Early Thanksgiving Morning in Brighton Beach: On the Boardwalk

Early this Thanksgiving morning we took the G and Q trains to Brighton Beach. It was very quiet and still as we walked up Coney Island Avenue the block to the beach.

On the boardwalk, the sand was high and spilling over. We spent a quiet (but cold) hour sitting on the bench in the sand, reading and drinking tea, and when we got up, there were already a good number of early birds (including one former BMCC student who came over to say hi) strolling and chatting in Russian.

Sunday Morning in Brighton Beach: The 34th Annual Brighton Jubilee at Brighton Beach and Coney Island Avenues

We wanted to go to the beach on a sunny Sunday this final weekend of August, and when we got off the Q train,

we realized we'd stumbled onto people setting up the 34th annual Brighton Jubilee, which to us looked basically like a collection of vendors

along Brighton Beach Avenue and Coney Island Avenue.

Okay, here's what the Brighton Neighborhood Association says:

The Jubilee is our only fundraiser and is a Brooklyn tradition that celebrates diversity. The multi-block festival features multiple entertainment stages and blocks of merchandise and informational booths, as well as kiddie rides and delicious food. Established 34 years ago, the Jubilee now attracts more than 125,000 people every year and is dedicated to bridging the communication gap through the international language of music.

We were there way too early for the music. Too bad. What it did seem early for was the smell of fried flesh: a little overwhelming before 9 a.m., the official start of the Jubilee. But then we're vegetarian.

Our family - two brothers and our mom, our dad enlisted on weekends sometimes - were vendors at The South's Largest Flea Market, Preston Henn's Swap Shop, on Sunrise Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale, through most of the 1980s. Our memories of it are hazy but not pleasant.

We lived nearby and taught at Broward Community College and we hated when someone was sick on the weekend and we were called to substitute, so we now have an aversion to events with outdoor vendors. Our brothers and mom, though, were good at it and sold really nice shirts, too, from a Korean manufacturer in Queens.

The life of a vendor can be lonely.

We don't mean to take anything away from the Brighton Jubilee. And we saw real bargains here, actually, especially on fairly decent clothing.

And how can you go wrong with ceramic vegetables?

Or all these makeup things for people who wear makeup?

This was like an infomercial come to life.

This girl was really eyeing those dolls.

This vendor didn't even bother with a table and just sat on her merchandise. She made two sales while we were standing there, too.

And of course there were the madcap Lawrence Welk-like bubbles in the air.

But still, we were grateful to get onto the beautiful beach for the rest of the morning.

Is it our imagination or did the boardwalk get lower or the sand higher?

Friday Morning in Manhattan Beach: Good Friday Breakfast at Manhattan Beach

On this beautiful Good Friday morning we made it to Manhattan Beach in less than hour from Williamsburg, thanks to quick connections on the B48 bus at Lorimer and Metropolitan, the B train at Prospect Park, and the B1 bus on Brighton Beach Avenue after we got a bialy and iced tea to take to the beach.

So we were here before 8:30 a.m. and it was beautiful to smell the salt air and see the ocean again.

This was "our" Brooklyn beach in adolescence and our twenties and was pretty much the same for kids like us who lived in southeastern Brooklyn and were driving in our teens. We remember one time when we'd driven here alone when we were about 20 and started chatting up the two girls at the next blanket. Finally one said, "You don't realize how old we are" and told us they were married women around 30. (Of course they'd assumed we were about 17, not 20.) We have a June memory of someone's transistor playing Beatles songs, and later, "Band of Gold." Today the bare trees made it clear that it is not yet June.

We first came here with our ninth grade friends from Meyer Levin J.H.S. 285 on the Brooklyn Day holiday in 1966. Unlike Coney Island or Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach didn't have a subway right there, nor stores or amusements. In those days the B49 bus, which we took on our way back, to the Sheepshead Bay Road Q/B station, didn't go into Manhattan Beach but ran only to the end of Ocean Avenue, and we had to walk over the wooden Ocean Avenue bridge over the bay and then through the streets of Manhattan Beach (the neighborhood) to get to the beach.

It's a lot smaller than Coney and Brighton to the east, a little curved cove of sand. To us, it's the nicest stretch of beach in Brooklyn except for the little private beach slightly to the east on the campus of Kingsborough Community College, where we taught between 1978 and 1980. In those days our step-great-grandmother Bessie Shapiro lived a few blocks away along with her sister Etta.

Ordinarily the buses are jammed with KCC students on weekdays, but this is spring break at CUNY and that's basically why we came today. The beach actually didn't look so good, with something we'd never seen before:

trenches of water due to the deluge downpour a few days ago, and there was sand on the concrete walkway. The sand also seemed darker and coarser than we'd remembered.

Mostly older people were about, jogging and speedwalking and chatting in Russian (or a few in Chinese), along with a couple of bicyclists.

