Brighton Beach

The Brighton Beach neighborhood is one of the most exciting scenes in New York. Located on the southern end of Brooklyn, Brighton is situated directly along the Atlantic Ocean, giving its residents immediate access to one of the most beautiful beaches in New York City. The Boardwalk is lined with first-class restaurants, bars, and amusement parks. Perhaps more defining to Brighton Beach than its vibrant beach scene is its huge population of Russian speaking immigrants. Often called “Little Russia by the Sea,” I truly feel like I enter an entirely different country whenever the subway brings me to Brighton Beach. As soon as you step off the subway platform you will notice that English is no longer the common tongue on Brighton Beach. In fact, I am often surprised if a person approaches me speaking in English while I am working or grocery shopping in Brighton Beach

Under the tremoring subway platform that runs along Brighton Beach Avenue are several ethnic Russian establishments including food bazaars, Russian book stores, and much more. More than half the stores on Brighton Beach Avenue are owned by immigrants that were once part of the Soviet Union, according to the New York Times. As for the night life in Brighton Beach, restaurants like Tatianna’s delight its patrons with authentic Russian cuisine and live Russian singing and dancing. Karaoke bars allow Brighton goers to enjoy all the latest Russian pop- culture (Kusnyer).

Brighton Beach is also home to one of the most legendary performance centers: The Millennium Theater. The Millennium Theater has featured numerous performances that reflect the Russian culture of Brighton Beach, like genius Russian violinists Vladimir Spivakov and Yuri Bashmet, Russian Ballet performances, and classical Russian theater productions. The Millennium theatre is versatile as it is ethnic, having performances by Ray Charles and several world Championship Kickboxing events on top of the authentic Russian culture it’s known to showcase (Mastertheater.com).

The influx of Russian immigrants to Brighton Beach started to occur during the 1970’s. The Soviet Union started to adopt a laxer emigration policy for its Jewish citizens. Many of the Jewish Soviets faced constant discrimination and antisemitism. Applying for anything in the Soviet Union required citizens to present their passports: those that were labeled “Jewish” were often put at a disadvantage (Lewin). “Sometimes I went to school and the kids would throw things at me and yell ‘Jew!’”, said Sasha Lyubarov. He faced a constant stream of anti-semitism. All the high-paying jobs were denied to him on the basis of his Judaism.

In addition, many Uzbeks and Soviets from the “Stan” nations came to America because of the economic conditions in the destabilizing Soviet Union. They thought they would find more opportunity and prosperity in America. Igor Sultanov, who I met during my afternoon shift at the Shorefront Y on Bright Beach Avenue said, “In Russia, there is always crisis. I used to have a big gym where everyone would come and exercise. All the [weight lifting] champions came to my gym but making a business in Russia is always very difficult.” This is what brought Igor to settle in the Brighton area in 1992.

Brighton Beach initially had little to offer its Russian Speaking immigrants in the beginning. Brighton Beach was stricken with poverty, arson, and drug trade during the period following World War II. Indeed, it was not Brighton’s liveliness that attracted the plethora of Russian-speaking immigrants that live there today. But just as they were in the Soviet Union, the Russian-speaking immigrants were unified by their knowledge of the Russian language (Kordunsky et. al.). Truly it would be hard to feel far from home when all your neighbors spoke the language of your home country. Finding work and networking was made easier for immigrants; the commonality found in knowing the same language made Brighton a tightly knit community. “I came here with only my suit cases with clothes in them. I did not know English,” said Lyudmilla Buda, the head lifeguard at the Shorefront Y for 22 years. “My whole life I taught swimming in Russia but here I had nothing. I made friends and they helped me get my license to work.” For Lyudmilla, the familiarity of the Brighton culture made it easy to adjust and assimilate into life in America.

Since the large influx of Russian immigrants arrived in the Brighton Beach neighborhood, it has seen much better days than its previous, crime ridden state. Since 1993, the 60^th police precinct saw a 72 percent decrease in major crimes in Brighton Beach (60^th Police Precinct). As poverty in the area dropped, the luxury condominiums Oceana were built in the early 2000s and became iconic parts of the Brighton Beach neighborhood. These high-income beach homes of course attracted the wealthy businessmen and performers of what used to be the Soviet Union (Wikimedia). Brighton Beach had almost been completely revitalized.

Life in Little Russia by the Sea is now much different than the life these immigrants had in the dying Soviet Union. Many former Soviets have stories of the everyday struggle of simply trying to acquire the most basic of food items in Russia. “I would get up very early in the morning just to wait on line at the store,” said Eliot Milskiy who emigrated from Russia in 1988. “I would wait for hours and when I finally got inside there was nothing. Some stale bread and some carrots on the shelf in the corner.” Now Eliot buys his food at the local Bazaar. To his great appreciation, the food in Brighton is plentiful and he does not need to awake in the early hours in the morning for fear that the food will be gone later in the day.

Many are appreciative of the work they have found in Brighton Beach when juxtaposed with the kind of work available in their former home lands. “My father worked in the mine for many hours a day,” said Kapiton Karabanov, who grew up in Siberia before moving to Moscow and then to the United States. “He would leave in the morning before I woke up and come back at night.” Mining in Siberia was a very arduous and dangerous profession. The mines were dark and it was hard to breathe. The risk for injury is high in the unpredictable mining setting where cave-ins are not uncommon. Kapiton, now a karate instructor, is happy to have taken the opportunity to emigrate from the Soviet Union.

Of course there is still much to be improved on, as with any New York neighborhood. Most of Brighton Beach Avenue, with all of its colorful and authentic Russian stores, lies underneath the loud and dirty subway Brighton Beach subway platform. “If I could get rid of one thing, it would be the train,” said Elizabeth Mestechkina who spent her whole life in the Brighton Beach area. “Every 10 minutes the ground starts shaking and there’s loud screeching noise from the train… the sun can never touch the ground because it is blocked by the train platform.” Many complain that the subway ruins the Brighton Beach atmosphere.

The wage gap in Brighton Beach has also been a cause for complaints amongst its inhabitants. Housing in the Brighton Beach consists of two different extremes: the luxurious Oceana upper class housing versus the remaining affordable housing, built when Brighton was struggling with poverty and crime. Oceana goers can enjoy beautiful views of the beach from their balconies, various amenities, and large, spacious living spaces. However, living in affordable housing is a much different lifestyle. “The building I live in is very horrible. It’s really tiny and its always very cold,” says Lior Agaronov, who lives in an affordable housing compound on Brighton 5^th St. “The walls are made of really cheap material I think because they’re always breaking. I always have problems with the equipment like the lights and the elevators and we are always receiving very outrageous bills. The subway is always really loud and it wakes me up when I’m asleep.”  Many of these problems are not present in the small community of Oceana. Oceana was built far from the subway platform and is far more aesthetically pleasing as a result. The buildings are new so residents face much fewer problems with utilities.

Despite the issues the Brighton Beach area has, according to its residents, it has seen much improvements since its earlier days of crime and poverty. Many of the people living in Brighton see a bright future for it and believe Brighton will continue to improve as it has in the past. However, its relatively homogeneous Russian community may slowly start to fade away. The number of people who qualify for immigration from Russia and other Russian speaking countries is steadily dropping. In addition, many of the later generations of Russian speaking immigrants are leaving the Brighton area. On top of this, Brighton has seen immigration from people coming from countries like Pakistan and India. All of these sudden changes lead many to believe that Brighton may not remain an all-Russian community in the future (Lewine).

Works Cited

Kordunsky, Anna, Ariel Stulberg, Bingling Liao, and Michael Larson. “Changing Face of Brighton Beach.” Forward. N.p., Sept.-Oct. 2012. Web. 5 Apr. 2016.

Kusnyer, Laura. “Guide to Brighton Beach in New York City – Russian Restaurants, Stores and Entertainment.” Nycgo.com. NYC and Company, n.d. Web. 10 May 2016.

Lewine, Edward. “From Brighton Beach to America; The Wave of Immigrants Began 25 Years Ago. Soon Russian Filled the Streets. Now, the Tide Is Ebbing.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 13 Mar. 1999. Web. 10 May 2016.

“DNAinfo.com.” DNAinfo. 60th Police Precinct, n.d. Web. 10 May 2016.

“Master Theater.” Mastertheater.com. N.p., n.d. Web.

“Brighton Beach.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 10 May 2016.

The West Village: Then and Now

After my A train arrives at the West 4^th subway station, I walk up the stairs to end up on Waverly Place and the Avenue of the Americas. I walk westward on Waverly to Grove, and follow that for just a short while before using West 4^th to cross over onto Christopher Street. The streets of the West Village don’t conform to the rest of the New York City grid, so it’s taken me almost a dozen trips to be able to navigate the area. Once I land my feet onto Christopher Street, I’m set; I walk straight along the street towards the southwest until I’m only 2 blocks from the water. It is here that I arrive at 154 Christopher Street: the office of Chemo Comfort where I volunteer once a week. However, the West Village is much bigger than the one building I’m most comfortable with. The neighborhood is bordered by West Houston on the south, the Avenue of the Americas on the east, West 14^th on the north, and the Hudson on the west. And that isn’t even considering the entirety of Greenwich Village, which is an extension of West Village to Broadway on the east.

The current demographic of the West Village is dominantly white, rich, young people – a much different description than much of New York. With about three-quarters of households being nonfamily ones, it is easy to accept that about 69% of West Village residents are in college or graduate school. However, even without much ethnic diversity, this area has a rich history that can be related to much of the development of Manhattan itself. Everything from the Village’s wacky streets to its thriving food scene and artistic culture can be explained through an analysis of how the neighborhood became settled. There have been many changes in the socioeconomic make-up of the area; the West Village hasn’t always been a land of high rents, but its history of art, culture, and cultural diversity has been constant for the past 200 years. With a 2010 population of 66,880, the Village only contributes 4.2% of the Manhattan population and less than 1% of the total NYC population (US Census Bureau), but almost every New Yorker knows of the neighborhood. Ask someone what they think of the Village, and they’ll conjure up images of hip coffee shops, artistic endeavors, and “the area’s charms and its vivid bohemian past” (Jacobson, 2015). Paul Whitteby, a student at NYU, says that although he moved from upstate New York when he started to attend the university, he had “known about Greenwich Village forever, it always seemed so fun and exciting compared to where [he’s] from …When [he] moved here, [he] couldn’t believe all the food that was everywhere you looked. [He] went out for like, every meal.” However, even with ideas of today’s Village, not many people know the history of this section of New York dating back to the city’s first settlement.

When the Canarsee Indians still occupied current-day Manhattan, the Greenwich Village area was known as “Seppanikan” and they focused their settlement around today’s Minetta Street, where there was a small stream. When the Dutch arrived in the Americas, they decided to make the area a tobacco plantation until the British arrived and renamed the area Greenwich (The Street Necrology, n.d.). As the Industrial Era began in the 1800s, the village of Greenwich developed and became more populated as the economy in New York began to thrive. As the wealthy citizens became more established, they wanted somewhere to go to relax after the long work day. A contrast to industrial, crowded downtown Manhattan, the village of Greenwich and nearby Bowery village became suburban recluses for the downtown workers (Strykowski, Ehrlich & Greer, 2010).

As the area became more populated, structures such a prison, gallows, and potter’s field, or burial ground, were established near current-day Washington Square Park (“Village History,” n.d.). The existence of these structures, in hindsight, seem to foreshadow the next era of Greenwich Village; the future unique and unparalleled atmosphere of the neighborhood can also trace its roots to this time period. Although the rest of Manhattan had plans to come together and conform to cohesive gridded streets in 1811, Greenwich Village didn’t change because a “yellow fever and cholera epidemic in the early 1800s” kept it isolated (“The Street Necrology,” n.d.). This explains why this area of Manhattan is exceptionally hard to navigate, especially compared to the easy-to-understand streets of midtown and uptown.

Additionally, the outbreak of yellow fever led to people deciding to flee their downtown homes to more “open spaces,” such as Greenwich Village, because it was thought that yellow fever came from unsanitary conditions, rather than mosquitos (Strykowski, Ehrlich & Greer, 2010). Upon being told this tidbit of history, Steve Nicolls, a long-time employee at Pizzetteria Brunetti, told me, “I simply can’t imagine a bunch of sick folks hangin’ out around here! The place is so clean and beautiful now, I hate to think it was ever dirty.” As people flocked to the Village, merchants settled and opened stores, which led to the construction of a church and school, and suddenly, Greenwich Village was a functioning neighborhood. Even after the epidemic ended, many people stayed in the area and turned their temporary houses and shops into more permanent settlements.

At this point, it was the early 1800s and the first waves of European immigration were starting. In the 1820s and 1830s, “Greenwich Village began to be a neighborhood of extremes in wealth disparity” as freedmen from the south, free blacks from the North, Irish immigrants, and other merchant groups decided to move to the Village. Tenements were built in the neighborhood, although “antebellum, urban architecture” was the norm. Newcomers began to find permanent housing in the Village, whereas the previous residents were wealthy folks just looking for vacation homes.

