Brighton Beach, New York, is a pretty great place to grow up

Ever since my family and I moved from Ukraine to the United States in 2000, we have lived in a small apartment in Brighton Beach. It’s a neighborhood in the southernmost tip of Brooklyn, in the middle of Coney Island and Manhattan Beach. Everyone who has heard of it knows about it as “that Russian neighborhood that’s far away.” That is very reasonable. People ask me to buy them some pierogi for them (which both they and I forget about), and then proceed to question how long my commute is and why I’m eternally late. They also get over-excited when they see the view from my room, and say, “man, it’s cool you live on Brighton Beach.”

Brighton morning

For someone who doesn’t live there, I can see the appeal at first sight. There’s a beach. There’s cool Russian food. There’s the novelty of walking on Brighton Beach Avenue and feeling like you’re in some subterranean place because of the elevated train tracks. Of seeing an old granny wearing caked-on makeup and a fur coat in May on the boardwalk. Watching throngs of 20-something-year-old guys eating sunflower seeds, dressed in what is either ironically or seriously considered to be the quintessential Slavic outfit – an Adidas tracksuit and the snazziest dress shoes you’ve ever seen, a mix of Armani cologne and Parliament cigarette smoke.

Here’s a brief description of what Brighton Beach is actually like from someone who lived here for almost 16 years.

Let’s start with the quintessential NYC discussion topic – the commute. Commuting is a hassle. For anyone from Brighton or the south Brooklyn area who is reading this, you know exactly what I mean. The B and Q trains go to Brighton, with the B train terminal at the Brighton Beach station. The Q runs alright most of the time, but the express B train – because it is at the terminal – will either leave just as I’m entering the station, or will lag as two Qs pass by before it decides to rev up. This can render the express factor almost null. It takes me an hour-and-ten to get to Hunter, an hour to get to my internship, an hour-and-forty to get to where most of my friends live, and so on. In short, if it’s not in Brooklyn, there is a 90 per cent chance I’ll be late by a few (or twenty) minutes.

Brighton Beach’s nickname is “Little Odessa,” named after a Ukrainian city from which a large influx of immigrants came decades ago. It is still composed mostly of immigrants from the former Soviet republics. This is why everyone can speak Russian on Brighton no matter what. The republics, no matter how different they were, all spoke primarily Russian in the Soviet era. The shop signs are almost all in Russian. To a New Yorker who speaks English and the bit of Spanish learned in school, this may be a bit intimidating at first. Walk into a shop or a cafe, however, and you’ll find that people will accommodate and speak English to you. It may be very broken, but you’ll be alright. With the recent influx of Central Asian immigrants to the neighborhood in the past few years, you’ll hear Georgian, Armenian, and Azeri on the streets and in the shops as well.

Drinking tea on the beach before Hurricane Sandy hit

Speaking of the shops and cafes, Brighton is known for being the place for all things Russian, Ukrainian, and so on. The cafes and restaurants all serve the most authentic Russian, Ukrainian, and Central Asian food you can find in New York. You’ll find those fabled pierogi (fried dough pastries stuffed with meat, or cabbage, or potatoes, or even cherries) sold by street vendors on almost every block. Eateries serve all kinds of soups the former Soviet nations are famous for (yes, borscht is one of them), pel’meni (meat dumplings), vareniky (potato/cabbage/cherry dumplings), kotlety (chicken cutlets), and so on. They serve food that’s downright delicious, and – in terms of NYC prices – pretty cheap. You can walk out of any of these cafes and restaurants with a pleasant fullness for only $15-20.

Brighton Beach is composed primarily of these restaurants – and a ton of pharmacies. If a store happens to close, you can bet a new pharmacy will open up. When you realize that most of the people here are middle-aged, it starts to make a bit more sense. What’s quaint about these pharmacies is that it’s typical to see loose herbs sold in ziploc bags, and funky-looking preparations with badly-printed labels in Russian. We post-Soviets have a tradition of holistic and herbal medicine. It actually works. And again, it’s all cheap.

Got a cold? It’ll be gone in two days

In the summer, people who head down to south Brooklyn slowly realize that our beach is cleaner. The funny thing is, they still stick around in Coney Island. I will never understand why. Coney is crowded. The water is 15 degrees warmer there. The sand’s full of trash. It is impossible to move around. You can’t get a tan because there is always someone standing over you, or the toddler next to your towel decided to build a sandcastle and the outermost fortifications of the noble structure somehow ended up on your back. That’s okay though. Brighton never gets that crowded and there’s always breathing space. You can choose to stay in Coney – Luna Park is there, and so is the Aquarium, and all that. But, if you get tired of the crowds and being a sandcastle, walk 10 minutes over to Brighton and feel the calm wash over you like the cleaner ocean water that we have here.

(A word of caution: you may get a little spooked at first seeing a 70-year-old in a Speedo. Or five of them, for that matter. We’re used to it in Brighton. Do as the locals do: acknowledge it and keep doing your thing.)

The Riegelmann Boardwalk, which stretches from Brighton Beach to the tip of Sea Gate, runs along the beach and has a few of the restaurants mentioned before on it. They’re bustling during the summer, and have been around for a few decades. The Boardwalk is also wonderful to watch both sunrises and sunsets from; to jog, bike, and skate on; and to take a walk and smell the sea air. You’ll see throngs of people watch the Coney Island fireworks on summer Fridays, as the display flashes over Coney and Brighton and makes the summer nights even more worthwhile.

Brighton sunset

Having grown up in Brighton Beach, I have to say the kitsch and weird appeal is gone for me. I complain constantly that I live far away from everyone and everything. I’ve gotten used to coming home after a long commute, and switching entirely to speaking Russian and to a slightly different mindset. However, I’m happy to have grown up here and to continue calling the neighborhood my home. It’s weird in its own way, but it’s ours.

The neighborhood gets very quiet at night – everything closes at around 10pm – and the boardwalk is lovely to walk on at that time. Even though the Ocean Parkway station is a block-and-a-half away from my house, I make a point to get off at the Brighton Beach station no matter how late it is to walk ten minutes surrounded by the night, the ocean breeze, and the silence that is only broken by the waves and my footsteps.