The 1870s: it all started with a tiny wooden pier that peaked out of the borough of Brooklyn into the grand Atlantic Ocean. Steamboats tugged on by it without a word. Some stopped by to hang their feet over the end into the salty waters below. It was a quiet and quaint beachside: a clean canvas, waiting for an artist to come by and make their mark. Turns out, William A. Engeman the man for the job. He saw this no-named beach as his next big project, a project that would change the face of Brooklyn forever. $20,000 later, that little pier was transformed into a full-length boardwalk. Hotels, luxury housing, horse races, carnival rides, and sideshows popped up along the coast. Top-of-the-line vaudeville performers found success in the theatres that began to appear. It was no long an unknown beach; it was a full-blown tourist attraction with a new name: Brighton Beach.

Swanky Brighton.

Brighton Beach has proven to be more than just a tourist attraction since its conception. During World War II, the Brighton Beach area served as refuge for the thousands of Russian, Hispanic, and Asian immigrants fleeing from their own countries. Since then, the population has grown immensely, making the area less of a vacation spot and into the staple New York City community it is today. However, Brighton Beach is far from the perfection that William A. Engeman envisioned. This neighborhood has encountered many issues, both social and ecological.

A Tree Dies in Brooklyn

Brighton Beach, post-Hurricane Sandy

In Brighton Beach, the hurricane destroyed both people’s homes and the ecology of the neighborhood. Back in 2012, my grandparents’ house was completely flooded by the hurricane, which eliminated all heating, plumbing, and electrical services. For weeks, my family and I provided them with shelter while their house was slowly renovated. Luckily, relief efforts for Hurricane Sandy victims were swift and largely successful, and my grandparents were able to move back into their home before the New Year.

The environment around Brighton Beach has not been as lucky. Many trees and other plant life were destroyed due to the heavy amounts of ocean water that flooded the streets and parks of the neighborhood. Not only did the city have to remove over 2,400 trees from the neighborhood since 2012, but it’s also close to impossible grow any new trees due to salt damage in the soil. Because of the sharp reduction of greenery in Brighton Beach, air quality has only worsened, and hot summer days have become even harder to handle due to the lack of trees that used to canopy the majority of the neighborhood’s streets and parks. Local joggers have abandoned the beloved Ocean Parkway due to the lack of trees that controlled the heat levels.

“I want to be in Amer-i-ca!”

Source: Nicole Bengiveno, NYTimes

Brighton Beach’s population has not stopped growing since World War II. On April 15, 2015, the New York Times reported that there has been a spike in Chinese immigration to the Brighton Beach/Bensonhurst/Gravesend area since 2003. Between the years of 2000 to 2013, the amount of foreign Chinese residents in Brooklyn jumped from 86,000 to 128,000, making them one of the densest populations between these three neighborhoods besides the Russians.

Brighton Beach is struggling to accommodate such a large influx of immigrants into its rather humble abode. Having lived in the Brighton Beach area for a year with my grandparents and cousins, it is hard to turn a blind eye to area’s overcrowding. Although there is an effort being made to increase in available affordable housing in the Brighton area, many low-income immigrant families are still being forced to squeeze their large families into tight living spaces. Mayor de Blasio hopes to correct this matter in his 10-year affordable housing plan, but as of now, this is the only solution being provided by the New York City government.

Bitter Litter

Ew. Source: Ned Berk

The issue with public sanitation and littering is especially prominent in Brighton Beach. While investigating “Little Odessa,” also known as Little Russia, I noticed that the amount of trash overflowing from garbage cans is significantly more severe than any neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan. After speaking to local shop owners, they reported that NYC sanitation does not show up nearly as often as they should (I did not ask for a specific number of days, but judging by the amount of trash, there was easily a week’s worth of trash overflowing from these bins, possibly even more).

While NYC’s government stands idle on this trashy issue, the locals of Brooklyn are taking action to keep their streets clean. In the beginning of September 2015, the local event “Speak-Up and Clean-Up” sent over 100 high school students to clean up their local neighborhoods (Gravesend to Coney Island to Brighton). Similar local events help clean up the streets and keep their neighborhoods welcoming, while indirectly keeping the environment around them healthy.

Battle of the Bathrooms

Source: NYC Parks

As ridiculous as it may sound, public restrooms are causing a social class conflict in the Brighton Beach neighborhood. Following Hurricane Sandy, the Brighton Beach boardwalk and its facilities needed to be rebuilt from the bottom-up. The city was originally going to build new six million dollar public restrooms along the boardwalk, a majority of them being in front of the high-end Oceana Condominiums. This sent the wealthier residents of Oceana into a tizzy, which led them to convince the Parks Department to relocate their project to another area: the Shorefront Y, which happens to be located in a lower-income community. Many of the families that live in the area of the Shorefront Y were also angered, saying that this alternative “is motivated by the very wealthy in the neighborhood.”

Unfortunately, no one escaped this conflict unscathed. As the conflict wore on, the Parks Department ended up abandoning the project as a whole in April 2015, leaving the city taxpayers a $2.5 million bill to pay off. Not only was this a waste of resources, but it also intensified the class conflict. A friend who lives in this area told me that there’s still major quarreling between the condominium residents and the local neighborhoods surrounding.