What’s The Best Seat On The Coney Island Cyclone?

Why do people like Roller Coasters? It’s probably the same reason we like Hot Sauce and Having Affairs. Humans love to feel challenged, pushed to the brink. We seek out danger to spice our humdrum existences. We feel the need to complicate our safe American lives with adventure, but not too much adventure. We’re not exactly ever going to get on a raft on the Mississippi with our best friend Jim and head out for the territories. Real adventures only happen in James Franco movies. We’re left with the illusion of danger and intrigue. And for $8 on the good old Cyclone Roller Coaster at Coney Island, you can feel just jostled enough to feel brave without even having to bleed at all.

It was originally constructed out of T. Rex bones unearthed when workers were digging to create the boardwalk at Coney Island. Since then Vernon Keenan’s lone remaining masterpiece has weathered on: a classic hybrid roller coaster that has thrilled Coney Island goers for almost 85 years. It is not the tallest, fastest or loopiest coaster in the land. Why does it still hold our imagination? Coney Island circa 1949 was a Roller Coaster Valhalla, with up to 5 classic coasters dotting the shore. The Cyclone is the only one that remains outside of black and white photos. Even with the recent improvements the new Luna Park has introduced, the Cyclone remains the only true coaster. Their “Scream Zone” has introduced a few interesting rides, notably the Screaming Eagle, on which riders get the feeling they’re flying while all the change is shaken from their pockets, and some kind of giant racketball on a string that costs $20 to ride.

I first became fascinated with classic Roller Coasters when I was too short to ride the Great American Scream Machine at Six Flags over Georgia. The Rolling Stones’ original “Paint it Black” video features the ride. I don’t know why they can’t make all awesome amusement park rides safe for kids of all sizes. Add a couple of kiddie seats on every awesome ride, nevermind the lawsuits. Kids want to have fun. And tea cups aren’t really all that fun. And there is nothing more deflating to a young child’s psyche than being turned away from a ride. I wanted a Red Badge of Courage button! I wanted to push myself to my very limits! I haven’t been back to the Scream Machine in adulthood. Maybe it can be the last ride I ever ride. A fitting end to a life filled with bumps and disappointments and some vomit.

We had no roller coaster where I grew up. When I make my first billion, I hereby pledge to bring a classically retro roller coaster to the Salem Willows Park near my hometown in Massachusetts. And I will call it The Witches’ Broom. And it will feature much cackling. And a big neon green witch. Who will be surprisingly sexy, despite her green warts and black-and-orange knee socks. And the ride will have no height requirements. If a baby wants to ride in the front seat, strap that baby in. The short shall ride with the tall! We all need a little hot sauce in this cruel world!

I latched onto the Cyclone when I moved to Brooklyn. I wanted to know its every bend. Knowing it might legitimize me not only as a kinda-adventure-seeker, but as a New Yorker. Truly, I will never be a New Yorker. I can wear all the Mets’ caps around I want, I’ll never truly fit in here. I’m a New Englander; I got Moxie soda in my veins and a giant red hot dog straight through my heart. But get to know the Cyclone I did. It is really the only place on Earth I feel completely normal. Traveling at that speed, feeling that out of control. That’s my normal. Not being able to live on a roller coaster is probably the center of all my various alienations.

It has long been assumed that the best seat on a roller coaster is the front seat. I once suffered under this illusion. And perhaps the front seat is the best seat on some roller coasters. Worth standing around and waiting for. I think of Superman — Ride of Steel, now called Bizarro, at Six Flags New England. On that ride, the front seat is definitely the best for at least the first descent, which actually goes into a tunnel in the ground. Pretty cool. After that, it’s all downhill. Steel coasters don’t give us the same thrill as hybrid and wooden coasters. First, because the builders of wooden coasters were truly geniuses. Secondly, loops on roller coasters are overrated. You’re really only upside-down for seconds. And for three, the steel-dominated roller coasters just don’t give you the same sense of dread. Wooden coasters are haunted by the screaming of generations of riders thrilled. They seem as if they could burst apart at any moment into toothpicks. Now that would be a thrill-ride.

