A common sensation among the residents of Bensonhurst is the feeling of living in the middle of nowhere. “It’s so far away from civilization,” laments Stephanie, a recent transplant from Sunset Park, as she exits the D train at the 18th Avenue station. For commuters like her, the over one hour-long train ride from the city to this remote corner of Brooklyn often resembles a journey between worlds. During the trip to 18th Avenue, as the Coney Island-bound D pulls out of the tunnels and onto elevated tracks, commuters watch as houses with clotheslines in their backyards and high schools with football fields pass in an out of their view, anomalies to those who are most familiar with the vertical architecture of Manhattan. As the train draws closer to the stop, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge materializes into view, a reminder that in many ways, Bensonhurst is an extension of “the forgotten borough.”
Despite its population of over 150,000 and the seeming denseness of its main thoroughfares, solitude dominates the atmosphere of the neighborhood. Walking along Bay 16th Street or another one of the neighborhood’s ocean-themed streets, it would not be uncommon to encounter few other pedestrians. To find signs of human life, one must venture down 18th Avenue or 86th Street, where the disparate and separate cores of the neighborhood lie, 18th Avenue representing the old and 86th Street the new.
Bensonhurst experienced two waves of Italian immigrants in the 20th Century: one prior to World War II and another one in the 1950s. Known as the Little Italy of Brooklyn, it is still famous for its significant Italian-American population. However, as non-Italian immigrants flow into the neighborhood and the Italian population ages, Italian-Americans now make up less than fifteen percent of the neighborhood’s total population. Like its Manhattan counterpart, Brooklyn’s Little Italy has become smaller and smaller, as the area comprising it has dwindled to a single street. 18th Avenue from Bay Ridge Parkway to 86th Street remains the last reminder of Bensonhurst’s Italian past. Riding the B8 bus through the avenue, one cannot help but notice the abundance of Italian flags waving on poles on street curbs outside Italian-American owned businesses. Many of the proprietors who currently manage these businesses do not speak the language of their grandparents and great-grandparents, who originally settled in Bensonhurst after emigrating from Southern Italy and set up these shops. However, by operating the pizzerias, bakeries, and cafes that line 18th Avenue, also called Cristoforo Colombo Boulevard, they continue a tradition that has long been a pivotal aspect of Italian identity: food. Enter Villabate Alba Bakery on the corner of 18th Avenue and 71st Street, and the gleam of shiny marzipan cakes perfectly molded and painted to resemble fruit will catch your eye. The line for cannolis snakes out the door. Further down the avenue, at 18th and 85th Street, the smell of fresh-out-of-the-oven pizza entices passerby as they exit the train station, deciding that they do not have worry about preparing dinner after all. Bensonhurst’s Italian-American pride culminates each year in the “Festa di Santa Rosalia” street festival during late summer. Named for Santa Rosalia, the patron saint of Palermo, for ten days, 18th Avenue enlivens with red, white, and green banners and the sounds and smells of street vendors selling zeppoles and Italian ices.
At 86th Street, Brooklyn’s Little Italy ends and a new enclave begins. Unlike 18th Avenue, 86th Street does not have a single ethnic identity, making it difficult to nickname. Some argue that it is an annex of Brooklyn’s main Chinatown on 8th Avenue in Sunset Park, and indeed, there are many groceries, take-out joints, sushi restaurants, dollar stores, nail salons, and other Chinese-owned businesses lining its streets. However, as store and restaurant awnings continue to go up, bearing names in Cyrillic, Spanish, Turkish, Arabic, and Polish, it becomes increasingly apparent that 86th Street is not a homogeneously Chinese enclave. While groups from China and the former Soviet Union dominate the neighborhood’s foreign-born population, Bensonhurst is also home to a significant number of immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Puerto Rico, Albania, Pakistan, and the Middle East, as indicated by the diversity of businesses and languages on 86th Street.
