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, part of the Town of Gravesend, the area of present-day Brighton Beach]] Brighton Beach is a community on Coney Island in the Borough of Brooklyn in New York City . 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)Kenneth T. Jackson: ''The Encyclopedia of New York City'': The New York Historical Society; Yale University Press; 1995. P.139-140.. Brighton Beach was dubbed "Little Odessa" by the local populace long ago, due to many of its residents having come from Odessa . It is or was reportedly the home of the Russian Mafia in the United States. 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 Group s, 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 Korea n 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. EDUCATION 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:
HISTORY 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 ; 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 comprised 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 Ukrainian s than to the earlier Jewish immigrants. Some of the newer Jewish emigres are married to Russian or Ukrainian Christians, and non-Jewish surnames abound. IN POPULAR CULTURE
REFERENCES Brighton Beach is also featured in 1990-s Russian spy-comedy with very long title - "On Deribasovskaya is a sunny weather, and on Brighton Beach it is raining again" SEE ALSO
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