During this time between 1830 and 1850, New York University also opened and offered housing to not just the staff and students but to their friends and affiliates, such as many artists, scientists, writers like Samuel Colt, Samuel Morse, and Edgar Allen Poe (Strykowski, Ehrlich & Greer, 2010). This influx of intellectuals set the foundation for the Bohemian era and a lower cost of living in the West Village, as they established “art clubs, private picture galleries, learned societies, literary salons, … fine hotels, shopping emporia, and theaters.” Additionally, “when German, Irish, and Italian immigrants [came and] found work in the breweries, warehouses, and coal and lumber yards … [older] residences were subdivided into cheap lodging hotels and [plummeting] real estate values prompted nervous retailers and genteel property owners to move uptown” (“Village History,” n.d.).

When I chatted with Betty Calanzo, a resident of the West Village for over 50 years, she thought back to her first days here and compared them to both today and the history I told her. “You know, me and Pat came here when I was only twenty-five. Bright-eyed and scared as hell, I came here not knowin’ what to expect. We felt at home in the community here, and over the years, I’ve realized I don’t wanna be anywhere else … But what you’re tellin’ me sounds crazy: it was cheap to live there then too? I’m lucky I got here when I did, [I’ve had] the same apartment for so long, there’s no way I could buy one now!”

As the late 1800s approached, these “new waves of immigrant groups including [the] French, Irish, and Italian” settled in the Village, and “the area experienced a rise in Bohemianism,” caused also by “the departure of the upper classes” who moved more uptown near Central Park. By 1900, the area was “quaintly picturesque and ethnically diverse; … [it] was widely known as a bohemian enclave with secluded side streets, low rents, and a tolerance for radicalism and nonconformity.” This reputation led Greenwich Village to be a tourist attraction for many. Then when Prohibition began, “local speakeasies attracted uptown patrons” (“Village History,” n.d.). Furthermore, by the 1950s, the neighborhood became influential place in the Beat movement, which was a movement by “beatniks” to separate from society and strive toward “personal release, purification, and illumination” through the use of jazz, poetry, and unique vocabulary, among other things (“Beat movement,” 2016).

The next decade brought “a homosexual community [that] formed around Christopher Street.” The Village’s reputation as a gay-friendly place began in 1969 when the police and local patrons at the Stonewall Inn, a well-known gay bar, got into a week-long confrontation called the Stonewall Rebellion. Following these riots, New York saw many groups form over civil rights, and on the one-year anniversary, “the first gay pride parades in U.S. history took place in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, and near the Stonewall Inn in New York” (“Stonewall Riots,” 2009). Soon after, a movement for LGBT rights began all throughout the United States. Greenwich Village’s penchant for backlash continued has it “became a rallying place for antiwar protesters in the 1970s and for activity mobilized in response to the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s” (“Village History,” n.d.).

According to some residents of the West Village, the neighborhood’s past is both allowing it to continue thriving and causing it to lose some of its uniqueness. After the Stonewall Rebellion, the Village was a “cool place to live” but now that acceptance has spread, the area isn’t as concentrated with LGBT residents and it “is attracting more families … as well as “successful young people in financial services, and a lot of high-tech people.” Because “about 80 percent of the West Village has landmark status,” most of the people who live there reside in “low-rise historic buildings.”

However, because of the novelty of “the area’s charms and its vivid bohemian past,” prices are rising (Jacobson, 2015). About 27% of West Village residents have a yearly income over $200,000 and 54% have an income over $100,000, compared to only 7% over $200,000 and 25% over $100,000 in all of New York City. This is most likely due to about 72% of residents being involved in jobs in management, business, arts, and science, compared to the 39% in New York City overall. These contrasts in jobs can be traced back to 98% of West Village residents having a high school degree or higher and 84% having a bachelor’s degree or higher (US Census Bureau).

While a higher median income and younger population is good for the economy and local businesses, some long-time residents are opposed. One resident claims that the demographics have shifted from “respectable” artists to a younger, more party-loving crowd. They seem to care less about the community and its bohemian history, and more about their own personal lives (Lynne, 2013).

Overall, the West Village has faced many shifts and evolutions over time, but they all coincided and interlocked to create the current dynamic of the neighborhood. A hub for art, culture, and unique residents, the neighborhood has had an impact nationwide through the Stonewall Riots, but also on the entirety of Manhattan through its function as first a suburban recluse, then a bustling commercial center, and finally a cultural center. The demographic has been consistently shifting toward a new, younger, more wealthy crowd, but the history of the neighborhood is evident whenever you walk through the jigsaw streets or look at the old, low-rise buildings.

