duck and cover, then get back to the whack-a-mole
as the wife and i devoured a large pie from Totonno's this afternoon (obligatory made-up pretentious bourgeois yuppie comment: as we ate the wife kept looking at the unglamorous surroundings and the styrofoam plates and saying "at least the pizza is fantastic"), we got the news that a plane had crashed on the beach at Coney Island earlier in the day. the 4 people on board were killed, but fortunately no one on the ground as hit or hurt. the section of the beach where it happened was cordoned off, but some people were lined up to gawk and you could see the tail just sitting there. we're not the camera-carrying type so i didn't get any pictures but it was kind of surprising how much everything around there was simply business as usual. we had already ridden the Cyclone twice and walked around for a while without any indication of something amiss. i guess a plane wreck just isn't enough to hold the attention of most New Yorkers, especially among the colorful distractions of the boardwalk and Astroland. and that includes us, as we were soon back on Surf Ave. giggling as the disembodied voice from the bumper cars once again encouraged all passersby to "Bump, bump, bump, your ass off!".