If you’re looking for one of the last remaining authentic experiences of New York City, and to escape the summer heat, there is only one answer: Little Odessa. On a blindingly bright late April Sunday I biked up and across the Brooklyn bridge and down the Bay ridge coastline to get my fill of Eastern Europe on the Brooklyn shores.
Brighton Beach is one of the neighbourhoods of south Brooklyn, located on the Coney Island Peninsula. Originally inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans, the area became a popular destination for wealthy New Yorkers in the late 1800s, who built grand mansions and hotels along the waterfront. The area continued to grow as a resort town, with the opening of the Brighton Beach Hotel and the construction of the Brighton Beach Pier. During the early 1900s, the neighbourhood saw an influx of Jewish immigrants, who established businesses and synagogues, and created a thriving community.
In the decades that followed, Brighton Beach became a hub for Russian-speaking immigrants, who transformed the area into a bustling centre of Russian culture, cuisine, and commerce, hence the nickname ‘Little Odessa.’ Most of the Eastern European population of the area arrived through the 1970’s as the USSR suffered great economic downturn. Almost 40,000 immigrants would arrive between 1975 and 1980. Brighton beach was attractive to these immigrants because of the available public housing, low-income cooperatives and the synagogues already present in the area (A large proportion of these Russian and Ukrainian immigrants were Jewish).
Still today, over 70 percent of its residents were born outside the United-States (Most in the ex-USSR or Central Asian countries adjacent to it), and the percentage of people who do not speak or understand English is nearly 4 times the city average falling just short of 40%. This made for difficult reporting.
Some might remember the area from the opening of Nicholas Cage’s Lord of War where the young Yuri Orlov, an arms-dealer-to-be, has his business epiphany after a shooting in a local nightclub (Not a real place by the way).
Getting to Brighton is relatively easy if one is prepared, I was not. Riding on my ‘silver surfer’ Citi-bike I marveled at the views of the glistening Hudson River and lush Staten Island shores. Was I still in New York? As I passed the Verazzano-Narrows bridge I knew I was nearing my destination, Brighton Beach a.k.a Little Odessa. My friend had assured me we could dock our Citi-bikes in Coney Island, we could not. This hampered the magic of our trip to beach of Brighton as we had to trek back to Bay Ridge and ride the R train to Ocean Parkway, but I was determined to keep in good spirits.
This is a beachside destination, technically, but it is closer in looks and feel to Vladivostok than to Ventura. The nail salon isn’t ‘Kylie’s’ but ‘Lisa’s’, the restaurant is ‘Tatiana’ not ‘Gemma’s.’ Walking around on Brighton beach avenue most storefronts are bilingual written both in English and in the Cyrillic alphabet.
Brighton beach the most glamorous, but it is enticing. With its wide expanse of sandy beach, colourful boardwalk, and bustling promenade, it is a popular destination for locals and tourists alike. The area is known for its rich cultural heritage, a variety of ethnic restaurants, shops, and markets. Walking along the waterfront, you can feel the energy and excitement of the crowds, the sounds of the waves crashing against the shore, and the warmth of the sun on your skin. There is something romantic about a white sand beach boarded by eastern-bloc concrete tenements, and no I am not joking. The contrast of the vast expanse of white sand beaches and the ocean waves with is incredibly striking. As with everything in New York you’ve got to find beauty amongst the grit, after all the most beautiful flowers grow in the deepest mud.
The crown jewel of Brighton beach’s boardwalk is Tatiana, the iconic and storied breakfast/lunch/dinner/nightclub staple of the neighbourhood. Pierogi’s, green borscht and beers for lunch, it does not get much more eastern European than this. The seemingly infinite terrace offers breath-taking views of the Coney Island channel and the lighthouses that punctuate it. Whereas the lighthouses guide ships through the deep cold Atlantic waters, Tatiana offers a harbour on the white sands of Brighton. If you closed your eyes whilst sitting at the terrace taking in the smells of home cooked meals and the ocean air and the sounds of Slavic languages, you would instantly be transported to the shores of the Black Sea.
This is what makes Brighton beach so special, it is one of the few remaining places in New York that is a real home and haven for its residents, and not a place where people just pass by for a couple years. Brighton exudes authenticity and warmth; the people might not want to speak to you but here everything is said through the setting. There is a Russian saying that goes: ‘A spoken word is not a sparrow. Once it flies out, you can’t catch it’ meaning that one has to think before he speaks, perhaps why no one wanted to speak to a reporter.