Brighton Beach
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Brighton Beach is a community on Coney Island in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City.
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[edit] Location
It is bounded by Coney Island at Ocean Parkway to the west, affluent, but non-gated Manhattan Beach at Corbin Place to the east, Gravesend at Neptune Avenue to the north (at the Belt Parkway), and the Atlantic Ocean to the south (at the Riegelmann Boardwalk/beachfront).[1]
[edit] Education
Brighton Beach, like all of New York City, is served by the New York City Department of Education. Affluent Manhattan Beach, New York 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 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
- John Dewey High School
- The Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences
- William E. Grady Vocational High School
- Abraham Lincoln High School
[edit] History
Brighton Beach was developed by William A. Engeman as a beach resort in 1868, and was named in 1878 by Henry C. Murphy and a group of businessmen in an 1878 contest;[1] 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, later known as the BMT Brighton Line, which opened on July 2, 1878. 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 of the New York City Subway system c. 1920.
The 1950s brought with it a neighborhood consisting mostly of second generation Americans, born of concentration camp survivors who had lost their husbands, wives and some of their children. Everywhere were the signs of the refugees who had fled, with numbers on their forearms, making their home in a small and welcoming town near Coney Island. The generation brought forth a well educated and industrious group of baby boomers, born into freedom and knowing of oppression and extreme antisemitism only from their parents' memories. These were the years filled with the odd and quirky stores that so embellished the little neighborhood seaside resort.
There was, for example, the "Forty Thieves" store, so dubbed because the owners were not quite honest. Other notable locations included Mrs. Stahl's, a knish establishment acclaimed as having the best kasha and cherry cheese knishes, as well as Diamond's, a small clothing store owned by Neil Diamond's parents. Other notable restaurants were Irving's Deli and the New Deal Chinese restaurant. The summer would bring with it a host of travelling subway riders, determined to find the best treats that Brighton Beach could provide on their way to the Coney Island beaches.
Today, the area has a large community of Jewish immigrants who left the Former Soviet Union between 1970 and the present day. However, living in the Soviet Union during its last decades made them, in many ways, culturally distinct from the Jewish immigrants that moved to the neighborhood decades earlier. The recent influx of Soviet culture has resulted in recent émigrés being more culturally similar to Russians and Ukrainians than to the earlier Jewish immigrants. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many non-Jewish immigrants, like Georgians, also settled in Brighton Beach and the surrounding neighborhoods, taking advantage of the already established Russian-speaking community.
[edit] Culture
Brighton Beach was dubbed "Little Odessa" by the local populace long ago, due to many of its residents having come from Odessa, a city of Ukraine.[2] 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.
Brighton Beach is home to many other ethnic groups. On Brighton 7th Street and Neptune Avenue, there is a mosque where Muslims (mostly from Pakistan and Bangladesh) pray, and another between Brighton 8th Street and Banner Avenue known as Al-Arqam. Nearby areas are sometimes called "Pakistani Brighton". There are numerous Polish, self-styled Russian (most are actually Jews) and Georgian residents, but relatively few Italian-Americans or African-Americans remaining. There are also some Korean markets, but for the most part their owners do not reside in the neighborhood. Notable past residents include talk-show host Larry King and current General Bancorp President Adnan Mohammad.
Brighton Beach is replete with restaurants, food stores, cafes, boutiques, banks, etc., located primarily along Brighton Beach Avenue and its cross streets. The neighborhood, with an estimated population of 350,000 (mostly from Russia and Ukraine), has a distinctively ethnic feel – akin to Manhattan's Chinatown. The proximity of Brighton Beach to the city's beaches (Brighton Beach Avenue runs parallel to the Coney Island beach area and the Boardwalk) and the fact that the neighborhood is directly served by the Brighton Beach Avenue subway station, makes it a popular summer weekend destination for thousands of New York City residents.
[edit] In popular culture
- The 1994 film Little Odessa is set in Brighton Beach.
- The Neil Simon play, Brighton Beach Memoirs, which won two Tony awards in 1983, is set against the backdrop of Brighton Beach in 1937.
- In Darren Aronofsky's 2001 movie, Requiem for a Dream, the character Sara Goldfarb (played by Ellen Burstyn) lives in an apartment on Brighton 6th Street.
- In the movie Lord of War, the main character, Yuri Orlov, played by Nicholas Cage, lives in Brighton Beach.
- In the songs "Hey Pete" and "Xero Tolerance" 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 French electronic music group Telepopmusik has a song on their album Angel Milk entitled 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.
- Brighton Beach is also featured in the 1990s Russian spy-comedy with the extra long title - There's Good Weather in Deribasovskaya, It's Raining Again in Brighton Beach
- In the Russian crime film Brother 2, Danila, the protagonist, comes to Brighton Beach from Russia where he buys a car from a Russian Jew.
- In Every Laugh A Tear (Lesléa Newman) takes place partly in Brighton Beach
- 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 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 presumably a reference to the fact that Brighton in England has a well known beach of its own, which runs directly into that of neighbouring Hove.
- In the space flight simulator Orbiter (sim), there is a fictional base on the moon named Brighton Beach.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Jackson, Kenneth T.: The Encyclopedia of New York City: The New York Historical Society; Yale University Press; 1995. P.139-140.
- ^ Johnstone, Sarah: Ukraine, Lonely Planet, 2005. P.119.
[edit] See also
- Coney Island and Brooklyn Railroad
- There's Good Weather in Deribasovskaya, It's Raining Again in Brighton Beach, a 1992 film
[edit] External links
- Brighton Beach is at coordinates Coordinates:
