SHEEPSHEAD BAY'S ONLY INDEPENDENT NEWS BLOG

Courtesy of Daily News

The United States Postal Service (USPS) has signed a five-year lease on 3157 Coney Island Avenue, after a fierce battle with the landlord to keep the Brighton Beach Post Office branch open.

The agreement caps an almost year long fight in which the new landlord attempted to jack up rent in excess of 30 percent of market value. According to the Brooklyn Eagle, Congressmen Jerrold Nadler and Anthony Weiner, and City Councilman Michael Nelson, joined the fight when their Brighton Beach constituents expressed outrage that the neighborhood’s only local office would close.

“Losing such an important neighborhood asset would have been unacceptable, as this is the only post office in Brighton Beach,” Weiner told Brooklyn Eagle. “The outspoken members of this community rallied to prevent this closure, and they deserve a great deal of credit for helping to avert what surely would have been a severe blow to those who live and do business in Brighton Beach.”

While stereotypes packed the dance floor, producers downstairs fought for a unique identity

Anastasia Kurinnaya, shod in a pair of black Aldo booties with five-inch heels, stepped carefully down the 10 rickety plywood stairs that led from the coat check into the grimy basement of Passion, a popular Russian dance club on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn.

…

Ms. Kurinnaya, 25, said she had been anxiously waiting all week for this moment. She wanted to get on the show to make her ex-boyfriend jealous.

“If I hook up with somebody I can throw it in his face,” she said.

At 11 p.m. on Saturday, Ms. Kurinnaya was the first person plucked out of Passion’s swelling crowd and led downstairs.

By 4:00 a.m., nearly four dozen other young Russian-Americans charmed, pleaded or simply shoved their way into the audition, determined to prove that the Russian version of Snooki or The Situation can outdo his or her Guido counterpart.

…

The creators of “Brighton Beach” said their show is not exactly a rip-off of “Jersey Shore,” or any other reality show.

“We’re trying to portray what goes on inside the Russian community and to expose people, introduce people, to what Russians are really like,” said Elina Miller, 25, who, along with Alina Dizik and Christine Mahin, is one of the show’s producers.

“Russians have a place in pop culture,” Ms. Miller said. “But it’s not necessarily a realistic or true portrayal. I realized that the best way to break down these stereotypes was through a show.”

- “How Do You Say ‘Jersey Shore’ in Russian?“, New York Times; March 11, 2010

Let me start by saying that you should read the above Times piece in full. It’s well-written, got a lot of great quotes, and they included some audio interviews that are pretty amusing. But when you’re done, come back here.

Now, that you’ve read it, let me tell you this: it’s a fun read, but it misses the point. Every media outlet in the world (including us when we broke the story) portrayed this as the “Russian Jersey Shore” with outlandish characters, over-the-top stereotypes, and regurgitated mouthfuls of Snookie and The Situation with a borscht aftertaste.

And that’s what’s wrong with the Times piece. Despite the producers’ insistence that it ain’t no Jersey Shore-remake, media-types everywhere are contradicting them with cherry-picked examples of the shlubs who reinforce the Jersey Shore narrative. Because, hell, that’s a lot funnier to write about. But is it better to watch?

At Saturday’s casting call, I got a different sense of what Brighton Beach can be. Producers Elina Miller and Alina Dizik are fighting an uphill battle to distance themselves from Jersey Shore’s putrid stigma while still feeding off its popularity.

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We just got off the phone with Elina Miller, the creator of the Brighton Beach reality show that’s drawing parallels to Jersey Shore, who confirmed that the planned series is bonafide.

Miller is working alongside Alina Dizik and Christine Mahin to produce the show, and they’re aiming to make more than just a Jersey Shore clone with swapped-out ethnicities. She said the show hopes to introduce Russian-Americans – and the intricacies of their culture – to a broader audience.

“While some of the stereotypes may have merit, I’m trying to show that [the community is] a lot more complex,” Miller said.

Miller described her “altruistic” goal as turning stereotypes on their head and “showing people that while there might be some things that they would expect, it’s about more than meets the eye.”

Keep reading about Miller’s goals with the Brighton Beach reality show

Vladimir "The Situation" Putin, Milla "JWOWW" Jovovich, Catherine "Snookie" the Great, DJ Ivan Drago

Okay, let’s start by saying that we have no idea if this is real. However, a A website popped up five days ago claiming to be the application page for a future reality television show based on Jersey Shore – but Ruskie-fied.

(An update to this story has been posted, including an interview with Brighton Beach show’s creator, Elina Miller)

Guess what it’s called… go on, guess…

Brighton Beach! And no, there won’t be one bit of stereotyping of Russians as vodka-downing, kalbasa-munching, techno-blasting party fiends. Oh… wait… here’s the description for the casting call:

Are you the Russian Snooki or The Situation? Are you a super outgoing and fun-loving Russian-American that sometimes sneaks kalbaska, pel’meni and vodka from the fridge? Can people hear the Euro/Techno/Russian music blasting from your car before they see you pull up? Do you attend birthday parties at Russian restaurants every weekend? If so, we may want to cast you for a new reality TV show that centers around a group of Russian-American strangers living together in a house on the shores of Brighton Beach for a summer. The cameras will roll as you do what you do best — eat, drink and PARTY.

