THINK about this as a really extreme example of a mother throwing out her son’s baseball cards.
After 35 years raising three kids in the Sea Gate section of Coney Island, Jewel Kaufman finally decided it was time to sell the empty nest and move on.
Problem was, the nest isn’t empty: It’s filled with priceless works of art created by her son, Seth. Now, when I say “art,” I don’t mean nice paintings that fancy people hang in their living rooms, and when I say “priceless,” I’m clearly exaggerating.
But you can’t deny the importance of Seth Kaufman’s irreverent contributions to the annual Mermaid Parade, a series of floats that are irreplaceable pieces of Coney Island’s honky-tonk history.
The papier-maché floats – including Kaufman’s 1995 mermaid-canning factory float and the legendary water-spewing “Giant Killer Mermaid” float from 1997 – will be sent to the wood-chipper if Kaufman doesn’t find a good home for them now that his own mother is selling the basement right out from under him.
“What, I don’t have enough guilt already?” Jewel Kaufman asked the other day.
Full disclosure? I’m feeling the loss personally because I’m a huge fan of the Mermaid Parade – and not just because it’s a really good place to see topless women. I also admire the parade’s authenticity.
Unlike generic gatherings like St. Pat’s or commercial monstrosities like the “Macy’s Day” Parade, the Mermaid Parade is one of the last real neighborhood events where real people spend their own money and creative capital building handmade floats and sewing their own costumes.
And for the past few years, Seth Kaufman’s floats have been front and center.
But don’t take my word for it. Take the word of Dick Zigun, who runs the Coney Island Sideshow and the Mermaid Parade every June.
“Seth has an impressive repository of major floats from the parade,” Zigun said.
But no matter how impressed he is, Zigun can’t help feeling that this wrenching catastrophe could have been averted.
“I serve the god of theater, Dionysus, who is a violent god, a vindictive god and a drunken god,” said Zigun.
“As wonderful as Seth’s floats were, Dionysus teaches us that good things used for celebration should be destroyed at the end of the celebration, and new art should be made the next year.”
Whatever. When I heard that Jewel Kaufman was selling the house, I rushed right over to chronicle the tragedy. When I arrived (after a few harrowing minutes in police custody at the Sea Gate border), the extent of the crisis was more vast than I could’ve imagined.
Lucky Lenny, the grinning Steeplechase horse, was in the garage. On the driveway were whole segments of the classic 1994 float, which featured an ingenious design involving Popeye (The Sailor Man) trying – but failing – to swim away from a voluptuous mermaid surrounded by dancing waves and moving fish.
“It was an exceedingly creative arrangement of automated belts and pulleys,” Kaufman said.
Nearby were the shattered remains of Kaufman’s monumental work, his 1995 “Sea Tails Cannery” float, a 6-by-12-foot behemoth that consisted of a giant mermaid surrounded by dancing lobsters. To parade-goers, it looked like just another boring mermaid float – until it passed and they saw the action behind the screen: a mermaid butcher, cleaver in hand, was making mermaid sandwiches while machines filled cans labeled “mermaid tails.”
It was good enough to win the award for best homemade float. The next year, it was recycled as part of what remains Kaufman’s magnum opus: a four-float, parade-within-the-parade that included its own king and queen and the “giant killer mermaid” float (with its caged mermaid and her water-spewing tail).
“I took off the entire month of June to do that,” Kaufman said. “We called it ‘a trilogy of terror.'”
Now, that’s also in pieces all over Jewel Kaufman’s back yard.
“I don’t want money, I just want to make sure they’re cared for,” Seth said. (If you’re interested, contact him at [email protected].)
“I have mermaid skulls in pristine condition. They’re factory originals!”
But, being a journalist, it fell upon me to ask Kaufman the tough questions: Tops on the list: Who wants this stuff?
“Uh,” Kaufman paused. “Well, someone who cherishes Coney Island history – and has a garage.”