Abroad in New York

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The New York Sun

New York is large and diverse not only in population, but also in land. We are a city of parts, each as quintessentially New York as any other. A remarkably swift ride from Manhattan on the B train – the “Brighton express” – takes you to Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay. The station there, like others along the mostly outdoor Brighton line, has the character of a country railroad station, just as the high street, Sheepshead Bay Road, has a small-town atmosphere. In a few minutes by foot, you pass under the viaduct of the BQE. On the other side awaits a place like no other in New York.


This is Emmons Avenue. On the south side lies the bay. The several blocks of piers date from the 1930s. The boats docked at the piers charge modest fees to take people out on regularly scheduled deep-sea fishing expeditions (sea bass, fluke, porgies, and bluefish), as well as on Jamaica Bay “eco-tours” and pleasure outings.


On the other side of the bay, accessible across a picturesque footbridge, lies the Manhattan Beach neighborhood, fronting on Rockaway Inlet. Brooklyn’s pleasantest public beach is located within Manhattan Beach Park, along Ocean Avenue, which follows the line of the footbridge. The neighborhood, developed in the 1920s, comprises streets of commodious suburban houses. In recent years, upwardly mobile Russians have built “Mc-Mansions” in Manhattan Beach – sometimes to the consternation of old-timers.


Several blocks of restaurants and stores line the inland side of Emmons. Sheepshead’s most famous eatery is Lundy’s, at Ocean and Emmons Avenues. The original Lundy’s stood on the south side of Emmons in the years before Robert Moses built the piers. In 1934, Lundy’s opened a spectacular new restaurant in a “Spanish Mission”-style building by the architects Ben Bloch and Walter Hesse, famous as designers of synagogues and Schrafft’s restaurants.


Lundy’s is Sheepshead’s finest building. It once accommodated 2,500 diners, and claimed to be the world’s largest restaurant. The seafood palace was a major destination for diners from Manhattan as well as Brooklyn. Following founder Irving Lundy’s death in 1977, the unthinkable happened: Lundy’s closed. Shuttered for several years, Lundy’s reopened in 1996. It’s smaller, though, seating “only” about 800. The rest of the vast building has been converted to use by stores, restaurants, and offices.


Other notable establishments on Emmons include Pips, a comedy club that opened in the early 1960s and nurtured such talents as Rodney Dangerfield and Billy Crystal, and Randazzo’s, a classic Italian seafood joint that’s a personal favorite of mine. To the east, bait-and-tackle shops mingle with restaurants and cafes. To the west, Shore Boulevard hugs the western end of the bay. Here, straddling the Sheepshead Bay and Manhattan Beach neighborhoods, Holocaust Memorial Park affords a lovely setting around an elaborate Holocaust memorial (the city’s first) by George Vellonakis. It reminds us that many survivors made their homes in this part of Brooklyn, a borough that is also a haven, swept by sea breezes.


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