On April 6^th, Kate Zarudna and I went to the Homecrest, Ave U Chinatown again. This time, heading from Coney Island Ave goes until E. 15th street (where the Ave U, Q-line train station is located).

So, immediately, we saw that there were quite a few hair salons relatively close together within, basically, one block of each other. There were Chinese-owned hair salons, Russian-speaking hair salons on the same street (about 12^th to 14^th Streets, I think). There were about five hair salons. Actually, three or four of them were Chinese (or Asian) owned and there was only one salon that was owned by Russian-speaking people (one can never be sure exactly from which ex-Soviet republic). The two types of salons appeared to have separate clientele; however one or two of the Asian salons were completely empty while the only Russian-speaking owned salon was packed with middle-aged women.

Besides the hair salons, there are obviously many businesses along the street that appear to be prospering. Among them are: tech-based businesses, nail salons, and general stores (99¢ stores), and many, many, pharmacies. In the fresh food stores and the various clothing stores (rather inexpensive clothing, not the boutiques), all nationalities were represented: Russian, Chinese, Hispanic.

Besides the two predominant groups that have businesses and eateries along Ave U, here were also a couple restaurants that served Vietnamese cuisine and there were also two Mexican restaurants. We are not sure about their clientele, but most likely all ethnicities frequent those restaurants.  One a slightly different note, we went to a Japanese restaurant on Ave u (Tokyo Sushi) and all the customers (at the time when we were eating at least) were Russian-speaking, while the employees were only Chinese.

Since this was our second visit, we also went in to a different Chinese-owned traditional herb medicine store that caters to both Russian and Chinese clients.