Brighton Beach

New York City map with Brighton Beach marked.

Brighton Beach is an oceanside neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. As of 2007, it has a population of 75,692 with a total of 31,228 households. It is known for its high population of Russian speaking immigrants and as a summer destination for New York City residents due to its beaches along the Atlantic Ocean and its proximity to the amusement parks in Coney Island. In popular culture, the neighborhood served as the setting for the 1983 Neil Simon play Brighton Beach Memoirs, a coming of age story about a family living in the neighborhood during the great depression. In current popular culture, the neighborhood has been used as a setting for New York television shows such as Law & Order, Blue Bloods, and Person of Interest. In August 2011 a reality tv series, Russian Dolls followed the lives of eight women living in the community.

Location

Downtown section of Brighton Beach, looking east along Brighton Beach Ave. from the corner of Coney Island Ave., near the Brighton Beach subway station A Russian-language bookstore under the elevated train tracks on Coney Island Ave. in Brighton Beach Recently built luxury condos on Brighton Beach Where apartments and private homes meet P.S. 225, a school in Brighton Beach Brighton 15th Street

Brighton Beach is bounded by Coney Island at Ocean Parkway to the west, Manhattan Beach at Corbin Place to the east, Gravesend at the Belt Parkway to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the south (at the Riegelmann Boardwalk/beachfront). It is patrolled by the NYPD's 60th Precinct.

History

Brighton Beach was developed by William A. Engeman as a beach resort in 1868, and was named by Henry C. Murphy and a group of businessmen in an 1878 contest; the winning name evoked the resort of Brighton, England.

The centerpiece of the resort was the large Hotel Brighton (or Brighton Beach Hotel), placed on the beach at what is now the foot of Coney Island Avenue and accessed by the Brooklyn, Flatbush, and Coney Island Railway, which opened on July 2, 1878. After a series of winter storms threatened to swamp the hotel, an audacious plan was developed to move it in one piece 520 feet further inland by placing railroad track and 112 railroad flat cars under the raised 460 ft. by 130 ft. building and using six steam locomotives to pull it away from the sea. Engineered by B.C. Miller, the move was begun on April 2, 1888 and continued for the next nine days, being the largest building move of the 19th century.

Adjacent to the hotel, Engeman built the Brighton Beach Race Course for Thoroughbred horse racing. The village was annexed into the 31st Ward of the City of Brooklyn in 1894.

Brighton Beach was re-developed as a fairly dense residential community with the final rebuilding of the Brighton Beach railway into a modern rapid transit line, known as the BMT Brighton Line of the New York City Subway c. 1920. The subway system in the neighborhood is above ground on an elevated structure.

The years just before and following The Great Depression brought with them a neighborhood consisting mostly of first and second generation Jewish-Americans and, later, concentration camp survivors. Of the 55,000 estimated Holocaust survivors living in New York City as of 2011, most survivors live in Brighton Beach.

Notable establishments included Diamond's (a small clothing store owned by the parents of Neil Diamond), Irving's Deli, Mrs. Stahl's Knishes and The Famous, a kosher restaurant. The summer would bring the crowds, and many world renowned celebrities, to the Brighton Beach Baths (Private Beach Club) and surrounding public beaches.

Today, the area has a large community of Jewish immigrants who left the Former Soviet Union since 1970. Some non-Jewish immigrants, such as Armenians and Georgians, have also settled in Brighton Beach and the surrounding neighborhoods, taking advantage of the already established Russian-speaking community.

Among the charitable organizations serving the Russian-speaking community is the Russian-speaking Community Life Center, which provides a variety of classes and programs.

Culture

Crowded Brighton Beach on a summer afternoon

Water sports on Brighton Beach

Brighton Beach was dubbed "Little Odessa" by the local populace due to many of its residents having come from Odessa, a city of Ukraine. In 2006, Alec Brook-Krasny was elected for the 46th District of the New York State Assembly, the first elected Soviet-born Jewish politician from Brighton Beach.

The proximity of Brighton Beach to the city's beaches (Brighton Beach Avenue runs parallel to the Coney Island beach and boardwalk) and the fact the neighborhood is directly served by a subway station makes it a popular summer weekend destination for New York City residents.

Transportation

Roadways

Major roadways in Brighton Beach are the Belt Parkway, Coney Island Avenue and Ocean Parkway.

New York City Subway

The BMT Brighton Line has two stations, Brighton Beach and Ocean Parkway, serving the neighborhood. Both are located on an elevated structure over Brighton Beach Avenue. The Q train provides local service north to Manhattan at all times while the B train provides express service weekdays only.

New York City Buses

Buses serving Brighton Beach include the B1, B36, B49, and B68.

Education

Brighton Beach is served by the New York City Department of Education. Manhattan Beach is zoned to PS 225 The Eileen E. Zaglin School for grades K-8, as well as PS 100 The Coney Island School located on Brighton Beach and West 3rd Street for grades K-5 and P.S. 253 The Magnet School of Multicultural Humanities.

Nearby high schools include:

• Rachel Carson High School of Coastal Studies
• The Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences
• William E. Grady Vocational High School
• Abraham Lincoln High School

Crime

Brighton Beach is considered hot spot for the Russian Mafia, though public perception has been that organized crime "has largely gone away." In the 1970's, the most notorious leg of the mafia was the Potato Bag Gang, which served as a robbery gang for larger Russian crime syndicates in New York City. Marat Balagula was a crime boss from Brighton Beach who denies having any connection to the American Mafia or the Russian-speaking Mafia.

