Brighton Beach

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1873 map of the Villages of Unionville and Guntherville, part of the Town of Gravesend, the area of present-day Brighton Beach

A Russian-language bookstore under the elevated train tracks in Brighton Beach

Newly built luxury condos on Brighton Beach

Where apartments and private homes meet

A school in Brighton Beach known as P.S. 225

Brighton 15th Street

Brighton Beach is a community on Coney Island in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City.

1 Location
2 Education
3 History
4 Culture
5 In popular culture
6 References
7 See also
8 External links

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].

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 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:

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 immigrants who left the Former Soviet Union between 1970 and the present day. However, living in the Soviet Union during its last decades has 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.

Brighton Beach was dubbed "Little Odessa" by the local populace long ago, due to many of its residents having come from Odessa. Many Russian women have started to make topless sunbathing popular on the beach.^{[citation needed]} It is or was reportedly the home of the Russian Mafia in the United States.^{[citation needed]} 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 also home to many other ethnic groups, such as immigrants from Pakistan. On Brighton 7th Street and Neptune Avenue, there is a mosque where Muslims (mostly from Pakistan and Bangladesh) pray. There is another mosque located between Brighton 8th Street and Banner Avenue near "the junkyard". There are numerous Polish, Russian 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. 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 (the street runs parallel to the Coney Island beach area and the Boardwalk) and the fact that the street is located right under the Brighton Beach Avenue subway station, makes it a popular summer weekend destination for thousands of New York City residents.

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.
The opening scene of XIII (video game) is set 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.
Brighton Beach is also featured in 1990-s Russian spy-comedy with very 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
The film Lord of War was filmed in Brighton Beach
In Every Laugh A Tear (Lesléa Newman) takes place partly in Brighton Beach