[The Luna Park Face. Source: Google search.]

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything.

~~John Lennon

My wife was with a man with a mission. We exited the D Train into 87° F heat and enough humidity to drown a fish. It was the last stop on the line, Stillwell Avenue/Surf Avenue. The man? Me, of course. And the mission was to get to Maimonides Stadium in time for the first pitch. The Brooklyn Cyclones were up against the Jersey Shore Bluepoints. The Cyclones are a minor league team for the New York Mets. Full disclosure: I’m a Yankee fan. A serious one. But I found the Cyclones ballpark a very enjoyable place. Intimate and smelling of dirt and grass, the way all ballparks should. The ticket prices for Yankee Stadium were a little beyond our means this past Saturday, June 22. More importantly, the game was the last event on our schedule that day.

I had other hot dogs to grill.

As we left the train station on Surf Avenue, the crowds were thick, like the damp air. What’s more, nearly everyone was in a costume that spoke of the sea (which was in my line of vision just beyond the Boardwalk). We had stumbled into the tail end of the wondrously extravagent Mermaid Parade. A pleasant surprise indeed. But it was really icing on the cake (such a clever cliché). On Mariam’s iPhone were tickets to the Circus Sideshow. We had twenty minutes to cross the Avenue and go into the show’s venue.

A guy: “There is no 3:15 show.”

Us: “It’s right here on our phone, see?”

Guy: “Doesn’t matter. It’s the Parade. Not our usual schedule.”

Us: “So what do we do?”

Guy: “Come back at 3:35.”

At 4:15 we finally found our seats in the small theater. For the next forty minutes or so we watched the usual fire-eaters, sword-swallowers, and ladies in a box that had blades sent through. The usual. I loved it. But I must say that it wasn’t as exciting as the time a decade ago when I was called to the stage to stand on a woman’s abdomen…while she was lying on a bed of nails. Or last year when I went on stage to pull an 8-inch nail out of a guy’s nose. Now that was really exciting.

[A pretty non-Mermaid waits for the sideshow. Photo is mine.]

[Waiting for the sideshow to begin. Photo is mine.]

[A ticket seller at the Sideshow Museum gift shop. Inked, pierced and happy. Photo is mind.]

One fact about me, gentle reader, is that I simply love Carnivals, circuses, sideshows and pretty trapeze artists. I went to a small one-ring European-style circus in Bruges many years ago. The woman on the swing, so high above the sawdust floor, went on to another town and then another. She took a tiny bit of my heart with her…she never saw me looking up, getting dizzy and silently blowing her kisses. In fact, she never knew of my existence.

I guess that’s the way things go when you’re young, carefree and always misplacing your heart.

After the final act, after a barefoot woman walked up a ladder of swords and somehow didn’t bleed to death in front of us (we were in the first row), we were back on Surf Avenue and checking the time. I wasn’t going to miss the first pitch, so we headed to the Stadium. I took a few photos of the dispersing paraders:

[Happy Mermaids on a hot day. Photo is mine.]

There were simply too many interesting people along the Avenue to photograph them all. But I did my best to isolate the more creative individuals.

[I didn’t know the names of these two creatures of the sea. But they smiled which made me smile. Photo is mine.]

As we stood at the end of the ticket holders line, I could see that the parade ambience extended to the outdoor restaurant.

[A guy drinking a beer…with a plastic conch shell hat. How about that? Photo is mine.]

We made it to our seats in plenty of time to see a few ceremonial first pitches. I was very impressed by a 10-year-old boy who threw a perfect strike to the catcher. Mariam brought back our dinner from the concession stand. My cheese burgher was one massive and uninterrupted unit of meat, cheese and bread that dripped all over my already soggy napkin.

Sometimes life is sweet.

The game started off badly for the Cyclones. A leadoff hit. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you what the final score was. We left before the 7th Inning Stretch. I doubt the home team was able to dig themselves out of the early hole they had fallen into so quickly.

[Section 10. Behind the home dugout. It was Free Shirt Day. The seats filled up quickly. Luna Park and the rides are in the distance. Photo is mine.]

A part of me wanted to take off my shoes and walk the beach, but the sand would be nearly hot enough to melt the quartz crystals. I have tender feet.

But, at the end of the day, a baseball game, a parade of sexy mermaids, a side show, countless tats, a free shirt and a sea breeze that actually dried my sweaty brow better than the temperature in Manhattan, was a grand way to spend a Saturday…in June.

What more could a boy and his girl ask for?