The Pits of New York

If you’re in the east village on Avenue A check out Benny’s Burritos. We had our last dinner with friends there on Sunday night after an afternoon at Coney Island. Oh yeah, Coney! Let me take a minute to describe our experience there.




Coney is the poor man’s Disneyland. It looks and smells worn out. The boardwalk is physically dangerous in sections. Planks of wood are worn out and it would not have taken much for one of us to have had their foot slip between the boards and get seriously injured.

The only ride we went on was the Cyclone rollercoaster. It is hard to believe this wooden antique can still legally operate. I screamed like a little girl down the first drop and every lightning fast twist and turn on the rickety beast. We paid $6 to have our lives flash before our eyes for less than two minutes. After stepping off the ride you have a strange sense of having survived a Herculean trial by fire. You feel re-energized and ready to take on the world. Who needs motivational speakers?

If you walk east along the boardwalk from Coney you quickly arrive in Odessa, on the Black Sea. Actually, you reach Brighton Beach which has a large Russian émigré community. Russian is the lingua franca of the denizens on the boardwalk and of the cafes that face the beaches of the Atlantic. Every table at the Tatiana or Moscow on the Beach was occupied by the latest batch of Slavic-americans.

When we doubled back to Coney, B and I paid five dollars each for the opportunity to “Shoot the Freak” with paint balls. The “Freak” was actually a young agile guy who was well protected by body armour and a shield. He chose to stand very still and yawningly deflect our colourful projectiles with his shield.

But back to Benny’s Burritos in Manhattan. We had a surreal experience after dinner. We were lucky we finished dinner. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.





The owner of the two dogs, who looked like a hobo from Tolkein's Middle Earth, informed us his two canines are two of God’s gentler creatures and pose no physical threat to us. They were just thirsty and being friendly. As he said, “They’re brothers. When they’re not fighting they lick each other’s dicks. I have a brother. We fought, but we never licked each other’s dicks. But so what? Whatever, I grew up in the 60s.” He did a little dance as he said that.

I offered B $100 if he would finish drinking the water from the glass the dog just slopped his tongue all over. New York is expensive after all. He briefly considered until he recalled what the dogs liked liking.