Works Cited

“Beat movement.” Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2016.

Jacobson, A. “The West Village: Bohemian Past, Lofty Prices.” New York Times, 2 September

2015. Web.

Lynne, J. “Dorm Mentality: Trending WV Demographics.” Huffpost New York. 14 January 2013.

“Stonewall Riots: The Beginning of the LGBT Movement.” The Leadership Conference. 22 June

2009.

Strykowski, J., Ehrlich, K., Greer, R. “The Early 19^th Century.” Creating Digital History. 20

November 2010. Web.

“The Street Necrology of Greenwich Village.” Forgotten New York. n.d. Web.

United States Census Bureau. New York City: GPO, 2010. Web.

“Village History.” The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. n.d. Web.

The Chinatown in Brooklyn

Avenue U is a street located in Brooklyn, New York. Its cross streets were named by numbers from west to east, such as East 15^th Street, where the Q train station is located. It starts from Bergen Avenue in Bergen Beach near Jamaica Bay and is essentially cut off by Stillwell Avenue, one block after West 13^th street. The neighborhood after Stillwell Avenue is 86^th street, another area that has many Chinese stores. Avenue U is very long, but only the section between the Homecrest and Sheepshead Bay is considered as Chinatown. This part of the neighborhood covers areas from Coney Island Avenue (E 11^th St.) to Nostrand Avenue (E 30^th St.).

Avenue U is actually the boundary that separates Homecrest from Sheepshead Bay. Known as the second Chinatown of Brooklyn, Avenue U does not actually have clear borders. The Chinese spreads from Kings Highway to Sheepshead Bay, but they are densely populated near Avenue U. The Homecrest neighborhood is consisted of mostly white collar family households. The community makes up mainly by Italians. Sheepshead Bay’s occupational employment is mainly white collar as well. White people dominate the community, which makes up 75.4% of the population in the neighborhood.

With a large number of white people residing in the surrounding neighborhoods, how did the Avenue U turn into Chinatown? In fact, there had been racial tension during the late 1980s that the Chinese will take over the whole neighborhood. The history has to go back to the rapidly growing number of Chinese immigrants that were filling up 8 Avenue in Sunset Park. Congestion and the skyrocketing price of real estates in 8 Avenue during the 1990s had caused the Chinese to moved out from Sunset Park. The pouring number of Chinese into Avenue U led to the establishment of the second Chinatown of Brooklyn in the late 1990s, between the Homecrest and Sheepshead Bay sections.

Avenue U is an area that draws back a lot of my childhood memories. When I initially moved to the United States from GuangZhou, the first place I took a step on is E 26^th Street between Avenue U and Avenue T. Back in time, I was surprised by the inexpensiveness of things. Though I was not familiar with currencies at the age of 11, I was still amazed by how you can get a product without even paying a dollar.

My father and I were the only two from our family who live in New York. My father immigrated three years before I did, and he initially resided at E 26^th Street at a distant relative’s house. A one-bedroom house with a kitchen and a bathroom was rented for $400, which also included the fees for all utilities. The landlord thought that the rent might be too cheap and he imposed some additional requirements: my father needed to regulate and move the garbage cans to the edge of the street every week, and he had to shovel the snow during the winter. My father agreed to it and lived there for 9 years.

“Right at where we lived, the 26^th Street, is actually an Italian neighborhood. When I first moved there around 2006, Avenue U used to be a lot quieter and has fewer people,” my father said. The Italians moved away probably because they were buying houses from other states. As a result, more and more Chinese immigrants have moved to New York and they choose to settle on Avenue U because their family members and relatives had already been living here. The neighborhood now is supported by the southern Chinese from GuangDong (Canton) Province. To be more specific, it is mostly populated with Taishanese.

My middle school friend, Christina, is one of the examples. She moved to New York in 2008 and settled at E 28^th St until now. Her family is renting her aunt’s property and they are paying a lower-than-average amount. Similarly, they also need to keep the house in good condition because her aunt would occasionally come over for a spontaneous check. Christina grumbles, “sometimes it is annoying to rent your relative’s house because she complains a lot about what you do to her house.”

In recent years, as Christina’s mother recognized, there is a growing number of Fuzhounese moving into the neighborhood. This doesn’t seem to pose a problem to the younger generation because young people tend to focus more on schools and jobs. However, the older generation would sometimes complain that the Fuzhounese from 8 Avenue, Sunset Park is going to flood Avenue U in the future. Ironically, the Cantonese are now concerned with the same thing as the white people did twenty years ago. They worried that too many people moving in will increase the rent and turned Avenue U into an overcrowded and unclean place, just like 8 Avenue at Sunset Park.

