Coney Island has a century-long history that mixes highbrow and lowbrow, relaxation and thrills, an escape from the city and a home to tens of thousands. It’s the beach that you can take the subway to. Coney Island is decidedly not The Hamptons. Artist Steve Powers once called it “the most beautiful place in New York City.”

We feel similarly, and for years we have had our eye on a particular payphone there. It’s a real dream spot, right at that main intersection where New Yorkers hop off the subway and enter the free-wheeling chaos of a neighborhood that is also a beach and also full of amusement parks. You may never have noticed the phone there, but you know the spot.

We knew that spot needed an ad takeover, but what? Who could do that spot justice? Who was going to give us that happy-go-lucky celebration of pure joy that is a summer beach day?

Enter Swoon, someone who was an early inspiration for the entire Art in Ad Places team. She told us:

I have always loved the feeling of mystery that accompanies seeing a work of art show up where it’s maybe not supposed to be. In particular the sense of confusion I sometimes feel when I see art taking over the spaces where advertising usually reigns. The tingly sense of openness and strangeness you experience trying to figure out what this could possibly be advertising, only to realize that in fact it’s pointing you to a world far outside of commerce, maybe even deep inside yourself. My piece is about grief, it’s about hell on earth. About holding on to the world by the skin of your teeth and maybe not always making it. Is it strange that this is up at Coney Island, land of fun and amusement? Not really. I’m from a beach town, I know boardwalk life, and I know that those extremes of revelry and suffering often ride together, closer neighbors than we like to admit.

This pairing of poster and location echos an installation that Swoon made about Coney Island more than 15 years ago: Coney, Early Evening. Even then, she was thinking about that relationship between revelry and suffering. Yes, Coney, Early Evening includes the roller coasters and the boardwalk, but look closer… There’s also Alison the Lacemaker front and center, working on her memento mori of a dancing skeleton. Why does a land of pure joy need a barbed wire fence? Who is the hooded figure lurking in the background? Coney Island is more than fun and games.

All that in mind, maybe Swoon’s chaotic depiction of horror and sorrow is more at home across the street from Nathan’s than just about anything else could be.