A Country of Immigrants

It took one-hour to go from New York to Ukraine.

From our loft in SoHo we walked a couple blocks and boarded the Q line to Brooklyn. We clattered and rocked through the dark underground of Lower Manhattan, submerged beneath the East River, looped through subterranean Flatbush and Prospect Park, and finally emerged into daylight. There our train clickity clacked above residential streets SE toward Brighton Beach on the Atlantic - just north of Coney Island.

Subway to Brighton Beach

In less than an hour, we were transported to "Little Odessa" as it is called. The signs were "we are not in Kansas", and all in Cyrillic.

Theatre Poster of Upcoming Event

Women, short and round, many with head scarves, waddled on stocky stockinged legs pulling their wire grocery carts to speciality shops. We strolled into a few. Slavic sausages and bloody organ meats, all variety of smoked fish, shelves of sturgeon caviar, and rows of unrecognizable goods described in untranslatable words written with indecipherable letters.  In this long, narrow shop the center isle was filled with pre-made salads and slaws, while steam-tables kept casseroles and cooked meals hot.

Home Cooked Home Food

Patrons circled clockwise around the island filling their take-out pans with familiar home cooked foods. Some I recognized from my youth in Chicago, but Robin was filled with amazement.  Wanting to engage in this foreign place I asked one patron what "spasibo" (the only Russian word I recognized being said).  He struggled to understand my pronunciation, then struggled to reply in English "Dank-ooo".  Thank you too, I replied.  We truly felt transported to another country.

This visit to Brighton Beach reminded us that the city's history of immigrants is still present in America today. 

Previously we visited the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side, one of the best non-art museums in New York City.  It showcased housing that accommodated the largest mass migration in the world.  Today 60 Million Americans can trace their roots to an immigrant relative who lived in a tenement within the seven block radius of the museum.  That's one out of six Americans!  Originally built by German immigrants for new German immigrants arriving in the 1860s and 1870.  Each unit consisted of one 8' x 8' bedroom, one similarly sized living room, and a smaller kitchen/dining between. There was no electricity, no refrigeration, no water, and no toilet - three outhouses were located in the back yard - next to the well - for a 5 story, 16 unit building.  While the men usually did physical labor for day-wages, the woman maintained the house; hauling groceries and water up several flights of dark stairs, and taking refuse down to the street. When you walked the streets you needed to be aware of what's above you.  After all that up and down residents often tossed grey water, garbage, and chamber pot contents, out the window.  Combined with the excrement of 200,000 horses that transported goods and people around the city, gave New York a foul odor, and a crucible for disease.

Original Tenement, now a Museum

One unit is restored to 1860s, and one left as found in the 1960s

By the 1920s tenements were synonymous with slums.  With increased immigration, each unit now housed several Italian or Irish families in less than 300 sf, smaller than a standard hotel room today.  A twin bed would accommodate four persons sleeping head to toe.  To solve the squalor, city planners revised building codes for the health and safety of residents.  Knowing that the requirements were economically impossible for owners of old buildings to afford, it also enabled the city to condemn the buildings for residential use.  This forced residents to move to new low-income housing built further north and east.  By 1930s the tenements were empty of residents and falling apart.

While today the city's neighborhoods are more a stew of cultures as previously discussed, there are still pockets of immigrants, like Brighton Beach, where they huddle together, yearning for a better life.  Little Italy, west of the Lower East Side, is probably one of the oldest ghettos in NY, but frankly more a tourist attraction now.  The descendants moved out of Manhattan to the other Boroughs, especially the Bronx where a new "Little Italy" sprung up.  However, they still own and run rows of Italian restaurants along Mulberry and Mott streets. Red, white and green awnings over street-side tables, and gateway arches lit with "Italian lights" make the streets look like Rockefeller center at christmas.

Little Italy

L'Italy is being compressed by the ever expanding Chinese community to the south. Chinatown, with its neon red characters across flat Soviet style building facades, and vegetable and fish markets spilling into the streets, made me recall my frequent trips to Asia.  Throngs of Chinese, as dense as any street in Shanghai or Hong Kong, press upon you, reach over you, as you try to select seafood based on only Chinese characters scrawled on a placards stuck into iced fish.

