Like a derelict beauty queen, Coney Island sits at the edge of Brooklyn, still wearing her sparkling tiara of lights and rides, waiting for someone to remember how pretty she once was. A remnant of a lost New York, one where family vacations existed just at the end of the subway line, Coney Island persists, with each summer threatening to be its last. Its roller coasters, hot dogs, and boardwalk carry on, joyously welcoming summer each year with blithe disregard for the dire forecast.

This year I joined the throng flocking to Coney Island to welcome the first day of summer, packed into blissfully air-conditioned subway cars, and rode to the end of the line. For many New Yorkers, myself included, life revolves around Manhattan and its nearest surrounding neighborhoods in the boroughs. A trip to Coney Island may as well be a trip to the end of the universe. It is definitely a trip to a different New York. One of quaint street names, of neighborhood feeling and of nostalgia. One that has been erased layer by layer in my New York. And perhaps that is the pull of Coney Island. It is the New York of the American experience, the one that exists in our collective memory but nowhere else. At Coney Island, you can grasp it, if only for a minute, for the cost of famous Nathan's hot dogs.

With a corn-dog and chili-dog in hand, I watched the annual Mermaid Parade. Born in the 1980's, the parade brings the crowds out in an attempt to honor the glory days gone by. Hundreds march by in everything from 1940's pin-up ensembles to anime creature costumes, and for a moment, if you squint your eye's just right, you can see it. The sequins and glitter and crowds coming in from Manhattan to trade the oppressive heat of the asphalt for the cool ocean breeze. But the moment passes as the "Don't Develop Coney Island" mermaids walk past, trying to preserve what has already slipped away.

Walking down Surf Ave., contemplating what may have been the penultimate hot dog experience of my life, I realize I love New York. I love the constant change and reinvention. That new layers of the city rest comfortably on the old, juxtaposing its history with its present. That it is never the same as when you last left it, and never the same as you imagine it.