
The Hamptons:
People watching at the Hamptons is actually kind of fun if you play the game "day tripper wanna be or local." Of course, at one point you have face the realization that half of the beach is probably looking at you saying "definitely a day tripper wanna be."

Coney Island:


That gem of a cell phone picture was taken by Emily the day that we went to Coney Island. Needless to say, old men in speedos are all the rage at Coney Island.

EDGE: The Hamptons. I don't enjoy having the urge to vomit.


Category 5: Other things to do
The Hamptons:







Consumerism!!!

Coney Island


Old roller coasters that probably aren't all that safe!

EDGE: Coney Island


Category 6: Food

The Hamptons:
Lobster, caviar and other fun stuff that I can't afford.

Coney Island:
Overpriced fried [insert any edible object here].

EDGE: Coney Island

Category 7: Night life

The Hamptons:
Nothing to speak of.

Coney Island:
Possible death

EDGE: The Hamptons


Tie Breaker: Spectator sports
The Hamptons:
Wandering around on the streets looking for celebrities wandering on the streets. Apparently people do this quite a bit. Because if they get really lucky they'll be able to see this fine lady:


It's not for me. If I ever saw Martha Stewart I think I'd run in the opposite direction out of fear that she'd kill me so she can baste me in garlic and rosemary and then pan fry my leg in order to make a delicious appetizer for one of her dinner parties.

If you really want to see a celebrity in the Hamptons, drive around town at one in the morning looking for an obscenely drunk driver. It's probably Billy Joel.

Coney Island:
The Nathans 4th of July hot dog eating contest! Oh boy! Nothing says patriotism like scarfing down 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes as the Japanese guy next to you pukes at the last second! THAT WAS THE GREATEST MOMENT IN AMERICAN SPORTS HISTORY ACCORDING TO ESPN'S ANNOUNCER! He might have forgot when little Jimmy Green was plunked in the head by a 2-1 fastball to walk home the winning run in the 1982 Norton, Kansas Little League Baseball quarter final. Or, you know, any one of the ten billion American sporting moments that were greater than that.

EDGE: Coney Island.

WINNER: Coney Island 4-3

The Frickin' Frick

So, I ditched MoMA free Fridays (sponsered by Target in case you were wondering) and chose happy hour instead. Somehow priceless pieces of artwork lost out to not-so-pricey booze. Luckily that was enough to get me off my lazy ass on a Saturday morning and head over to the Frick.

I've spoken to quite a few people about the Frick and although their reactions are rather mixed, nearly all of them agree on one thing:

This guy had a damn nice house.

Upon arriving at the Frick, I was upset about three things
1) Entry is $15 for adults but I could just tell them that I'm a student and only pay five.
2) The realization that I'm far too big of a pussy to tell them I'm a student because they might ask for my student ID. That would be embarrassing.
3) If I had just waited a day I could have taken advantage the "Pay as you Wish" Sundays at the Frick.

This is why you don't wake up obnoxiously early and head to a random museum without doing any research.

$15 dollars and a whole bunch of self loathing later, I was in.

I think the thing that I found most upsetting about the Frick was that there were no write ups explaining the artwork. If you want to learn anything interesting about the artwork at the Frick that you have to buy one of those stupid little audio tour things and feel like a douche walking around listening to it. I hate those things.

Is there really any good reason not to put explanations next to artwork in a museum, aside from simply adding to its overall pretentiousness?

For instance the Frick contains a statue of a she-wolf much like the one below



The only information given is the fact that it is a she-wolf and it was made in Italy. There's nothing there that explains that in Roman mythology Romulus, who was the founder of Rome, and his brother Remus were nursed by a she-wolf as babies. The fact that a statue of a she-wolf without Romulus and Remus included is pretty rare isn't mentioned.

Instead people without audio tours are left to their own devices and probably wind up thinking "That is pretty fucking ugly."



It would also be nice if they let me in on what the hell that skull is doing behind St. Francis. It's pretty creepy.

I really would enjoy it if one day a museum just decided to put random and blatantly incorrect descriptions next to their artwork. Think how much fun this would be...


"The Seventh Earl of Derby fathered 12 other children. However his first daughter ate all of their brains when they hit six months of age. Whenever she was reprimanded for these actions her head would repeatedly spin around in a counter-clockwise fashion. This frightened the Earl of Derby and made him feel like less of a man. In order to compensate, he pretended that he was Zorro."


"Wu-Tang Clan ain't nuthin' to fuck with!"


That would make the Frick worth the price of admission. Otherwise, not really worth it. Unless, of course, you like walking around other people's houses. In which case, befriend some rich people and, hopefully, they won't charge admission to let you walk around their mansion.

On the way home, I stumbled upon the Asia Society Museum. I figured, "why the hell not?"

The museum has two floors. The first floor was showing films by Chen Chieh-Jen, a Taiwanese film maker. I walked in right at the beginning of one called "Factory." Apparently, he brought a bunch of old laborers back to the Taiwanese clothing factory where they worked for 20 years. After 20 years of service, they were fired because the company they were making clothes for found cheaper labor (see how explanations attached to works can add to them, I never would have come close to figuring this out if I only watched to film). The movie had no sound or plot and mainly consisted of a series of nearly motionless shots with slow zooms and pans.

When I first glanced at the screen, it seemed boring as all hell. Yet after 3 minutes of watching it, I was captivated. I sat there through the whole half hour film and didn't even move. Fortunately, nobody goes to the Asia Society's museum so I wasn't interrupted. A total of two other people entered the room while I was there, one of whom was a security guard.

