My advice to any visitor wanting to get a real taste of New York: skip the tourist gridlock at Times Square, the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, hop on the Q and don’t get off until you hear the computerized conductor say “last stop on this train”. You’ll know you’re in Coney Island. Follow the smell of sea air and mustard for one block, and you’ll have reached the Coney Island/Brighton Beach boardwalk, where tourists from all over the world mingle effortlessly with old school Brooklynites, recent and not-so-recent immigrants, Eastern Europeans, Asians, Christians, Muslims and Jews, the old and young, rich and poor, here for the cheap food, the rides, the kitsch, the sea air, the sun, the photo ops, and most of all, the escape from modern day reality. Remarkably untouched by the march of time and the encroachment of hipster chic, it wouldn’t take a lot of imagination to believe you’ve gone back in time 20 or 30 years. No matter what brought you here, eventually your sore feet and need to regroup will draw you to the benches that line the boardwalk facing the Atlantic. This is where lives and stories and agendas intermingle in countless and endlessly fascinating ways – in ways that could only happen in New york, and only in Coney Island.

Often overlooked is the fact that Coney Island actually has one of the more beautiful beaches in the New York area. Expansive and remarkably well maintained, the beach here provides a handy and welcome escape for those millions of working class New Yorkers who don’t have a country house or fancy Hamptons rental to run out to on weekends. Here, it’s mostly a mix of local Russian, Hispanic, Middle Eastern and Whatever Brooklynites, sharing the sand without prejudice or an eye towards social standing. The tourists mostly seem to stick to the kitschy boardwalk, and that arrangement seems to suit everyone just fine. The Coney Island boardwalk may be world famous for all kinds of reasons, but the beach and the Atlantic still feel like a well-kept secret known only to the Brooklyn regulars.

Coney Island can certainly give Times Square a run for its money when it comes to photo ops and camera toting tourists. Cell phones everywhere, of course. But plenty of “real” cameras, too, and even a fair amount of organized shoots. Here are the top ten things I see people taking photos of along the Coney Island boardwalk, and therefore, the top 10 things I try hard to resist: 10) Exterior signage of Tom’s Coney Island Restaurant (for some unknown reason); 9) Rides, various, every; 8) People dancing to the boardwalk DJs; 7) posted Coney Island boardwalk maps; 6) The garbage drums (they’re painted with Coney Island-theme imagery); 5) Sea gulls (they’re big and fat); 4) Various buskers; 3) Nathan’s signage, or really, Nathan’s anything; 2) The Cyclone (it’s like a camera magnet); and 1) (by far) Themselfies.

This image was taken on a cloudy, it’s-about-to-rain-any-second day. The beach was more or less deserted, and this man was standing alone, facing a stormy horizon, apparently deep in contemplation - a striking black silhouette. It seemed like a rather serious moment. Right next to him was this colorful children’s jungle gym, a place for fun, but not at that moment.

Sometimes the picture you take isn’t the picture you get. In this case I thought I was grabbing a shot of these two women taking a selfie. But when I looked at it later, i saw that I caught this guy walking past behind them and photo bombing, his girlfriend none the wiser. I never even saw the guy. I was totally focused on the ladies. I guess the lesson here is just keep taking pictures, lots of them. You never know what surprises await.