Coney Island/ Brighton Beach/ Sheepshead Bay

Is drinking on the beach legal now?

Drink on brosef.
Champagne for my real friends; real tickets for sham advertising. Photo by Tim Donnelly.

Hey look, it’s suddenly legal to drink on the beach in Coney Island! Huzzah! I mean, what else would be the explanation for this ad showing three white people who are most definitely standing on the beach in Coney Island, Brooklyn? Because they’re most certainly not something an ad company pulled out of some stock art website after a search for “Ed Hardy douchehat vacation seduction scheme” keywords. Champagne surf party for everyone! Except, no of course it’s not legal.

This bit of false advertising comes as part of this summer’s Coney Island campaign, spotted by the B/Q train in Atlantic Terminal, advertising the new Place to Beach (Place to Beach — what does this even mean? Isn’t the beach a place? How do you turn “to beach” into a verb when you are already at the beach??), the mexican-ish food stand/bar that replaced the beloved old Beer Island on the boardwalk. Don’t tell me they’re drinking non-alcoholic champagne in that ad either as that only makes it worse.

While it’s not the most offensive thing one could advertise (showing hip young millennials flocking to hip young chains might fit that bill), it does belie a little bit of whitewashed corporate blandness that Coney Island is trending toward.

Of course, you can and should drink on the beach this summer without being an ass about it: people still walk the sand hawking Coronas and Nutcrackers, and it takes only the measliest bit of foresight to avoid getting ticketed by the fuzz when you’re enjoying a cold one out of doors.

But if you’re sloshing around a bottle of champagne in broad daylight like a bunch of we’re-above-the-law chuds who think Coney is Myrtle Beach, you deserve all the tickets.

Follow Tim (but plz not if you’re a beach cop): @timdonnelly

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