The Invention of Leisure: Hot Dogs, Dreamland and the Globe Tower

Gorky writes what he sees, but his political preferences make the critique of the spectacle into something political. The Editor of "The Independent Magazine" prints Gorky’s article, but at the same time apologizes for it in his foreword, writing that for most people, Coney Island "seems a place of gaiety and comparatively innocent (…) But for the man who has assumed the name of  "Gorky", "The Bitter One", it only affords further evidence of the stupidity and depravity of the human race and of the tyranny of capital”. The spectacle, to remain politically correct, must be declared innocent. 

In “The New Republic” from November 23, 1921, Bruce Bliven wrote an article entitled "Coney Island for Battered Souls”: ”Souls battered by what? You ask. By life; by our industrial civilization; and most of all, by the conditions human beings must endure if they choose to dwell in the city. At Coney we eat our “hot dogs” bathed in mustard; a pot of the arsenic looking stuff stands on the counter and the customer trowels it out to his own taste. It is the rite most frequently performed; and it is symbolic of the place. A palate dulled with condiments must be over-stimulated before it can taste at all. A mind buffeted by the whirlwind of life in New York, assaulted by the roar of machinery, dizzied by the pace at which we spin along, learns to regard a shout as the normal tone, and cannot hear with comfort anything less strident. So Coney is the place where people are shouted at for their own pleasure, enjoying both new noises and the extra loudness. Come for a walk down our chief street, and let me show you what I mean. The very architecture roars at you. The entrance to an amusement park must not be an entrance merely; it should be the gigantic round face of a man, with enormous staring eyes and a gaping mouth through which the crowds can pass. Failing this, it should be a section of the Swiss Alps, with a real waterfall. If our architectural scheme requires pillars – lo! They are barber poles. The final word in exterior decoration is a big mirror set into the wall, and sourrounded by the same gilt moulding in bas-relief which is to be found along the tops of the animal´s cages at the circus.”  

At the turn of the 20th century, the definition of leisure as a spectacle of the unreal is invented in Coney Island. With the rapidly developing metropolis of New York right next to it, Coney Island must be more eclectic and spectacular than the already eclectic and spectacular city, but with a lower budget. To surpass the reality of New York, Coney Island has to be hyper-real. It is an other, alternative world for the masses, a world of stereotyped exotic coulisses and simplified myths. It mixes Chinese Pagodas with Venetian facades and Russian onion domes. It offers rides through hell, visits to Dreamland, and unlimited mustard sauce for hot dogs. In the early years of the 20th century, Coney island is the laboratory for the future of the leisure industry.  

The most spectacular project of Coney island was the “Globe Tower”. On May 6, 1906, it was announced in the New York Herald, inviting people to invest in a 700 feet high tower. The design, of which at least two versions exist, is a structure which wants to suggest progress by reminding on the Eiffel Tower at its base and at the same time tries to appear serious by means of a metal version of the dome of the US Congress on top. In its center, it contains a globe with 11 floors, each 50 feet high. These floors would be filled with four circuses, gigantic animal cages, a miniature train, the largest ballroom in the world, a moving, glass-enclosed restaurant, a hotel, and a palm garden at its highest level, topped by giant telescopes and searchlights. With the Globe Tower, the entertainment village would become an entertainment planet, an enclosed other world which assumes the shape of a planet on stilts. It is a self-contained space for naive imaginations of excitement non-stop, for sleeping, eating and playing in the same space, trying to impress with superlatives of size. It was same idea which would drive the entertainment parks, multiplexes and casino-hotels of the late 20th century, the same idea which drives places such as Las Vegas or Dubai. The Globe Tower itself was also prophetic in a financial sense: It turned out as a financial scam and was never built.