Coney Island: Leg 2 —Brighton Beach to Manhattan Beach

Our walking path

(1.93 miles covered; 6.2 miles walked) 

 1. Getting there 

I intentionally left Connecticut just after the morning rush hour on a Wednesday, assuming that this timing would afford me a leisurely trip to Brooklyn to complete the second leg of the first island, finishing off Coney Island. Most of the trip was smooth sailing. Then came the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (AKA the BQE). My GPS suggested a shorter route that would save me a whopping 7 minutes. However, that involved heading in the direction of the George Washington Bridge (AKA the GWB). I’ve learned to steer clear of the GWB . . . ever. It is a trap. It’s never shorter when the GWB is involved. And that route would put me in Manhattan, only to have to cross the East River (via yet another bridge) into Brooklyn. No thank you.

So from the Bronx, I took the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, which I believe is mostly known as the Whitestone Bridge or maybe just the Whitestone because everyone knows it’s a bridge. Then came the BQE. To say it was crowded doesn’t really convey what the traffic is like on this road. Every vehicle seems to be on a personal mission to never, under any circumstances, let any other vehicle, no matter how big, cut in front of it. No one is permitted to leave more than 5 feet in front, behind or to the left or right of their vehicle. The traffic moves at a consistent clip, but there is little room for error.

I was relieved to get off the BQE and onto the streets of Brooklyn. It’s been a while since I’ve been in Brooklyn, I realized. I mean really in Brooklyn, not just on the highway or at Coney Island. My first mission was to get to Park Slope to collect my daughter Abby before the two of us would set off for Brighton Beach via subway. The exit took me right through Clinton Hill, a Hasidic Jewish neighborhood. It was lunchtime and the streets and sidewalks were bustling with men (only men) in black coats and hats moving with purpose and with packages and papers in their hands.  And I drove by CityTech (formerly New York City Community College), the college on Jay Street in Brooklyn Heights where my Dad taught for a few years in the late 70s before he passed away in 1980. The last time I was there was for a memorial event that was held in his memory. I was 16.

Driving through Brooklyn brought flashbacks of the long hours spent on the Belt Parkway, traveling from Massapequa to visit my grandmother and great aunts for holidays and Sunday dinners on Glen Street or to see my aunt and uncle in Bay Ridge. But, unlike the AMC Ambassador that my parents drove in the 1970s, this car had air conditioning.*  While I was making my way down Vanderbilt Avenue toward Grand Army Plaza and Prospect Park, I hit every red light. For two or so miles, the guy on the rented CitiBike in the narrow bike lane to my right was making considerably better progress than I was. Every time that I passed him, he’d be right back outside my passenger-side window as I got to the light. I was grateful for the air conditioning. 

 Mercifully, I was able to park the car without a hitch on 6th Avenue between 7th and 8th Street near P.S. 38. 

Time to take the F train.

2. Brighton Beach

Outside the New York Aquarium

From the subway, we make our way through the New York Aquarium’s parking lot, but we won’t be visiting the sea life inside today. Once we get to the boardwalk, we hang a left and head toward Brighton Beach, leaving the hubbub of Coney Island's amusements behind us. Brighton Beach takes its name from the southern English seaside town where King George IV built his Royal Pavilion and where he spent much of his time. One of the late 19th-century developers of Brighton Beach thought the association with that other Brighton would lend this burgeoning, new-world seaside town some old-world cachet.  You will have to judge for yourself whether it worked.

The area certainly does have a colorful history. The original residents, Native Americans of Munsee Lenape Tribe (source: native-lands.ca), who were largely wiped out by 1654, once collected mussel shells, also known as wampum — a form of currency — on these shores. Brighton Beach is now known for its vibrant community of Jewish émigrés from the former Soviet Union including Ukraine, who came in large numbers mostly in the 1970s, leading to the nickname "Little Odessa," a nod to the Ukrainian city on the Black Sea of the same name. In the 1970s, a group called the Potato Bag Gang — con artists affiliated with what is known as the Odessa Mafia, who posed as sailors — sold unwitting victims what they claimed to bags full of gold rubles for thousands of dollars, that were actually bags of what were probably inedible potatoes and you didn't even get dinner out of it. I can't imagine this scheme was very long-lived. And in 1983, the semi-autobiographical Brighton Beach Memoirs by Neil Simon premiered on Broadway to great acclaim. 

