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Rock2, originally uploaded by emilyrems.

Last night in Union Square, LCF and I came upon Rock Rockit, a German carnie who LCF used to work with the summer before last at the Coney Island Sideshow. Rock had considerably more tattoos and fewer teeth since the last time I saw him, and he was wowing the tourists by swinging a bowling ball by his stretched earlobes, eating fire, and pulling a latex glove over his head and then inflating it till it popped. If the tourists walked by without leaving a tip in his hat, Rock would stop what he was doing and scream after them that they were “cheap bastards.” I think that was my favorite part. When I met LCF two years ago, Coney Island was officially my favorite spot on earth, and I made every excuse to go out there not just for sun and fun, but also for late night stuff like films and burlesque shows. After LCF and I got together, I went out there to pick him up from work almost every day, and we even talked about moving to a seaside apartment there together. The next summer, however, he decided to quit the sideshow, which proved to be an excellent decision, but we haven’t been back since. So seeing Rock out here kind of makes me a little wistful. After over a year of no Coney, LCF mentioned after we saw Rock that he might like to go back to the sideshow to check out their Halloween Spookhouse this weekend. I don’t want to get my hopes up, but I would love to spend some time out there again. Especially since so many big shot real estste peeps seem to have such big, big plans for the place. I fear it’s charmingly grungy and slightly dangerous days are numbered.

P.S. I also walked past the tree with the mystery keys hanging off of it again last night and the keys are STILL THERE!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 20th, 2006 at 2:38 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.