For many of Bensonhurst’s recent immigrants, who are numerous (according to former mayor Michael Bloomberg, in 2013 Bensonhurst had the second highest number of immigrants in New York City after Washington Heights), Bensonhurst is New York. When asked about why he has no intent to learn English, Begzod, my grandfather’s home attendant and a 23-year-old immigrant from Uzbekistan, answers, “Why should I? Everyone here speaks Russian.” Living in a neighborhood that has a Russian supermarket that sells imported goods, several mosques, a Brooklyn Public Library Branch with books in multiple languages, and a few Central Asian restaurants, many of Begzod’s social needs are met within the neighborhood’s boundaries.
For the children of immigrants, on the other hand, the neighborhood’s remoteness, desolate streets, and lack of affluence can be confining. Through my mother, Begzod explains to me that his 16-year-old brother regularly stays out with friends until the early hours of the morning on weekends, drawing the ire and worry of his parents. “He doesn’t like it here. He always wants to hang out in Manhattan,” he explains. Unlike Begzod, his brother arrived in New York at a crucial age for his cognitive and sociocultural development. Begzod explains how his brother picked up English at school with ease and increasingly feels the need to fit in with American society.
For those who commute between Bensonhurst and more prosperous parts of the city for work, the lack of major retail stores, yoga studios, and Whole Foods can make the neighborhood feel empty and inconvenient. Relatively low rents and lack of financial stability prevent many of these college-educated 20 and 30-something-year-olds from moving out of their parents’ houses or out of the neighborhood and into areas like Brooklyn Heights. Many of them speak only English fluently, a language that is barely heard on the neighborhood’s streets. They use Bensonhurst as crash pad, retreating here to sleep on weeknights while traveling elsewhere for social and intellectual stimulation.
Stephanie is one these nocturnal residents. She grew up in Bensonhurst in a Chinese-American family. After earning her degree in music from UCLA, she returned to New York and settled in Sunset Park, a neighborhood that borders affluent Park Slope and that has slowly begun to gentrify. Lack of career prospects and an unstable flow of income forced her to move back home with her parents. “I like Bensonhurst, but I don’t want to stay here forever,” she remarks as we exit the train station. It is 11 p.m. and she is returning from a gig on the Lower East Side, guitar slung across her back. She would have liked to play the later set as well, but her job in retail, which begins at 8 a.m., prevents her from staying out too late. “My parents were nice about letting me move back in, but they made it clear that I couldn’t stay for free,” she explains. When asked about why she wants to eventually leave Bensonhurst, she explains that she wants to live closer to the indie music scene. “I also have the feeling that if I keep living in my parents’ neighborhood, I have failed to rise above their position in life,” she explains.
Although Bensonhurst lacks the cultural resources to appeal to Stephanie’s generation, it still boasts the Belt Parkway Promenade, a pedestrian and biking path along the water stretching from Bay Parkway to Bay Ridge, which appeals to the generation’s health and recreation-consciousness. Though the trail is not nearly as user-friendly as those in DUMBO or Central Park, with craters, gravel, and sand lining the way, no clearly defined divisions between the cycling and running paths, and the smell of cigarettes and illegally-gutted fish filling the lungs of runners gasping for breath, its scenic views of the Verrazano Bridge and Staten Island across the water, especially during sunset, make for a breathtaking run or ride.
Works Cited
“The Festa Di Santa Rosalia, a 70-year Bensonhurst Tradition, Will Go on as Scheduled This Year .” NY Daily News. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 May 2014. <http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/bensonhurst-festa-di-santa-rosalia-year-article-1.1432257>.
“Mayor Bloomberg Welcomes 100 New U.S. Citizens .” NY Daily News. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 May 2014. <http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/mayor-bloomberg-welcomes-100-new-u-s-citizens-article-1.1552071>.
Santos, Fernanda. “For Italians in Brooklyn, the Faces and the Voices on the Streets Have Changed.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 06 Jan. 2009. Web. 07 May 2014. <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/nyregion/07italians.html?_r=0>.
United States. New York City Department of City Planning. Population Division. Nyc.gov. N.p.,
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<http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/census/census2010/t_pl_p1_nta.pdf>.