The rest of the museum served as a good explanation of why no one goes there. There was a small collection of historical artwork and a exhibition of Chinese-American elementary students' artwork. As for the historical artwork: there's a better collection at the Met and you're not forced to pay $10 for admission there. As for the elementary students' work: fuck you Asian Society, you charged me an entry fee for this.

Aside from the movie, the best part was the fact that they had a number you can call in order to get guided audio tours through the exhibitions even though every door states: "No cameras, mobile phones or umbrellas allowed in exhibitions." Huh?

Are you kidding me? What type of genius is running that place? Oh yeah, the same one who make people pay admission to see 9 year olds' artwork and then wonders why nobody comes.

Brooklyn Museum

You learn all types of interesting things when your looking at historical artwork.



In some African traditions, the depiction of a woman holding her breasts (see above) says that the woman is a good mother and is nurturing of her child. So, in the case of Britney Spears August 2006 cover shoot for Harper's Bazaar magazine...




No, wait, it still says "crazed slut."

Overall, the Brooklyn Museum struck me as being the poor man's Met. On the plus side it's not as pretentious as the Met and not nearly as crowded. The collections aren't as extensive as the Met's but they are much larger than one would think. It's located next to Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens so the area is definitely worth the trip.

Getting off the subway we were couldn't help but notice three people in crazy outfits playing traditional Russian music while marching across the courtyard in front of the museum. If that wasn't enough, the drummer was one stilts. Creepy. Even creepier was that as the marched every single person with a baby carraige slowley was drawn to them and followed behind like they had been brainwashed. It was a little bit scary. OK, it was very scary. I almost peed my pants.

I've come to a realization. I really need a digital camera. Not a lot of work that I liked in the museum is online. The only one that I found was this:



When you walk up to the picture, all of the eggs seem flawless. But once you look closely, you notice all off their cracks and imperfections become evident. Once you notice them, you can see them from a distance. The picture no longer is perfect. It struck me as being a lot like people that you get to know (sorry about the douchey metaphor).


I'm taking a break from museums today, hopefully I'll make it to one on Monday.

MoMA! (Floors 1-3)

That is an ice cream scoop. It's pretty damn similar to the one that I have at my apartment. It's also very similar to the one on display at MoMA. The only real difference between the one in my apartment and the one at MoMA is that I can touch the one in my apartment without facing prosecution.



That is a piece of paper folded into squares. It too is on display at MoMA. In fact, its sign proudly displays "RECENT ACQUISITION." This means that sometime in the recent past, a group of people paid a reasonable sum of money because they felt that it belonged on display in the same building as works by Van Gogh, Picasso and Monet.



That is horse shit.



I think I might try to sell it to MoMA.

Okay, I understand. It's art. I'll give it that. But come on, who comes to a museum that is host to priceless works of art and gets excited about seeing an ice cream scoop or a piece of paper folded into squares?

Can't they find better stuff to fill up the museum? I know its a pretty big place but modern art must have more to offer us than just that.

This is not to say that MoMA sucked. There were plenty of amazing pieces of art there. In two and half hours, we only managed to make it through half of the museum and had an absolute blast in the process. The amazing part is that it the most renowned works are in the top floors which we didn't see.

Although the questionable art bothered me in principle, it didn't lessen the experience all that much. If you don't like a piece at MoMA, it's pretty easy to just move on. After all, there is no shortage of artwork to see.



This is by Max Beckmann. It's part of a portfolio called "Hell." It's not exactly an uplifting collection but it was pretty damn amazing. One of the downsides of going to MoMA on free Fridays is that you have to put up with a lot of crowds. Beckmann's work was nice because it was right next to some rather unspectacular Picassos. So everyone in the room was hoarded around them and completely ignoring everything. It was one of the few times where I was able to really relax and look at something that I enjoyed.



I have no idea what my baby cradle looked like but it definitely wasn't as cool as that thing. It looks like it was taken out of a Tim Burton movie.




Kara Walker took Civil War images and put silhouettes of slaves on top of them. That doesn't sound particularly amazing but it works well in execution and was really thought provoking.

Anyhow, I'm probably going back next Friday for the top floors. God forbid I actually pay $20 to see priceless art work.

Barry Bond's Dog

This was on Flickr, user: krazykoreanbling

Museum Number 1 (I feel so damn accomplished right now)

Today Em and I went to the American Folk Art Museum. Finally. I've only been planning on heading over there for a week now.



That there is supposed to be a Baby's Quilt. It's made using condoms in tin packaging. There's no better way to tell your child "You were a huge mistake" like wrapping it in the condoms that you should have used the night of its conception. Classy.

The museum was different than I expected, which is a good thing. There's a lot of really interesting pieces that, although not astounding, were definitely interesting. I don't think that I've been to museum that inspired so much genuine conversation before.

A lot of the stuff was created by people who weren't artists by profession. They weren't attempting to create masterpieces and didn't think that they were going to get much recognition from it. As a result, the stuff is pretty eccentric and sometimes just odd, i.e. a rug completely made of used Wonder Bread wrappers.

My one real problem with the place was the portraits. We sat down by a TV that was showing a documentary on that:


The people being interviewed went on and on about how the portrait's minimalism made it great and how a European painter would have ruined the portrait. Hell, they even compared the thing to the Mona Lisa. Let's be honest with ourselves here, that thing says "Children of the Corn" much more than "Mona Lisa." I'm going to have nightmares about waking up and having that girl eating my intestines. The cat did speak to me though,



Unfortunately it said "My name is Mr. Bigglesworth. I used to have a soul but the frightening little girl holding me ate it three nights ago."

However the place definitely is worth the $7 admission (just tell them you're a student, they don't check). If you're having any doubts...



Can you really resist a face like that?