Scrambling For Beach Space At Coney Island Or August In St. Tropez - A Matter Of Culture, Not Money

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Coney Island.  A bit crowded in the summer.  Well, very crowded if the truth be known but still there's the ocean, Nathan's Famous, the rides, the beach, and getting away from it all. 

 

Arnie Czonka  was a pipe fitter at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. 'Why don't we go to Jersey?', asked his wife, 'those nice beaches like Neptune and Mantoloking'; but Coney Island had always been good enough for the Czonka family, a short subway ride from Bay Ridge, nice for the kids, plenty to eat. 

The Czonkas had come to America along with thousands of other immigrants in the great waves of the early Twentieth Century, lived in Lower East Side tenement for a generation before moving out to Brooklyn. Work at the Navy Yard had always been available and Arnie's forbears had worked as stevedores on the docks, then mechanics, forklift drivers, and then steamfitters and hydraulic press operators. 

Arnie was the last in the line of workers at the Yard.  His sons wanted to go to Harvard and the youngest, Petey, was the smartest kid in his class so maybe had a chance; but for the time being it was a workaday world for Arnie and his family, beer, sweat, and steel-toed boots. 

He was not exactly unhappy but when he sat with his wife and watched Travel Channel episodes in St. Tropez, Rimini, and Sardinia, he felt he was missing something - the good life, the sophisticated comings and goings of the rich.  Yachts, summer homes, skiing at Gstaad and Chamonix, lunches overlooking the sea on St. Bart's. 

'Some day, Arnie', Emma said. 'Someday your ships will come in', a favorite in joke, an intimacy between a happily married couple between whom there were no secrets. 

So, off they went to Coney Island for a week and stayed at the Sleep Inn not far from the beach, reasonably priced, few amenities, no view, but a pool in the back and free coffee and donuts for breakfast.  Arnie never really like this vacation week, the crowds were almost as noisy as the shop and he preferred Emma's pierogis to beach food; but it was an affordable getaway. 'Maybe next year we'll go to Jersey', he said. 

For decades the French have sniffed at the so-called American summer 'vacation', a week or two at some nasty beach, plastic buckets and chaise lounges, cheap hotels and bad food.  They, workers and aristocrats alike, knew how to vacation.  The all took the entire month of August and headed for the mountains or the Mediterranean. 

 

They would stay either in grand villas overlooking the sea or in small pensions on the small cobblestone streets not far from the harbor, streets with cafes, boulangeries, simple but good prix fixe restaurants, and Italian-style gelaterias.  One did not simply lie on the beach, but ate and drank well, swam in the morning, took long siestas, and had dinner as the sun was setting behind the hills. 

Of course this idyll has changed in recent years.  Successive conservative governments have sponsored reforms to France's generous social welfare schemes - the traditional four week vacation, thirty-five hour work week, and early retirement age among them - and the waves of African immigrants have turned much of Paris and all of Marseille into sub-Saharan enclaves.  The butchers are halal, the grocers Arab, pita more common than baguette, and head scarves and caftans seen far more than Hermes and Dior. 

Yet for most French, August is still summer vacation.  Four weeks is needed to unwind from metro, boulot, dodo, the grinding workweek at Renault or Michelin, the same lathe operators and steamfitters as in America but knowing how to enjoy life - a cafe-Cognac at the zinc around the corner before work, une blonde afterwards, and maybe a digestif after dinner. 

Emmanuel de la Rochefoucauld-Lafitte, heir to a title, a fortune, and homes in Paris and St. Tropez took his vacations whenever he pleased. The exodus to the south on August 1 was for others. He never tallied days in the Alps or weeks sailing off Cnossos.  His schedule was his alone, one of leisure and investments, nannies and chefs, chauffeurs and grooms.  

Emmanuel epitomized the best of French culture - he dressed in haute couture, dined five-star, was well-read and as familiar with Kant as he was with Verdi - and while he knew that his life was only for the privileged few, he saw it as a beacon, a hallmark, an ideal. 

He was doing what the French aristocracy had always done - led France and Europe in the art of high culture.  While few could match the lives of Emmanuel and his royal cousins, the example set by them would be followed, albeit with fewer resources, by the governed.  

Their wardrobes might not be filled with the suits and ensembles of Dior, Lanvin, and St. Laurent, but every Frenchman and woman would have one good, finely-tailored, trim, and artfully designed suit.  They might not dine at Paris's finest restaurants, but would still have a three course meal with une carafe de vin. They may not go to Biarritz for the summer, but would still have a leisurely, restful, varied time somewhere on the Mediterranean. 

Culture matters; which is why political leaders in Europe, seeing the rapid erosion of traditional Western values in their countries, have been forthright and adamant in their expression of cultural superiority. Giorgia Meloni of Italy, Marion Marechal of France, Viktor Orman of Hungary, Gert Wilders of the Netherlands, Alice Weidel of Germany, and Andrej Duda of Poland have all referred to their Greco-Roman, Christian cultural heritage and stressed the importance of retaining that ethos in the face of disruptive, antithetical cultural influences. 

 

The defeat of the Muslim Saracens by Charlemagne at Roncesvalles in 778 has been remembered as the moment when France saved Europe from cultural invasion.  Not only did the French beat a hostile invading force, it resisted the incursion and infection of a radically opposed cultural ethos.  From that day onward, France always referred to itself as la fille ainee de l'Eglise the eldest daughter of the Catholic Church.  

So, it isn't just that Armand Czonka and his family can't afford anything better than a Coney Island vacation, they wouldn't know what to do with a Cote d'Azur month.  Americans with more resources still jam cruise ships, showy hotels, and restaurants featuring international 'cuisine'.  They would never think of leaving the office for more than a week or two - something's likely to be gaining on them. 

Nothing against Coney Island - not for everybody, but as American a place as you can find.  A patch of sand, cotton candy, and a foot-long may not be a Frenchman's dream, but who said he should?  There is no way that America, despite the millions of tourists who visit Europe every summer will ever become European.  Culture is like an amoeba - it ingests, changes shapes and size, but always remains a globular bit of matter. 

America is the world's best example of such a cultural amoeba - the hodge-podge of people immigrating here become co-opted, assimilated, subsumed and integrated.  This obsession with diversity will soon dissipate and disappear. People are here to make a buck and that ethos will always remain. We have never had a culture per se to defend like the French.  Ours is society of procedure, flux, and reassembly. Europeans are right to worry about the loss of culture.