Their concern is not necessarily a problem. Since the Great Recession from December 2007 to June 2009, the U.S. labor market lost 8.4 million jobs. The inflation rate reached its peak in July 2008, which was 5.6%. Though the rate was negative in 2009, but the average inflation rate remains positive after that, which means the prices are still rising. The rise in prices cannot be solely caused by a small group of people. Inflation occurs in the entire country, and Avenue U is not an exception to this. Price in general only gets higher and higher.

Joyce Situ, who is currently attending Hunter College, admitted that the price of housing increased. She noticed that a house that would cost you about $70,000 a few years ago is now going to cost you over a million dollars. However, she did not agree that the Fuzhounese pose the threat. Joyce said, “I don’t think the Fuzhounese is going to flood this area. There is an increase in the number of Mandarin speakers, but it’s only a few.” She believed that the neighborhood is nearly as perfect and there were no complaints she can make. Joyce’s family also settled in Avenue U because of its relatives. Her family originally resided on the first floor of her aunt’s house at Bedford Avenue. The rent was cheap, but the place was extremely small with only one bedroom for a family that has three people. After living there for two years, they moved to a new house across the street. Her family wanted to stay in this area because the Chinese community has made it a comfort zone. Her new home is on the first floor with two bedrooms including a kitchen and a bedroom. They are renting it for $1300 per month, which does not include electricity fee. I believe that is the average rent for a family. After living here for so many years, Joyce is familiar with her neighbors, especially people around the same age. Now, her biggest concern is not putting on makeup when she goes out to the street because her friends are everywhere.

Joyce’s mother, Yoyo, opened up a new hair salon last year on 12^th Street. She took over Paul’s Hair Salon from her old boss and renamed it as YoYo Hair & Beauty Salon.  Yoyo said, “I opened up this salon because it is near my home. I have been living here for almost ten years and I find it convenient to travel to work.” She recognized that her customers were not just Chinese, but they were a mix of different kinds of people. I observed that the salon has many white customers, and most of them specified Yoyo to be their stylist. The customers all left the salon with beautiful hair with great smiles on the faces and appreciation to the stylists. Yoyo’s talent has brought people with different ethnicities together.

My father, who doesn’t speak English, was also praised by many patients with different ethnicities. In 2006, he received a satisfying job at a clinic near the Avenue U Q train station as a physical therapy assistant. He found the transportation very convenient and worked there for 8 years. The clinic provided a comfortable environment for him to work in because everybody around knew how to speak Chinese. Often, there were non-Chinese patients who came to receive treatment, but he wasn’t afraid of the language barrier because he can always find someone to translate for him. Regardless of his language barriers, the patients always specified that they wanted Mr. Hu to assist them during their treatments. “The clinic had more and more patients over the years because people shared and spread the fact that the clinic has an amazing assistant who provides excellent health care,” my father said.

Cross from the clinic is the Health Star Pharmacy. It is the most populated pharmacy I have seen in Avenue U due to its location. There are three clinics around and it is very convenient for patients to come pick up their medicines right away.  After that, they can shop for groceries in the supermarket next door, and get ready to prepare the night’s dinner. There have been numbers of grand open food markets and restaurants. Food markets seem to be most profitable business in this area. Lan, a 55 years old woman who has been living on Avenue U with her husband and son for twenty-five years, enjoyed shopping in the traditional Chinese supermarkets. She said, “These food markets sell fresh vegetables, fruits, and even fresh meats! I do not have to travel elsewhere to get my groceries. I can just buy it near my home.” Lan also liked the fact that she always bumps into someone while she was shopping. They would stop at the spot and gather for a short conversation.

Hang, who lives in Staten Island, opened a sushi restaurant on 19^th street around Avenue U. “I took over this restaurant in 1998. The business is pretty good and stable throughout the years.” Sushi Bistro is very small and it only fits eight small tables, but customers were continuously coming in for take-outs, and some people waited in line to eat inside. My two friends and I sat down on a table, and right next to us was a group of white customers who were speaking in English. While I was waiting for the food, I asked Hang if he has any complaint about the neighborhood. His eyes rolled over and he thought about the question for a few seconds, then he answered, “No.” We ordered a party tray and we were enjoying the meal with nice cups of tea. The food was very delicious. No wonder why people are constantly coming back to order.

