Sausage Hero: Coney Island 1996

If I had known these signs on the Coney Island Boardwalk where going to disappear I would have taken better photos. I snapped this with a disposable film camera on a dreary winter morning in 1996. I was looking for an original New York egg-cream to cure a vicious hangover. I didn’t find an egg-cream, but, in the dull shadow of the ruins of the original Cyclone, I did find some good hand-painted signs. In recent years attempts have been made to revive the style of the original boardwalk signs, but too often the result is signs that are kitschy and self-consciously retro. This nice free-hand sign is not about capturing a style: it’s about selling sausage hero sandwiches.