It was no day at the beach - part i

My friend Angel talked me into making a trip to Coney Island recently. It's a piece of Americana that I'd not seen, so I decided to give it a whirl. After a quick walk around the amusements, we headed down the promenade (boardwalk) for a spot of people watching. Well!!! It's been years since I've spent so much time among such huge numbers of straight people. We knew when we could see in the distance a green sign for a restaurant named V**ina that we were not among the Posh Table A crowd. (Two of the letters of the restaurant's name were obscured by other signage.) To our great relief, the restaurant was named something different from the obvious, and it was a grill rather than a fish restaurant.

Despite the fact that we hadn't had a drink all day, and it was pushing 1.00 pm, we continued our forced march down Brighton Beach. Noticing the maple leaf symbols of the city parks department I commented to Angel that the maple leaves made me think of Canada. I was actually thinking that we had walked so far that it felt as if we could have been in Ottawa by then.

"Are we there yet?" I demanded.

"Where?" Angel responded.

"Canada!"

We kept going and passed several bar/restaurants that we firmly intended having a look at eating and drinking in later in our expedition. Eventually, we got to the end of the boardwalk (somewhere in the Hamptons would be my guess), took our shoes off, and started the long walk back on the beach. Not recommended, though there were some nice views along the way. Also some not so nice ones: the product of 300 years of potato diet!

Just when we thought we might never eat or drink again, we came upon the section of Russian restaurants on Brighton beach and settled on the Winter Garden because we preferred its bold but co-ordinated colour scheme over the clashing tones of Tatiana and the unmentionable one.

We selected a lovely table and settled in for a libation and a nibble. We ordered vodka shots to begin - three of them, one for me, and two for Angel. I also ordered a vodka tonic, and Angel asked for a coke. We also asked for water. Two shots arrived quickly afterwards so we had one each. We sat waiting. When we eventually able to attract the attention of our waitress we asked about our other drinks.

"Bar's closed," she said, completely deadpan.

In what I imagine was a 'Sooty moment' (British readers may recall Sooty the hand puppet), in an instant, my head shot up and swivelled 90 degrees. I had one word for her: "Closed?!?!?!" which I delivered with the full force that those exclamation marks imply. It was 4.00 pm for goodness sake, and there was a huge amount of drinking to be done.

Not wanting to make international spectacles of ourselves, we ordered cokes (again). One coke arrived. We shared it and asked for water (again). A large jug of water arrived, but no glasses. Avid and careful readers will have noticed that we had received shot glasses earlier, which by this point were empty. Necessity being the mother of invention, we poured shots of water. Perfect. Eventually, we splurged on a second bottle of coke and polished off the water before leaving. As an aside, I will say that the food was excellent. The laughs we had about the service were even better. It's amazing how much fun you can have on one tiny shot.

The journey back to Manhattan was a revelation. I'll save that story and the account of our next journey to Coney Island and Brighton Beach for another time.