This was taken at the Siren Music Festival (which stopped being after 2010) at Coney Island. We're sitting on a little plot of grass behind the main stage as Broken Social Scene plays, the notes wafting perfectly audibly back to us. It's near the end of the day, and I'm not minding at all not being able to see the band, because I'm exhausted after a full day of standing in the summer sun.
I only went to Siren twice, because it was mostly a shitshow. Coney Island itself is a warren of bottlenecks so it was really hard to move between the two stages. There's also almost no shade, which makes an extended stay there in the middle of the summer a daunting experience. Additionally the area set apart for the stages was kind of big, but narrow, so you had a lot of people cramming in, many too far back to see, on concrete, under the hot hot heat.
The plot of grass pictured above behind the Stillwell stage was one of the only places to not be horribly uncomfortable. That, and a stretch of beach behind the main stage. I remember the previous year sitting on the sand, watching the waves, and listening to the New York Dolls as the sun went down. That's sort of a microcosm of New York, really. An intense, crowded, stressful place that also happens to be full of great times. A place that, if you're paying attention, will also provide you with peaceful places that are a respite from the craziness. In the end, though, like with New York, these small moments were not enough of a break for me. I never went back to Siren, though hopefully I will be back in New York eventually. Though not again as a resident.
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