In popular culture

• The Neil Simon play, Brighton Beach Memoirs, which won two Tony awards in 1983, and its subsequent film adaptation, are both set against the backdrop of Brighton Beach in 1937.
• The 1994 film Little Odessa is set in Brighton Beach.
• In Darren Aronofsky's 2000 film, Requiem for a Dream, the character Sara Goldfarb (played by Ellen Burstyn) lives in an apartment on Brighton 6th Street.
• In the film Lord of War, the main character, Yuri Orlov, played by Nicolas Cage, lives in Brighton Beach.
• In the 2007 crime drama, We Own the Night, the character Bobby Green, played by Joaquin Phoenix, is the manager of a nightclub in Brighton Beach.
• In the 2009 film Two Lovers, featuring Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow, the action takes place in Brighton Beach.
• Brighton Beach is also featured in the 1990s Russian spy-comedy Weather Is Good on Deribasovskaya, It Rains Again on Brighton Beach.
• In the Russian crime film Brother 2, Danila, the protagonist, comes to Brighton Beach from Russia.
• In the 1998 novel In Every Laugh a Tear by Lesléa Newman, developments take place partly in Brighton Beach.
• In the 1998 trading autobiography The Education of a Speculator, speculator and hedge fund manager Victor Niederhoffer takes us back to his childhood in Brighton Beach during the 1950s.
• In the 2000 novel Vector by Robin Cook, disillusioned former Russian biochemical worker Yuri Davydov develops weapons-grade Anthrax in the basement of his Brighton Beach home.
• Brighton Beach is where Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character Neil McCormick was taken to be beaten and raped in the 2004 film, Mysterious Skin.
• In the 2008 video game Grand Theft Auto IV, Brighton Beach is represented by the neighborhood of "Hove Beach". This is in reference to Brighton, England's proximity to, and relationship with, neighboring Hove. The two, having city status, are officially known as Brighton and Hove.
• In the songs "Xero Tolerance" and "Hey Pete" by Type O Negative, Brighton Beach is mentioned as the place where Pete is going to kill his cheating girlfriend. The D-train is his means of transportation in these songs. The full title of the band's faux-live album on which these songs appear is "The Origin Of The Feces - Not Live At Brighton Beach".
• In the video game, XIII, Brighton Beach is one of the first settings of the game's complex plotline.
• The French electronic music group Telepopmusik has a song on their album Angel Milk entitled "Brighton Beach".
• In the space flight simulator Orbiter, there is a fictional base on the moon named Brighton Beach.
• On the TV series The West Wing, Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff) hails from Brighton Beach.
• On the TV series Bored to Death, unlicensed private detective Jonathan Ames investigates a case based at a Russian nightclub in Brighton Beach.
• A Lifetime reality TV show called Russian Dolls, documenting the lives of young Russian-Americans and a group of Brighton Beach housewives spending time in a popular Russian nightclub, Rasputin Restaurant, premiered August 11, 2011.
• In an episode of the CBS's Blue Bloods the storyline revolves around the murder of a Russian Mob associate who lived in Brighton Beach. Several scenes are shot on and around the boardwalk.
• In Haley Tanner's debut novel "Vaclav and Lena" (2011) action takes place in Brighton Beach
• In the episode "Witness" of the TV series Person of Interest (2011), Reese has to protect a Brighton Beach high school history teacher who's being hunted by the Russian mob.

Brighton Beach is mentioned:

• In a Rilo Kiley song "Close Call", in which the lyrics "She was born on a Brighton pier to a gypsy mother and a bucket of tears..." are sung.
• In a Little Brazil song "Brighton Beach", in which the lyrics, "I first met her Brighton Beach back in 1973..." are sung.
• In two songs on gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello's album Multi Kontra Culti vs. Irony: "Smarkatch" and "Let's Get Radical".
• In the 2002 film 25th Hour during Edward Norton's rant about New York City.
• In the German soap opera Verbotene Liebe (Forbidden Love), when Christian Mann and Oliver Sabel return to Düsseldorf from New York. Christian claims to have learned a new recipe while in "Little Odessa".

Notable residents

Notable current and former residents of Brighton Beach include:

• Marat Balagula (born 1943) neighborhood mob boss during the 1980s
• Eddie Daniels, clarinettist and saxophonist
• Howard Greenfield (1936–86), songwriter
• Vyacheslav Ivankov (1940–2009), alleged crime boss
• Jack Kirby (1917–94), comic book artist, co-creator of Captain America during the early 1940s
• Lea Bayers Rapp (born 1946), author, journalist, playwright
• Lynn Ross (stage name), dancer in original 1957 Broadway production of West Side Story
• Neil Sedaka (born 1939), songwriter
• The Tokens, vocal group formed in 1955 at Abraham Lincoln High School

See also

• Coney Island and Brooklyn Railroad

External links

• Brighton Beach Neighborhood Association
• Russian Community Life Center
• Brighton Beach News Russian-American newspaper
• NY Mag Everything Guide to Brighton Beach