Memorial Day Jam

I'm not very good about living up to my promises. I know I said I'd get a report on the Old Coney Island Memorial Day dance aired last weekend but I didn't come through. Sorry about that, it's been one of those weeks!

Old Coney Island is worth a look if you're in the Cincinnati area. You can see the remnants of its old soul through the newly added water slides and wave pools. Deco elements are visible as you drive in through the gates and the pavilion where the dance was held (not the Moonlight Pavilion as promised but still) is the same sort of venue you'll find if you visit High Bridge Kentucky. According to my father-in-law, you used to be able to find an outdoor venue like the one at Old Coney just about any side of Indianapolis - that was the way of the late forties: Friday night you'd drive down to the pavilion and dance. Westlake here on the West Side of Indianapolis had a particularly memorable pavilion where Bob described seeing Louis Armstrong and standing so close to the bandstand he could see the beads of sweat rolling down Louis' forehead on a warm spring night. I'll never gripe about having an air-conditioned ballroom for my dancing but when I hear that story I kind of feel like some the native magic of dancing's been irrevocably lost to the mechanical churning of progress.

The dance felt a little like taking a step back about 65 years. The organizers did a great job by modeling the event after a USO event of the war-time 40's. The band wore military uniforms and the bandleader called out the soloists by rank as well as name. The effect was transcendent - one moment you're in 2009 with all that implies and the next you're in '43 at some army base located in the armpit of god-knows-where taking a brief break from the blood and tears. The band strikes up a hot Glen Miller tune and you go into a jivey swing hoping the physicality of the dance and holding a woman close will exorcise the death and despair of war. For a few hours the mortars are replaced by tom toms and you can almost reclaim the youth you've donated to your country. Well, almost.

There's one interesting thing I've noticed about all these reenactment-like dances. They inevitably miss one fact and that is the collision between the military and zoot-suit communities. The song Zoot Suit Riot wasn't written just because, you know? It was a reaction to actual rioting between Latino youths and Navy sailors and Marines in Los Angeles during the war. It turned out to be yet another sad instance of minorities suffering the lynch mob mentality that would plague the country right up through the 60's.

Still, every one of these dances will have at least one guy in a zoot suit in attendance. Ah, the amnesia that time endows us with - sooner or later people will believe sailors got off the boats in LA, put on their zoot suits, and went to party in some jazz bar.

History aside, the floor at Old Coney is pretty brutal if you're used to dancing on hard wood. It's advertized as 'terrazzo' which you should read as 'linoleum' and it's (of course) right on top of a concrete slab. The end result is a slick surface that will leave your feet tired and your knees sore. Not the best place to display your moves. The crowd at the dance was - well - typical. There were more dancers than floor space (a tribute to the organizers) and they contained the usual percentage of louts and clods. It wasn't as bad as Fountain Square but it definitely wasn't stunningly better on the floor etiquette side of the equation. Still fun was had by all and we're planning a return to the venue in hopes that it will be a little less crowded on a non-holiday weekend.