Sorry Alevtina, but this just isn’t your day.

Keep reading about Brighton Beach’s reality show

Councilman Michael Nelson’s office sent us a note last night that they got word from the Department of Transportation that the Operation Iraqi Freedom Way sign should be back up by the end of the day on Monday, February 22.

The stalled construction site at 2820 Avenue Z that imperils children remains dangerous. Eleven days after the Department of Buildings declared it in “Emergency Condition” and nearly two months after the fence first fell, leaving it open to children from P.S. 52 down the block, nothing has changed. We’ll be watching this one closely. There’s no reason the developer couldn’t nail up a $50 piece of plywood for the time being, and there’s no reason the city should allow this to go on for as long as it has.

A street sign honoring Iraq War veterans appears to have been stolen from a Brighton Beach corner, leading residents to point the finger at anti-war activists.

The sign renamed the corner of Corbin Place and Oriental Boulevard as Heroes of Operation Iraqi Freedom Way in 2005. According to the Daily News, residents took it as a “symbol of the contributions to the war effort made by local immigrants from Russia and former Soviet countries.”

The sign vanished in December, and Raisa Chernina, founder of Be Proud Foundation, which lobbied for its installation, claimed unpatriotic critics of the Iraq War stole the sign because it appeared to support President Bush.

“I have no doubt about it, because so many people were against the war,” Chernina told Daily News. “But they mix people fighting the war with the war itself.”

Supporters are rallying at the corner today to demand the sign’s replacement. The Department of Transportation has already said they will install a sign soon.

Remember Alexander Kravitz? We wrote about the Gravesend resident last January, after he was arrested in a Queens motel room where he hoped to make a porn video with a 14-year-old girl. Kravitz’s defenders came scrawling comments on the site back then, talking up what a real hardworking, honest champ the 27-year-old William E. Grady High School teacher is and that we shouldn’t judge him until the jury does.

Well, the jury has. Wait, nix that, Alex Kravitz pleaded guilty to the crime. Kravitz admitted to attempting to disseminate indecent material to a minor, as part of a deal for a 90-day jail term and five years’ probation. The Daily News reports that Kravitz will also have to turn over his computer, forfeit his teaching license, and register as a sex offender.

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Click to watch video from NY1

Police are turning to the public in their search for the murderers of a Brighton Beach business owner after nearly a year of dead ends.

Brighton Bazaar owner Vlad Tolstykh, 35, was assaulted by two men wielding a hammer and a hand axe at a parking garage on Brighton 11th Street in March 2009. He was beaten and robbed of two watches and an unknown amount of cash. Video caught the suspects walking into the garage and attacking Tolstykh, but police haven’t been able to get enough information to identify the suspects.

A total reward of $32,000 is being offered for information leading to an arrest, with $20,000 being ponied up by Tolstykh’s family.

Anyone with information about the case is being asked to contact Crime Stoppers by calling 1-800-577-TIPS, by texting TIP577 to CRIMES, or by going to NYPDCrimeStoppers.com.

Workers from the Department of Transportation arrived at Cass Place and Neptune Avenue around noon today, and replaced the Right On Red sign that we’ve all been missing. You may recall we wrote about the Cass Place sign blowing off the pole after a mid-November storm. The sign was already damaged, with a broken rivet on the bottom. But now we’ve got a new happy, healthy sign to confuse drivers. L’Chaim!

(Thank you, Local Broker, for info and photos.)

(Photo courtesy of Daily News)

Though the NY Times recently reported that no Brooklyn Post Office branches are among the 16 New York City offices facing closures, one southern Brooklyn branch is still at risk for other reasons and postal authorities have not planned to accommodate its out-of-luck clients.

According to Don Brown, Community Board 15’s liaison to the United States Postal Service, authorities overseeing the Brighton Beach Post Office have negotiated a six-month extension to the retail station’s lease, following the news in May that it would shut down on December 31, 2009.  Though Brighton residents can breathe a sigh of relief until June 2010, Brown says USPS is making little headway in finding a new location.

Trouble emerged when Kaytus LLC, the new landlords of 3157 Coney Island Avenue, refused to renew the lease after more than 30 years in the location. According to Brown, Kaytus was seeking an “exorbitant” amount in excess of 30 percent of market value. With the federal agency bleeding money across the nation, postal authorities nixed any deal with the landlord and began looking elsewhere. Hampering the search are strict guidelines for finding a new location.

“It’s a matter of finding a building with the proper size and structure to accomodate their needs,” said Brown. Despite a neighborhood of empty buildings and stalled developments, the post office can’t catch a break.

Making matters worse, authorities haven’t drawn up plans to accommodate patrons of the Brighton Breach location when it closes, leaving no choice but to flood the Sheepshead Bay branch on East 18th Street, which recently reduced hours. Brown said that temporary trailers and other options have been discussed to no avail.

“Certain things have come up as possibilities, but nothing that seems viable,” he said. “There is a problem as to what alternatives [clients] have, and it’s possible they may have to flow to [the Sheepshead Bay Post Office], but ultimately I think there’ll be a solution.

While Brown remains optimistic, neighbors in both Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay have fingers crossed. With eight months on the clock, can the United States Post Office find a location in Brighton Beach?