the candy store

one of the main reasons i post less on here these days is that all the things i find myself wanting to write about are better written elsewhere.

there was something that i meant to write about but forgot to, though. when i read yesterday that somebody had died as a result of the same arctic swim i was bragging about, it popped back into my head. if you don't feel like reading the article, he didn't die from being cold or anything. he injured his spinal cord somehow by diving in. it's still a huge tragedy, i only mention that because i don't want my mom to freak out. hi mom.

but reading about something so sad reminded me of something else i saw that day. being that it's winter and coney island is decidedly a summer destination, most of the shops on or around the boardwalk are boarded up. it's a bleak scene, to say the least, when a crowd of over a thousand is gathered on the boardwalk in broad daylight, surrounded by closed shops. but some shops never close (nathan's hot dogs are better than almost everything), and a few seem to make a special effort to open up for coney island's best-attended off-season event.

after the swim, the crowd basically retreats en masse down stillwell avenue, and most seem to stop at nathan's, which is at the corner of stillwell and surf. a little further down surf avenue there is a candy shop. bright colors, candy apples, etc. the kind of candy shop that there probably aren't many left of and that can only still exist in places like coney island. we stopped at nathan's on the way out (even though we had also stopped there on the way in) and walking down surf avenue towards our car, we passed the candy shop.

the shops on either side were closed up, but the candy shop was open, and the owner was just standing in the doorway, looking defeated while throngs of people (including us) walked by with nathan's hot dogs in hand.

anyway. i just got the impression that he had opened the doors specially for the occasion, and not many people appreciated it. and that made me a little sad.

in other news, i wrote about this already for work, but roddy woomble's (he's the singer in idlewild) solo record my secret is my silence blew me away this week. even though it came out months ago. better late than never, right?

oh, and also, i got a big snail to live with roddy and eat algae. his name is spencer and i haven't taken a picture yet. this morning he was all hiding in his shell instead of crawling around and it has me a little worried. please keep him in your thoughts.