I got a ticket for drinking a beer at the Mermaid Parade — Brooklyn’s largest and most beloved public assembly of drunken perverts.
Sure, I’m guilty — I accept that I broke the law — but longtime patrons of the 34-years-and-running art party say the citation is totally unheard-of, and proof that Sodom by the Sea is losing its edge.
“Man, this place has changed,” said Dan Nanjira, who has been attending since the mid-aughts. “We were at Cha Chas once — it isn’t there anymore — and cops were taking pictures with topless women and open bottles of vodka. I am annoyed they issued you that ticket — you can quote me on that.”
He could have been exaggerating, but there’s no disputing that thousands of mermaids publicly imbibe at a rate that would make Bacchus dizzy. Marchers lavish parade judges with hooch on Surf Avenue to curry favor — it’s practically in the charter. Another attendee for nearly two decades said she’d seen everything at the annual parade — except a summons for suds.
“This is the first time that I’ve heard someone getting ticketed for a beer,” said Marine Parker Tara Williams, who was drinking on the Boardwalk near the B&B Carousell. “So I’m keeping mine on the down-low now.”
But cops want more than on-the-down-low drinking, according one who detained me. The 60th Precinct’s commanding officer instructed his rank and file to summons for minor infractions such as public boozing and urination to send a message to beach-goers, an officer told me while another ran my name for warrants and wrote me the $25 fine.
Revelers, however, paid no heed when I showed them the ticket. Nanjira and a friend took their pilsners for a stroll on the Boardwalk anyhow, and Williams offered to pose for picture drinking her lager in defiance on the public esplanade.
Officials announced last year they were upping auxiliary police numbers in the Amusement District to combat quality-of-life offenses, and crime is generally declining in the 60th Precinct as it is citywide. But violent crime is still higher in Coney than neighboring commands, and there have been more shootings in the People’s Playground this year than either of the last two — 11 to date versus six this time in 2015 and 2014, city records show. Those numbers don’t even tell the whole story, according to locals who say they are so accustomed to hearing gunshots that they don’t always bother calling police.
“We have become numb to the sound of bullets,” Pamela Pettyjohn told me last year, standing feet from a hole that stray gunfire tore in her Neptune Avenue home.
Locals have claimed the city favors the Amusement District over low-income residential areas around it, but from where tourists are standing, Coney is definitely on the up, according to Nanjira, who lives on Long Island.
“In some ways, I miss the way it used to be,” he said. “But I gotta tell you, this place is better off.”
