Coney Island. NYCSummers underneath the boardwalk would be easy. I noticed this the first time that I ever set foot in Coney Island. I stepped off the train into the foggy streets of southern Brooklyn and stepped into a ghost town, something out of an old western. The boardwalk provided the perfect liminal space, perfectly flat, a desert of concrete with the square buildings of the Freak Show and Nathan’s hot dogs inviting you out from the fog. The fog separates out this little town on the edge of the Hudson River. It buffets it from the rest of Manhattan with the walls of the Cyclone and the Freefall, along with the amateur baseball stadium acting as garrisons from the impinging commerce that inevitably surrounds Manhattan and Brooklyn. This little world unto itself was where I knew my experiment would be most successful.So of course I headed toward the pier. I knew that there, along the underlying fog was where I would have the most success. I kicked off my shoes as I passed the public toilets, still quiet before the spring surge that inevitably came to Brooklyn each summer season. I kept this very notepad and a pencil. I knew I didn’t need more. The shore was what I was looking for, the gray crests matching the sky. The smell of sea was thick there. Lost to my other senses was the site of garbage. Nowhere in the sounds of Coney Island were the plastic bags, and the cans of soda. No. As I closed my eyes, I could only smell the salt of the sea, the sweet tinge of soaked wood and the ever present sound of gulls and shore. This would be perfect. In the fog. In the sea. I would fully understand what it was like.