Now, my father is working at a different clinic in midtown. His eyes were full of nostalgia, and he griped that if it wasn’t the stingy and selfish boss, he would never leave Avenue U. He admitted that the neighborhood is undergoing expansion throughout the years and the economy is getting better. The depression in 2008 had struck many people’s hearts. But living in this neighborhood never gave him the sense of insecurity because he had made so many friends there and the Chinese community resembled a big family. We would introduce jobs and places to live to the ones who need help. Though many people do not speak English, the ones with more knowledge would never hesitate to help out.

The increasing number of stores opened on Avenue U has characterized its ongoing economic expansion. This Chinatown has practically everything. It has food markets, restaurants, 99 cents stores, banks, schools, Rite Aid, shoes and clothing stores, bakeries, Laundromats, train station, bus stops, bubble tea shops, electrical shops, phone stores, clinics, pharmacies, and salons. Many of these shops are owned by Chinese immigrants. Immigration has posed a huge benefit to the society. It has made the people living around a lot more convenient by providing a variety of services and resources. The whole community is working well. People with different ethnicities are getting along with each other. More importantly, Avenue U has also served to be a family for Chinese immigrants to reunite.

Source

http://stateofworkingamerica.org/great-recession/

http://www.yelp.com/biz/paula-hair-and-beauty-salon-brooklyn

http://www.city-data.com/neighborhood/Homecrest-Brooklyn-NY.html

http://stateofworkingamerica.org/great-recession/

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/

http://www.point2homes.com/US/Neighborhood/NY/Brooklyn/Sheepshead-Bay-Demographics.html

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/22/nyregion/neighborhood-report-sheepshead-bay-new-language-and-a-new-life-for-avenue-u.html

Sunset Park

When the train arrived in 8 Av on the N line, I got off following most of the passengers from my cart – all of whom were Chinese. The cart was instantly emptied out. My first sight out of the station was a sea of people. The background was hundreds of colorful signs written in a familiar language. I had a sense that I was back in Hong Kong.

A neighborhood located on the West side of Brooklyn, Sunset Park endured influxes of immigrants over the past twenty years. Now, the neighborhood had become racially distinct from the rest of the city. Within itself, the neighborhood is separated into three regions in terms of ethnic groups. Chinese immigrants dominate 8^th Avenue, Hispanic immigrants dominate 5^th Avenue, and Jews dominate the East of them. Between 5^th and 8^th Avenue, I saw mostly Chinese stores and sporadically Hispanic ones.

I walked down along 8^th Avenue from the station on the 62^nd street. Signs in all sizes and colors protrude in all directions, competing for attention. Since the businesses there aim for customers who live around there and speak the same language, some of them even bother not to put an English translation beside the Chinese title on the signs. When they do, the translations are often only a phonetic translation of the Chinese name. In other words, you cannot figure out what type of store it is if you look at the English “translation” alone.

Anyone who comes to the neighborhood for the first time would probably have a bad impression on 8 Av, for it is unbearably crowded, unhygienic, and noisy. I could not possibly take a picture of the street view without someone bumping into me. The situation was like two waves from the North and the South flushing into each other. I was a drop of water that is trying to swim against the opposing stream with my side of army. Walking along with my stream of people on the narrow pavement, I felt as if it was unlawful to stop in the middle of the street. It was impossible to keep my friend by my side when we were walking. We both tried very hard to penetrate through the moving herd of people. Passing a lot of bakeries and cafes, I reached fish market of 8^th Avenue.

Boxes of live fishes are lined up from the stores to outside of the stores, making the street even narrower. The ground is all wet. It was even harder for us to walk. Then I realized 8^th Avenue is filled with pregnant women, because they would block the only space between the boxes of fish and the road with their baby carriages, while they were bargaining.

“That’s for sure. Guess what. Because they cannot in China,” the old woman at a bakery explained to me. The population growth control policy in China restricted that its people can only bear two babies in a family. When some of them have the opportunities to come to the United States, their traditional sense of 「兒孫滿堂」(which means having descendants filled up the hall) is finally unbound. The old woman resumed, “Of course it’s better to have them ABC sons than Chinese sons. (Why?) For the welfare they could suck from the government of course.” She meant that Chinese immigrant parents prefer their children to be American-born Chinese (ABC) because they could exploit the benefits and welfare for citizens. It is surprising that a Chinese would denounce another Chinese from the same community. It turns out they are really not from the same exact community.

