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Brighton Beach aint what it used to be.

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How so?

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Ok go back 10-15 years. There were busy businesses. The constant stream of middle aged to elderly Russians/Ukranians were coming over here with $$, a lot of them had to pay their way out (i.e. paying for a work visa) and spending it in these stores and restaurants and night clubs. The Patriot Act's restriction on immigration and deeper checks have dried that up. Add to that the fact that the children of those immigrants didn't stay in the neighborhood. They went to college, married an American and moved to Staten Island or Jersey. They became "Americanized" very quickly.

While this depletion of customer base was going on, we had the real estate bubble. You had stores rents go from $15,000 a month to $25K when the lease was up for renewal. This caused a few businesses on the main drag to close up. Oh, and the end of food stamp scams helped a couple places to shut the doors.

This isn't even comparing today's Brighton Beach to the one of 40-50 years ago, when the Jews ruled the roost. Up until the late eighties, I knew Jews that would travel 1.5 hours from Jersey once a week to buy all there Kosher meat and food. Kosher butchers, poultry markets, fish markets. Now Russian video stores and T-Mobil.

Brighton isn't even Moscow on the Hudson anymore, much less Brighton Beach Memoirs. I've heard the Turkish places are doing well, and there are a lot of Pakis living on the side streets.

Although, on the positive side, there aren't as many junkies and bums living under the board walk.

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Most of my friends that I went to school with moved to Staten Island and New Jersey, actually their whole families moved. A lot of them went to NJ because the house prices were good. Where I live (Kings Highway and the Wests) there are a lot of new condos being built but it is really hard for the storefront businesses here. If you take a walk further to like Easts and towards the Q-train, then there's at least an empty storefront on every block. Thats the Jewish area there, but there's also a lot of Russian places from East 9th to East 19th. I guess that businesses that are doing better are the food ones, because most of the russian businesses are either food or clothes/boutiques.

I remember the time in 1996 when my family came to NYC. The Brighton was very lively and the restaurants were doing pretty well. The place was bright after 9:00PM with lots of people. Today it is dead after 9:00PM. There were arcade machines outside, and I clearly remember a small arcade gallery around the area where Tatiana's is right now. That place had the Mortal Kombat machines, and it is gone now. Coney Island amusement park is pretty much gone now too.

I think that theres one Jewish food place left on Brighton, they sell overpriced chicken as well as other stuff like macaroni and cheese.

Yes, there are a lot of muslims in the area of Coney Island Avenue that is close to the Brighton Beach Avenue. They have all kinds of places like money tranfers, restaurants and cafes.

I really like that Oceana place if you heard about it. Its the gated set of buildings that they build there 4 years ago. The place is really nice, and its gated, but the problem is the cost that they want for the apartments: $500,000-$4,000,000. And the other thing is that the quality of the building is not very good, one of the people that lives there told me that the contractors did a shitty job, and rain from outside got into his apartment (he lives on 1st floor) and his wooden floor bubbled-up. But the place is really good in general: its right next to the beach, gated, all the russian places nearby, subways and buses are near, Kingsborough Community College is also not far. If I had the money then I would buy apartment there.

I think that only middle-aged and elderly Russians go to these music-video places like Mosfilm and St. Petersburg to buy movies, because younger Russians know internet and they download all the stuff for free.