Some grass grows in Brooklyn 

As we continued east, the boardwalk grew a bit more dilapidated and appeared to be retreating a bit more quickly to the elements than it did on its more westerly end. Mini-dunes are forming under the benches facing the sea. Many of the lateral wooden boards that had clearly once fit together now looked a bit like the gray back side of mismatched puzzle pieces that somebody had left out in the rain.  Still, despite the occasional exposed nail or creaking board, Abby and I easily clocked a mile in no time flat, acquiring matching sunburns on our right shoulders in the late-afternoon sun to the southwest. 

Then we spy houses straight ahead, right on the ocean. And so the boardwalk ends, making a sharp, sudden turn to the left and dumping us unceremoniously into a parking lot. There is a steep seawall right up to the water's edge in front of those houses and, yet again, chain link fences, preventing anyone with any sense from considering trying to pass that way. No more beach. No more boardwalk. To continue east, we have to walk on the street. We pass Corbin Place, which marks the divide between Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach, and walk east on Oriental Boulevard. 

3. Manhattan Beach 

Speaking of Corbin, Manhattan Beach was originally developed in the last years of the 19th century by a certain Austin Corbin, a railroad magnate and banker, who frankly isn't looking that hot through the long lens of history. Apparently, he had a sickly son and was seeking a place for him to recover by the sea. It seems he went a bit overboard, building a seaside resort for wealthy Manhattanites that did not survive the elements or Corbin's eventual fall from grace.

https://www.heartofconeyisland.com/manhattan-beach-coney-island-history.html
(Click the link. It's worth it.)

A former president of the Long Island Railroad, he was a known anti-Semite and served as secretary of something called the American Society for the Suppression of Jews, which apparently never really got off the ground. I imagine the man is twisting in his grave now, seeing that Manhattan Beach is now home to many Jews (and Italians).

I'm guessing Italians weren't too high on his list either. 

So, while Corbin Place still exists, it is no longer named for him, but for a woman named Margaret Corbin, who was the first woman to officially receive a pension from the U.S. Military for her role fighting in the Battle of Fort Washington at the northern end of Manhattan in 1776. A nurse by trade, she took over firing of the cannon after her soldier husband took a hit. In 2007, after much debate in the community, the people of Manhattan Beach decided to keep the Corbin name but change the dedication. Pretty ingenious if you ask me: no one has to get new business cards, no expensive new street signs, and a giant F-U to old Austin. 

There remain few vestiges of Manhattan Beach's 19th-century grandeur. Just a few buildings from that time and from the early 20th century are still standing. One that does remain is the rather modest-looking St. Margaret Mary Roman Catholic Church (above, left), built for the Irish immigrant community here in the 1920s. The church stands in stark contrast to what appeared to be a heavily guarded Italianate mansion (above right), built within the last decade, which stands behind the church on the site of its former rectory.

 (source: https://bklyner.com/92-year-old-manhattan-beach-rectory-to-become-mcmansion-sheepshead-bay/)

We walk to the eastern end of Manhattan Beach — full of people swimming, sunbathing, and barbecuing on this warm summer's day. And it should come as no surprise what we find next. Yup, you guessed it: more chain link fences. On the other side is the campus of Kingsborough Community College, which occupies most of the eastern tip of Coney Island. We could have probably walked back up to Oriental Boulevard, hung a right, and gotten in, but after my experience with Sea Gate booth cop, I was not so hopeful. And it was hot, we were hungry, and we needed to get back on the subway to make our way back to Park Slope. 

So, I covered most of my first barrier, its eastern- and western-most extremes aside. I'll be back.

*My brother Matt contests my assertion that the Ambassador had no air conditioning.  Fact-checking with other siblings is under way.