Kurt Hollander
KURT HOLLANDER is originally from New York City where he was the editor/publisher of the Portable Lower East Side. He has been living in Mexico City for 25 years, where he is a photographer (kurthollander.com), writer (dfdeath.blogspot.com), and author of Several Ways to Die in Mexico City (2012), an autobiography.
DREAMLAND
Coney Island and the 20th Century Avant-Garde
By Kurt Hollander
In the late 1980s I wrote my last short story, “Skinny Takes a Walk,” which I self-published at that time in my magazine The Portable Lower East Side. In the story I take the subway out to the last stop in Brooklyn, walk over to a residential building a few blocks away, ride an elevator up to the 12th floor and stand in front of a door behind which my father is living. In the end, though, I don’t ring the bell, but rather turn around and take the elevator back down and walk around the Coney Island amusement park, boardwalk, and beach. Instead of actually avoiding my father, all I think about that fictional day are the stories he used to tell me about hanging out here as a kid.