It was nice to hang out and look at the water. The beautiful Marine Parkway Bridge is faintly off in the foggy distance here.

Monday Morning in Brighton Beach: Breakfast on the Boardwalk

We were at the Brighton Beach boardwalk around 9 a.m. today, when the day seemed fresh and pristine.

Our early breakfast on the High Line on Friday made us decide to go out early again, to one of the spots we love - admittedly, more in summer than in any other season.

The B train got us to Brighton Beach Station pretty quick from Atlantic Avenue. We started taking the Brighton Beach line in the mid-1960s when the express was the Q and the locals were the QB (bridge to Manhattan) and the QT (tunnel to Manhattan). The express eventually became the D, with the local the M and sometimes the QJ. Now the express terminating at Brighton Beach is the B, and the local, going on to Coney Island, is the Q. We miss the double-letter locals.

Back around 1971 at a Brooklyn College peace rally, one of our friends carried a sign that said ESCALATE THE BRIGHTON STATION, NOT THE VIETNAM WAR. There actually is an escalator today, though going down you have to take the stairs.

We got our oatmeal, banana and iced tea at the Starbucks on Brighton Beach Avenue, which is one of those owned by Magic Johnson's Urban Development Corporation, one of the only ones we've been in around the country that's not in a largely African-American neighborhood. Brighton Beach, of course, is very, very Russian and has been since the '70s.

The neighborhood was more mixed (though quite Jewish) thirty years ago when our first book With Hitler in New York came out in hardcover. The title story, originally published at Washington & Lee University's literary magazine Shenandoah in 1978, features a scene in which his American friends take Hitler here on a summer evening:

After our eggcreams, we go on the boardwalk. Ellen tells Hitler that there are many old people and Soviet Jews in Brighton Beach and cautions him not to talk German. Hitler nods.

We join a circle surrounding a fiftyish woman in shorts. She is very animatedly singing a Yiddish folk song. All of the old people are enjoying it. It seems like it’s supposed to be funny, or maybe dirty. Hitler is listening intently.

“Farshteit?” I ask Hitler.

“Ja, ja,” he says. “She is telling about how not to have children.”

An old lady next to us smiles. She seems glad that Hitler understands the song. We walk away before she can recognize him.

Libby and Mike are sitting on a boardwalk bench, talking about old times.

Hitler and I are leaning against the rail, watching the dark ocean, the dark sand, talking about this and that.

“Giscard d’Estaing is so funny,” Hitler says. “The things he does to make himself popular.”

I nod.

I tell Hitler I can name all ten states of West Germany. He counts on his fingers as I name them. I can only name nine. I know the other one has a hyphenated name, but it is difficult.

“It’s where Stuttgart is,” Hitler gives me a hint.

Now I remember. “Baden-Württemberg,” I tell him, and Hitler smiles.

I wonder if I am beginning to fall in love with him.

This story has been reprinted in I Hate All of You on This L Train, our new little book from Canarsie House.

Brighton Beach wasn't our beach. That was always Rockaway, where we grew up in the summers. Later, when we went to the beach with friends in junior high while school was still in session in June or after the bungalows were torn down, we headed for Manhattan Beach, closer to the neighborhoods we lived in and seemingly more teen-friendly and remote.

We'd come here in April and May, on cool but sunny days, to a place off the boardwalk called Sun City, where other tan-freak degenerates like us sat in chaise lounges that were metallic reflectors. To make it worse, we used face reflectors. No wonder we have wrinkles.

But we did go to Brighton Beach with friends sometimes in college, as this diary passage, dated Wednesday, June 11, 1975, in our book Summer in Brooklyn: 1969-1975 shows:

After hanging up with [Vito], I dialed Mavis's phone number; she was just on her way out, to meet Helen & Grace at Brighton Beach. I told her to stay up & I'd be right over to pick her up. Mavis went to Washington over the weekend to visit Phyllis, who's working there over the summer, & she saw the Univ. of Maryland & was favorably impressed, as that about makes her mind up about grad school. She said graduation was one big bore, & as we drove she took photos of me with Bob's camera.

We finally found a parking space & then met Helen & Grace on the beach; they were sitting with Grace's grandmother, who only speaks Spanish. It was great to see Helen again; she's gotten thinner & I noticed she bleached the hairs on her chin. Helen also seems very mellow, as befits a Californian; she was very interested in my MFA program. From her conversation, I gathered she was seeing a great deal of Mason -- she & Grace were planning to go to his house this weekend. I know that Mason's always been terribly fond of her, & that's understandable. Grace was her usual sprightly & quirky self; she's going to summer school at BC. Her abuela is funny too. We sat out on the beach for an hour or so, then Mavis & I left, as she had to meet Bob in the city at 4:30.

Today we sat and walked on the boardwalk for about 90 minutes. It started to get busy around 10:30 a.m. We like it best when it's early and almost empty.