Can we change the channel?” Regina Spektor pleads, shielding her eyes from a fight scene unfolding
on the motor-home TV. “This is too scary for me.” The driver, clearly miffed at the prospect of not
finishing his bootleg copy of Watchmen, eyes the singer—her cherry-red lipsticked mouth cast in a
girlish pout—and finally obliges, switching to…Jurassic Park.
“Are you kidding?” Spektor, 29, laughs, as a velociraptor chases Jeff Goldblum across the screen. “I’m
such a sissy. I can’t even handle Animal Planet.” She pauses, shaking her head. “The world is too much.”

Today, at least, she has a point: The world outside the trailer is a gray, rainy, abandoned Coney Island. While in the summer, the place can still feel like New York City’s famed urban playground— offering working-class families weekends packed with games, rides, fire-eaters, and Nathan’s Famous hot dogs—on this dreary early May weekday, it seems like a paint-peeled and rusted set on a Hollywood lot. And Regina Spektor is seeing it for the first time—empty. There are no screaming kids tossing balls into a clown’s mouth to win a California Raisins doll, no smitten teenagers in line to make out on the Wonder Wheel, no worried parents standing at the base of the Cyclone, certain that this will be the time the ancient roller coaster’s wooden tracks break.

No, today the park is all Spektor’s, open solely for her—or rather, for SPIN to photograph her. But the weather isn’t cooperating, and so she spends the afternoon sitting in a rented motor home parked on Surf Avenue, eating soy yogurt and checking her BlackBerry for urgent messages about her new album, which she just finished mastering last night. Even when the sun breaks through, it’s accompanied by heavy drops. For Spektor, though, this is a blessing in disguise. Because the last thing she wants to do is actually ride a roller coaster. “I can barely handle the backseat of a car,” she says, laughing. When the rain finally subsides, we venture out among the miniature airplanes, trains, and monster trucks. Though she’s not keen to climb aboard the Thunderbolt, Spektor agrees that, on paper at least, it’s a magical prospect: an amusement park all to herself. Every kid’s dream, really. But then again, Spektor wasn’t like other kids.

Six years ago, when Regina Spektor first edged into mainstream consciousness, she was defined by
two simple phrases: Russian immigrant, discovered by the Strokes. But in 2006, Spektor left those tags

Sonia by Rykiel dress, soniarykiel. com; artist’s own shoes.

Shot for SPIN in Coney Island, New York, May 7, 2009

64 JULY 2009 / BECOME BET TER LOOKING, VISI T SPIN.COM