Brighton Beach Russian Community, Brooklyn, New York

Between the rhythmic rumble of subway trains (Yes, we still call it a subway when it's above ground.), you hear chopped bits of conversations in a guttural language that must be Russian. Unless someone says, "Pravda," I haven't a clue. They could be speaking Martian, but I'm pretty sure it's something that would not be out of place in Moscow.

New York City has been blessed by immigrants from around the world. They've literally built the city, and more atmospherically, they've added an international flavor to everything. Walk along many streets, get in a elevator in an office tower, sit down for lunch in a crowded restaurant, and you will hear a mix of languages that will make your head spin as you try to recognize one from the others.

Brighton Beach's big contribution to internationality is Russian. But beneath the skin, the place is all New York.

In the 1990s, newspaper stories often mention what they called Brighton Beach's Russian mafia and how it was responsible for growing crime rates. Now, there seems to be no such organized group, and some insist there never was.

Newspapers create inflammatory stories to draw readers to their ads. It's an old story.

Like the rest of New York, crime rates plummeted throughout the 1990s while Rudy Giuliani was in office and got even better under Michael Bloomberg. New York is now one of the safest cities in the world. Brighton Beach is no exception. The streets are probably safer than when Neil Diamond lived in Brighton Beach, his parents running a local business and him going through the struggles that resulted in my favorite Neil Diamond song, Brooklyn Roads.

But things may be changing again and not for the better. In June, a shooting was reported on the boardwalk. A sixteen year old girl was killed and four others wounded. The shooting took place in broad daylight.

Friends of hours spent a July evening, having dinner on the boardwalk and, returning to the subway, watched from the El as a ruckus break out on Brighton Beach Boulevard below. They vowed not to go back.

Single experiences can distort perceptions, and we didn't let those discourage from riding the Q out to Brighton Beach on a hot Friday afternoon.

As soon as we climbed down the old, metal stairs to the street, however, screaming ambulances raced by us toward the boardwalk. There, we found police and medical emergency technicians treating to older men who'd been stabbed, apparently by each other in a dispute.

A hundred feet up the boardwalk, Volna had people out hooking passersby for lunch as if nothing happened. We passed on Volna and finally pick on of Tatiana's several restaurants, the one farthest from the stabbing.

Pickles!

The best in New York and worth the hour long jaunt out through Brooklyn for my wife to load me up with as many jars of pickles as I can carry. You can find other great Russian food too in Brighton Beach and standard American fare along with other necessities. Those you can get elsewhere, but the pickles ought to be on any food lover's bucket list.

Opportunities to score some of the world's great pickles are plentiful along Brighton Beach Boulevard, trains rumbling overhead.

Without the wide, sandy beach that stretches out to the Atlantic from Manhattan Beach to Coney Island. (Coney is not an island at all, by the way.)

Across the blue water, a hook of New Jersey land reaches into the ocean to the southwest, and across the straight that forms part of the gateway to New York harbor, the westernmost sands of the Rockaways seems strangely abandoned, an empty beach in the sea.

It really is a beautiful sight, and on weekends, pleasure craft and sailboats populate the water. Advertising planes trail pennants behind them as they skim by on the way to Coney. The crowds are busier too, but never, in my experience, as thick as you might expect for a beach so beautiful and inviting on a hot summer day.

I don't know why the crowds are so light and the restaurants so lightly trafficked. Maybe the better publicized beach at Coney gets the traffic, or maybe it's a lousy economy and New York's emptying out in August. But I'd take advantage, if I were you.

The food, largely Russian, in Brighton Beaches string of boardwalk restaurants is delicious, inexpensive and comes in enormous portions with quick service. Not hungry? Tatiana sports a sporting beer garden, right on the boardwalk.

The boardwalk itself is broad and well-maintained. For watchers, people of all shapes and sizes stroll by, huge men in speedos walk along with thin girls in wonderfully skimpy swimsuits. It's a Brighton Beach Russian parade, sprinkled with the other ethnic flavors of New York.

And the beach... The Beach is the best part. The sparkling sands have plenty of spaces open for beach blankets and chairs. It's so empty, as you can see from the photo, that the few people who are here seem to be distantly associated with a different community.