A Postcard From Brighton Beach
Say you woke up on Saturday morning with an urge to holiday on the Black Sea (rare, true, but go with me). Ordinarily you would have to take a flight to London or Brussels and then take a connecting flight to the Ukraine, Bulgaria or Georgia (if you’re feeling adventurous) before ending up at a resort of questionable luxury on the Black Sea. But if you’re in New York, all these sights and smells are available to you on Brighton Beach, a short hop and a skip away at the end of the Q line.
On a recent Saturday I made the trip with my friend, Charlie. Charlie is one of my oldest friends and a man who could find the best bottle of Scotch in a blackout. He was in New York for the first time, passing through on a work trip to Kentucky, but I wasn’t going to let him do the standard tourist circuit. Whenever friends come to visit, I prefer to seek out typically ‘non-New York’ moments. The New Jersey palisades, minor-league baseball in Staten Island, Bay Ridge, or basically anything that’s not Williamsburg. So for this trip, we’re going to the beach in Russia.
The biggest mistake you can make when you reach Brighton Beach is not to buy a bottle of vodka as soon as you get off the subway. I say this not to encourage public drinking (although that’s a separate topic, America) but rather to forewarn you, as every restaurant you go into will immediately place a small shot glass alongside your glass of water when you order your food. If you don’t buy the vodka you’ll quickly realise that all the best restaurants are BYOB and you won’t have any alcohol to wash down the copious amounts vareniki and pelmeni that you’ll consume. And that would be a crying shame.
The second biggest mistake you can make is to assume that Brighton Beach is a play-by-play replica of Russia. What you’re actually getting is much more interesting. A capitalist’s idea of what an American’s idea of Russia may be. And that’s what makes it one of my favourite places in the entire city.
Under the elevated subway tracks, it’s one short block to the boardwalk. The shoreline is a little further out, which, if not boasting the cleanest water in the city, is generally calm enough to paddle in. On this early spring afternoon there are a few optimists sunbathing. Their winter skin almost translucent against the darkened sand.
Food bores can argue over which is Brighton Beach’s best restaurant, but I have only been to Varenichnaya so therefor it’s my favourite. After an end-of-afternoon swim, as the beach is cooling off and the parks department staff have retired their whistles, it’s quiet and uncluttered to sit at one of the window tables and order a bowl of borscht, followed by the buttery pelmeni and a selection of smoked fish.
Later that afternoon and, although we haven’t been for a swim, we’re standing in the doorway of that restaurant. It’s a cliche to say that Brighton Beach is like ‘another world’ but when Charlie and I walk in the waitress greets us in Russian, hands us a menu filled with cyrillic characters and places two shot glasses and an ice bucket for our vodka on the table. Sometime cliches exist because they’re true.
Inside by the counter, two shaven-headed Russians, each with the build of a heavyweight boxer, are sat downing shots of vodka and shovelling potato dumplings into their mouths three at a time. Outside the restaurant, it’s New York seaside in April. The sun is low. Dark yellow sand rolls to the horizon like a freshly ploughed field. Closer by, old ladies stroll the boardwalk with their walkers, dogs run around, Russian boys practice acts of violence on the beach.
The boardwalk is broken in parts, posing a passing danger to cyclists and roller skaters who navigate the potholes with ease, their muscle memory attuned to the vagaries of the weather beaten path. Beyond, the long-duelling restaurants of Tatiana and Volna still aggressively via for passing trade, as they have done for years.
As night falls, the ocean turns inky black, while the locals promenade along the boardwalk in their evening wear. We take a table at Volna, on the boardwalk at 6th Street, and watch the parade waltz by.
Brighton Beach has a curious history. In 1868, the developer William A. Engeman purchased, for twenty thousand dollars, several hundred acres between Manhattan Beach and Coney Island. He built a bathing pavilion, and named the area Brighton Beach, for the English seaside resort. A visitor could bet on horse races, gawk at albinos, or attend ragtime shows at “the handsomest seaside theatre in the world.”
By the nineteen-seventies, the neighbourhood had become heavily Russian, and, like Chinatown and Curry Hill, “Little Odessa” was as much a nostalgic ideal as a place. “Fuck the Russians in Brighton Beach, mobster thugs sitting in cafés, sipping tea in little glasses, sugar cubes between their teeth,” Edward Norton’s character says in Spike Lee’s film “25th Hour.”
The collapse of the Soviet Union bought a second-wave of immigration throughout the 1980s and 90s, and although the attitude to non-residents has softened, don’t expect this part of town to transform into the next Rockaway Beach anytime soon. Vodka and weight- lifting remain important themes here. Once the weather hits 70 degrees, the hardy locals will be quick to fill the beach wearing ill-advised speedos and necking bottles of warm Baltika beer. And not in an ironic manner.
Visit right now, though, before the beach officially opens for the summer, and you’ll still find the sand strip hauntingly empty and the avenue at a perfect low buzz. The ocean-view restaurants will still hassle you for your custom but there’s a good chance you’ll be able to stroll the boardwalk at sunset with nothing between you and the Atlantic except a soft light, the ocean breeze, and a light vodka haze.
This post forms part of a series for the NYC Beach Guide. Sign up for our newsletter to receive a weekly email in your inbox!