When I ride the Cyclone, I’m most frightened by the initial ascent. The clacking of the chain catching the cars from underneath, a slight lurch forward where you’re not sure if it’s caught correctly or not. The rear seat is great here, because you can really enjoy the feeling that the ride will fall backwards and crash. I’m still waiting for that to happen. Only one person that we know of has ever died on the Cyclone. That is a testimony not just to its design, but also to how well run and maintained it’s been over the years. Luna Park staff runs it now; it is more businessy than ever. You used to be able to stay on the coaster for two or three rides in a row by paying off the Cyclone staff. No longer. They won’t even let you wait for the front or back seat. They sometimes run an extra line you can wait on for the right to ride first or last. But sometimes they don’t. And you get the seat you get. And there’s nothing particularly wrong with the middle seats on the ride. They’ve actually, thoughtfully, begun letting women and children board the Cyclone first so that boyfriends and bigger dudes can be on the left them so they don’t squash their smaller companions with G-Force-related jolting. Luna Park’s staff is nice and professional; they lack the barely disguised malice of the hustlers that used to run the Cyclone. It’s quite a jump from Luna Park and its clean rides (that are often broken) and the narrow corridor that leads to the Wonder Wheel. There is still a sliver of the old Coney Island dance that needs to be experienced again before it is banished forever. People Trying to Rip You Off. That was what New York used to be about before the entire city became a kind of adult tourist trap with safety wheels strapped everywhere. New York now offers the illusion of safety when it once offered the illusion of perpetual danger.

The front seat of the Cyclone is coveted beyond all sense. Of course it’s fun to be in the front seat. If you’ve never ridden in the front, you ought to at least once. But I’d argue that the back seat is the best on the roller coaster. If you’re looking for the wildest ride, you can’t beat the back seat. One gets the sense that the car is actually rattling above the track. I rode it again just this week to make certain. After spending a few hours wandering around MCU Park watching Brooklyn Cyclones’ noontime tilt featuring rehabbing Mets’ superstar Jose Reyes, I was ready for a little jostling. (The most fun to be had at the ballgame was above the Cyclones’ bullpen, where (in the finest Coney Island tradition) relievers had set up quarter-toss amusements. Throw a quarter into a Dixie cup from the railing above and you might walk away with a signed Cyclones’ cap, Pitching coach Frankie Viola’s signed sneakers or a signed Jose Reyes ball. Relievers T.J. Chism and Todd Weldon would even break a dollar into four quarters for you, putting your change into a tied-up plastic medical glove and tossing it back up to you. I wasted about a buck fifty. But some of the kids I was near must have emptied their entire piggybanks. I don’t know if there were any winners.) $8 does seem stiff for a ride that used to cost me $3 or $4 bucks. I mean, $8 gets you a round-trip on the East River Ferry, which is a great ride in and of itself. So, you better get a lot for your $8.

I was gonna call my old physics teacher to confirm my hypothesis that you’re actually traveling faster in the back car than the front, but he doesn’t work at my old high school anymore. But that theory makes scientific sense to me. The slingshot effect of the front cars racing down increases the momentum and G-Forces on the back car. Enough of a jostling to make me almost lose my paperback Camus and sunflower seeds out of my cargo shorts pockets. At different points I felt like I had to press my feet down against the floor of the car just to stay alive and not be sent toppling somewhere. And I’m 5'6 ½", 220 pounds. The bar is safely crushed against my huge gut. Yet I still felt like I could be rattled straight out of the last car. I’ve never felt imperiled in the front seat. It’s fast and it’s nice and you’re the first on that particular trip to enjoy it. But nothing feels out of control, unsafe or doom-laden. Sure, there’s a little frisson to be gotten out of the fear of sawing your raised arms off with the weird crossboards that dot the track, but everyone gets that, no matter where they’re sitting. I’d love to lose one or both arms on the Cyclone. If I ever do lose one or both arms, I will very likely tell people I lost them on the Cyclone.

The front car of the Cyclone does offer an incredible ride. I once had the front seat and somehow timed it right that as I hit the top of the first ascent fireworks began over the Coney Island boardwalk. That was truly a perfect moment. If you can make sure that happens, that would be worth your $8. Still, for my money, I’d argue the back is the best. For generations, the Cyclone was the fastest roller coaster known to man. And it seems to me the back seat rides even faster. The reputation of the Cyclone may be diminished by younger, faster, steelier coasters. But it’s here, in New York. There are better stadiums than Madison Square Garden, better buildings than the Empire State Building and better rappers than Jay-Z. But everything in New York is bigger and blustier. And everything that happens here is way more important than everything that happens that doesn’t happen here. Whatareyougonnado? Coney Island perfected the chili dog, the roller coaster and the shooting of freaks. Only ⅔ of that remains for you to enjoy today. Climb aboard the back seat and enjoy the ride. Maybe the coaster before the chili dog and not the other way around. Or you may need another chili dog.

Jim Behrle tweets at @behrle for your possible amusement.