An elevated railway runs above Brighton Beach Avenue and the shops are underneath. The boardwalk is one block south.
What Brighton Beach looks like
The B and Q run above , and the shops are underneath. Shop signs put the Russian in large letters and the English small above it. Fruit is sold off tables outside the Tashkent Supermarket at number 713. The elevated station sits above the avenue between Brighton 5th and Brighton 7th Streets, with the stairs down to the sidewalk.
The neighborhood's Russian speaking, largely Soviet Jewish character dates from the mid 1970s, when it earned the name Little Odessa. The at 1029 Brighton Beach Avenue, the old Oceana, books touring Russian acts and plays them in Russian.
The big apartment houses went up before any of that, between the boardwalk and the avenue in the 1920s and 1930s. is a long run of them, six storey brick fronts with fire escapes.
Behind the avenue, bungalow colonies went up on the old race track. The walkways between them all got names. , Terrace and Lane run between Brighton 1st and Brighton 2nd Streets. The pattern repeats east to Coney Island Avenue. Most are too narrow for a car. The city does not light them, so some residents have wired up their own.
Every numbered street ends at the . The restaurants along it have glassed in terraces on the planks.
is at the east end, where Ocean View Avenue meets Corbin Place. It was dedicated in 1981.
Shot in Brighton Beach
Both of these were shot in the neighborhood they are set in. Anora used Tatiana, a real restaurant on the boardwalk. Little Odessa put its family in a real building on Brightwater Court.
Anora, 2024
Played Tatiana, 2024
Toros takes the microphone in Tatiana on the boardwalk and asks the room whether anyone has seen Ivan. Only the owners knew a film was being made. The other diners were there for their own dinners and birthday parties, and by the third take one table was ready to fight the actors. The first take is the one in the film. Sean Baker had moved the production out to Brighton Beach two months earlier and was living on Brightwater Avenue, in the apartment that became Igor's.
Little Odessa, 1994
The family's building on Brightwater Court
Played the family's home, 1994
James Gray put the family in 601 Brightwater Court, off Brighton 6th Street. He also used the Friends of Refugees of Eastern Europe on Brighton 6th Street. The aquarium appears at night and so does the boardwalk. Most of the film happens in back hallways, storefronts and the yards behind the buildings rather than on the main streets.
Roosevelt Avenue runs directly under the elevated 7 train through Jackson Heights, with small storefronts, restaurants and money wiring shops in a continuous row along the sidewalk the same way Brighton Beach Avenue runs under the B and Q. Both streets get their signage and daylight pattern from the elevated deck overhead rather than from open sky. Roosevelt Avenue's signage runs mostly in Spanish and South Asian languages rather than Russian, so bring or shoot around the storefront lettering rather than relying on what's already there. Try searching shops under elevated train now.
Miami Beach's Art Deco Historic District along Ocean Drive is apartment buildings from the same 1920s and 1930s decades as Brightwater Court, low rise blocks built right up to the sidewalk. Some of Brighton Beach's own prewar buildings carry art deco details on their entrances the same way the Miami Beach blocks do. Miami Beach's buildings run in pastel colors with rounded corners and porthole windows. Brighton Beach's brick fronts don't have that palette, so this only holds up in a tight frame on a plain doorway rather than a full facade. Try searching art deco apartment buildings now.
