Nostalgia is a bitch.† It is a sentiment that gives you pain when you witness what (I guess) must be the inevitable change that takes place in the world.
Some things only change a little, so the sense of Nostalgia is more like a haze that lingers over the current reality. Coney Island Hotdog in Worcester is sort of like that for me. The place is close enough to being the same as when I was a kid that I can picture the ghosts of waitresses that would call you “hun” and banana cream pies, just an old layer that has been peeled off or faded away.
Nantasket Beach / Paragon Park is one of those more painful incidents of nostalgia. All you see is the dirty broken ghost of a layer left. The heart of things is long gone. There is little reminder of what once was, leaving you doubting that it ever really was at all.
I used to got to Nantasket Beach and Paragon Park every now and then when I was a kid. Late seventies to mid eighties. I think I went the most in my mid-teens. My father and I would drive down in the evening. Convertible top down. Play some pinball or video games. Get a box of salt water taffy and eat most if it on the drive back.
Arcades lined the whole strip there in front of the park. There were tons of games. Lots of them were pretty beat up, but the depth in time that they represented was amazing. There was just so much going on and it was teaming with life.
I would go again just after Paragon Park had been shut down. Rode out there with my dad and other friends on our motorcycles. I think my girlfriend (now wife) was on the back. Things were shutdown, but it was all there still at least.
This past weekend I made a trip down to Nantasket Beach on Sunday morning to see what it was like. And this is basically all that there was to it:
Nantasket Beach strip in 2010
Now admittedly I had been here before in the past years, but I always made excuses like “Oh, maybe I am just here too early in the season, it will be much more active later on.” But this is the start of August, and all there is to show for it here is one limp arcade, a food stand, a crappy gift shop and a boarded up arcade home to who-knows what. It is basically what it was when I went there over four years ago.
Same photo from 2006
The only good thing is that nothing has changed in these last four years. The bad thing is it is all just as depressing now as it was then. I can only hope that it was a case that the old amusement park and arcades were just losing money hand over fist and couldn’t survive in the times, not that someone with a bit more money decided that the world would be better served by yet another big ugly condo complex. Perhaps the residents of Hull like it better this way. Their town is quieter now and it can be a little sleepy seaside town with a few shops, some ice cream and hot dogs and a carousel. That bit of nostalgia in me hates them for it either way.