Seafood Market

Ubiquitous Red Signs

Enthusiastically slapping cards onto the table characteristic of play in China

In Astoria, a northern neighborhood of Queens, there are streets catering to the either Arabic or Greek residents.  Here again, orthodox churches, mosques, and retail stores call out in strange letters. Old men stroll the streets in their dishdasha and taqiyah (embroidered can-like cap) with arms clasped behind their back, while young men in leather jackets hawk from shop doorways or hustle goods From one place to another.

         Greek Orthodox Church


                 Arabic Grocery Store

Guide for Arab Spotting

Just south in the Williamsburg and Borough Park neighborhoods of Brooklyn, are Hasidic Orthodox Jewish communities.  They congregate not because they are new arrivals seeking support as they transition to America, but to protect the purity of their beliefs and lifestyle from the influences of others. Men are to be dedicated scholars, devoting their life to studying the Talmud.  When out and about they are noticeable for their black coats and broad-brimmed hats, seemingly too small, perched high above corkscrew curls spinning down each cheek into their beards.  (Do they have to spin in opposite direction to balance?)  Like the men, religious law also requires women to keep their hair covered. But being women they still want to look fashionable. So they've found a work-around by wearing a natural hair wig to cover their own.  Though some of the more conservative women wear a headscarf to cover their wig, which covers their hair.  Robin still struggles with this concept.

The Boys in the 'hood

Rules for Women

In and around the city are neighborhood pockets of Eastern Europeans, Koreans, Ethiopians, Indians and hundreds of other immigrant groups.  As mentioned, compared to other cities, blacks and hispanic are distributed throughout most neighborhoods, perhaps because they are the most assimilated americans here.

New York brings home that America is a country of immigrants. Except for our Native American population we are all descendant from immigrants.  My paternal grandfather and grandmother emigrated from Romania (then Hungary) in the early 1900s with less than a 6th grade education.  My mother's parents moved from Austria and what is now the Czech Republic.  Both sets of grandparents worked hard, struggled through the depression, provided their kids education who then went on to serve America in WWII.  They they and other immigrants became "The Greatest Generation" building America's economy in the mid-twentieth century. Today, two generations later, the immigrant's grandchildren cannot think of themselves as anything but American, if they think about it at all.  And that may be part of the problem.

American culture is not based on 500 years of traditional dress, rituals, music, or aristocracy.  We are an ever-changing demographic mix rejecting, incorporating, and blending these other cultures into our own "creole".  Our culture is a culture of change.  The earliest settlers were already a mix of cultures: the Dutch in New York, religious fanatics in New England, British on the East and NW coasts, French in the Southeast, and Spanish in the Southwest.  In addition millions of africans were brought against their will for the cotton economy, and Chinese came to labor on the railroads or in the California mines.  Due to turmoil and starvation in Europe our doors opened to Scandinavians who located in the upper midwest and NW, Lebanese and Greek to the Detroit area, the Irish to Boston and Chicago, German to Chicago and the mid-west and others to their ethnic communities throughout the country.  We assimilated Vietnamese and other allies from our misbegotten foreign conflicts.  Most recently we see the changing face of America as our streets fill with subcontinent Indians and Chinese in the hospitality and high-tech industries.  This diversity strengthens our country, and our economy, despite what the fear-mongering isolationists claim; just as genetic diversity strengthens a species vs a monoculture.

However, I can't help but reflect on our culture of immigration and change relative to the current mass migration to Europe from war and economic ravaged countries.  European countries (as most of the world) have long cultural traditions and cultural identities.  They are not a product of constant change and immigration like America.  They are a distillation, not an amalgamation.  How does a culture and self-identity survive when overwhelmed by another without time to absorb?  How does a town in Germany of 150 maintain when over 700 new inhabitants arrive (NYTimes)?  What will France be when, soon in some districts, the electorate will be a majority of another religion and culture? Will they change? Should they?  I applaud the Germans and the Scandinavian countries with their open doors helping a suffering people - a model for our country.  But I try to comprehend what will be wrought by this change, and what else can be done.  We love diversity, that's why we travel, but in this mass migration will Europe lose its diversity in the long term?  These are historic times. There are no easy answers.