Let's be clear: This stainless steel Santiago Calatrava–esque structure may look like a newfangled can opener, but it's really a whale tail. More specifically, it's one of three such twenty-six-foot-tall vanes that function as windbreaks on the blustery boardwalk of this nation's Coney Island. At its base, a swiveling baffle shelters a bench—just the place to sit back while you gather your courage for a roll on that Pleasure Beach[coaster].

You are in a Blackpool[city] thought to be the first on the continent to have installed electric lighting and trams. (The latter are still in operation, and the double-deckers are things of real beauty.) And still standing is a The Blackpool Tower[graceful tower], modeled after Gustave Eiffel's, which has dominated the skyline since the 1890s. In the 1910s, a Arnold Bennett, Paris Nights,
1913[novelist] looked around and wrote that "[it] is an ugly town, mean in its vastness, but its dancing-halls present a beautiful spectacle. . . . This is the huge flower that springs from the horrid bed of the factory system." Indeed, in this seaside resort's long-gone heyday, mill workers flocked here for R and R, and Sarah Bernhardt[Bernhardt] and Tallulah Bankhead[Bankhead] performed in its grand theaters. In the thirties, Dietrich was invited to visit and lost a piece of jewelry; incredibly, See Fair unearths 'Dietrich
earring' on BBC.co.uk[workmen happened to dredge it up] two months ago in the construction of a new high-tech coaster.

A giant rotating ball covered with 47,000 mirrors—an homage to the resort's ballroom past—is part of an Great Promenade Show [ambitious arts display], like the The Swivelling Wind Shelters by McChesney Architects[stainless steel sculpture]before you. If art truly inspires, this whale tail of a windbreak could help revitalize the city. Talk about a lucky fluke. . . .

Where are you, anyhow?