The old woman is a Cantonese who immigrated twenty-seven years ago and have been living in Sunset Park since then. She started to complain about the Fujianese coming in. She said, “At the start it was all Hispanics. Then the Taishanese Chinese came and that made the Hispanics on 8^th Avenue move away. This became the Chinatown of Brooklyn. About ten years ago, the Fujianese started to come from China and made this place such a mess.” This old woman thinks that the ongoing immigration of the Fujianese caused the hygiene problems in the neighborhood because they have less of a sense of morality in the province they are from, according to her. It turns out that some Chinese groups are actually at odds even though they have seemingly established a strong sense of unity of a Chinese-American community by living close to each other.

On 8^th Avenue, there are two large Chinese American organizations, Brooklyn Chinese-American Association (BCA) and Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC), which aim at assisting all Chinese people to acquire good quality of life just as other Americans do. These organizations promote a interprovincial community. However, I discovered that the staff in both organizations are almost all Cantonese or Taishanese, who share the same Chinese dialect – Cantonese. They could speak Mandarin as well to the Fujianese, and they do hire some Fujianese people who speak in their dialect. Nevertheless, it is apparent that the Fujianese are more or less excluded from the Chinese community and the services.

Another phenomenon I saw was the variation of stores (or the lack thereof) there is. Along 8^th Avenue, you can see a lot of bakeries, cuisines, bubble tea places, fish and vegetable markets, and SAT-test preparation schools. “Sunset Park is ghetto. It gets more ghetto as you go towards forty-somethingth street,” said a fifteen-year-old girl who was stepping out of one of the many test preparation schools on 8^th Avenue. She told me that she does not like living in this neighborhood because it is “dirty” and “crowded.”

It is unexpected that although 8^th Avenue is filled with Chinese people, the Asians only comprise 11.6 percent of the population of Sunset Park. And 78.7 percent of population is Hispanics. In the neighborhood, the most concentrated and vibrant region lies on 5^th Avenue. It predominantly contains Hispanic stores. Like 8^th Avenue, the stores on 5^th Avenue lacks variations. They are mostly boutiques and supermarkets.

Walking along 5^th Avenue, I could see that Chinese people are starting to enter this region. Unlike 8^th Avenue where almost 95% of pedestrians are Chinese, 5^th Avenue seems to involve more interracial interactions. There are some Chinese accessories stores and Chinese bubble tea places. There are more Chinese people on the streets of 5^th Avenue than Hispanics on those of 8^th Avenue. There is even a senior day care center, that targets to serve both Hispanics and Chinese in the neighborhood.

The owner of the day care center, Ms. Ng Pang, is a Chinese lady born in Puerto Rico who spent her childhood in China and came back to America since high school. “Because of my cross-cultural background, I feel obliged to bring both immigrant communities together and help them strive in society,” she said, “I chose to open the day care center here because Sunset Park is a place where minorities work together as one, regardless of their ‘sub-identities.’” The population shift there was very thorough in the past twenty years. It started as almost entirely a Hispanic neighborhood, then the Taishanese Chinese moved in and dominated 8^th Avenue, and now new waves of Fujianese Chinese are flushing out the previous Chinese group. The neighborhood has always been an immigrant community albeit the racial shift. Ms. Ng Pang does not see it this way. She thinks this is a time when the underprivileged unite and work for the better for themselves.

Sunset Park has been the neighborhood dedicated for new immigrants. I can foresee that more immigrants of different cultural backgrounds will settle there. The neighborhood is an exceptional gift for new immigrants because of the old immigrants already settled there and the many organizations that seek to help. The people seem to be living in harmony across cultures despite some hostility against a particular Chinese group. The hygiene and noise pollution are also significant issues in the neighborhood. Better management and restrictions should be made to limit and improve the unwanted output of the local stores. Despite that, it is very nice to live in this neighborhood because of the close bonding between people of a common background. It is easy for them to find help that suits their needs.

After the new immigrants get accustomed to living in this country and become more independent from the help of others in the same community, they tend to move out to the more Southeast part of Brooklyn. There sees a new growing Chinatown in Bensonhurst right now. More Cantonese speaking Chinese are moving there because of the fact that they have come to the country for the longer and that a rapidly increasing number of Fujianese is residing in Sunset Park. Apparently, Sunset Park is very dynamic, always welcoming new waves of people coming in. This neighborhood has been dutiful to accommodates for thousands and thousands of immigrants in New York City. It will continue to be a lot of new immigrants’ new home in the future and the dynamics will endure.