labor day - parade and coney island

this post is a little late as i have been out of town for a few days, thus, away from my computer:

for labor day, r and i met f to see the caribbean parade with the promise of coney island afterwards. the parade was more f's idea since she's from panama. r and i probably wouldn't have gone to it had it been up to ourselves. we're just not parade people. standing in a large crowds waiting to see "something" is not really our idea of fun. besides, f's mom didn't have a food stand at this event so the main attraction was not there. but i love f so we went:


the parade at washington and eastern parkway, in front of the brooklyn art museum


looked like a peacock


more parade


more parade


girl in costume

and then onto coney island!!! this summer is supposedly the last summer the amusement rides and games would still be there before the developers come in to demolish them. it's been the rumor for the past few years, but those years seem have run their course. we shall see if the rumor this year is true as we head into next year, if the coney island we saw this summer will remain the same or if we had been there at a historic season.


coney island - view from train


we took the q train to the coney island station


nathan's - our first stop, hard to imagine that the plan is to building condos onto of this structure - according to f, nathan's has been named as a historic landmark so it cannot be destroyed


our nathan's feast...or what's left of it


proof that hot dog vending machines do exist - had we not been filled with delicious greasy nathan's, we probably would've tried one


some like to roll in style


boardwalk


shadows of the three of us


boardwalk and park


in the park


music courtesy of the red boom box


we survived the cyclone!


at sunset


cops hanging out by a sign


the beach that none of us were brave enough to venture onto and we admire those who did


boardwalk at sunset


alley


games


beach at sunset


q train crossing the manhattan bridge on our way back to bushwick

i took most of these pictures blind, aiming without looking looking through the viewfinder to be inconspicuous. of course, these are only a selection of all the pictures i took, and some of these are cropped. still, taking pictures this way was easier than i thought it would be. about 80% of all the pictures were fine as they stood, without further manipulations. i owe this to using a digital camera, which i'm discovering affords me a certain liberty that my nikkormat couldn't.