Mermaids vs. Sharks

The lead mermaid declares a hunger strike. King Neptune sinks his trident. All the marine specimens are kept stranded on the piers of Coney Island and Astroland Amusement Park already smells like a rusty shipwreck.

The future belongs to the real estate sharks that are already going forward with scheming some kind of Cancun on the town’s beach, breakwater of this New York population, “landscape of the vomiting multitude” (Garcia Lorca), Atlantis arrived at least, already submerged under the foam of speculation.

As in every summer, coinciding with the solstice, the mermaids come out this weekend. Heavy with the air of a carnival, the environment smells more of putrid fish. The parade left the flavor of an undertow or a procession for the dead (with scales.)

The official mayor of Coney Island, Dick Zigun, loudly cast the rod some days ago. He distanced himself with an open letter to his namesake of New York, Michael Bloomberg, denouncing the “speculative maneuver” and the intention to convert the decadent and historic enclave “into a commercial center with ‘Nike towns’ and ‘Toys R Us’, more than 4,500 apartments, and four thirty floor hotels.”

All the fish lined fauna of Coney Island, including the sword swallowers and the bearded women, have decided to stand up to the municipality. Although the muse of the protest is the Queen of the Mermaids, the artist known as Savitri D., she has declared herself on a hunger strike and she shall lead the twentyfour hour protest this June through the streets of the city.

The battle between the Coney Island mermaids and the sharks is the same metaphor for the struggle that liberated the neighbors and the real estate promoters in SoHo, in Brooklyn, and in Union Square. The mayor has turned over the keys of New York to the speculators. All of Manhattan is the show home of Donald Trump and his henchmen. The cranes of gentrification (the invasion of new money) have thrown out the races in Harlem and threaten to jump to the Bronx.

The nostalgic ones ask if the city is losing its soul, although the more appropriate question would be to ask if its politicians have lost their scruples. The life long residents—the majority Black and Hispanic—are expelled to who knows where, while the banks and the corporations multiply themselves like seaweed in this very intimate and crowded ocean of dogfish into which New York is converting itself.