The Brighton Beach Boardwalk Legacy of Strong Chested Champions

Nicky Crime comes to the Brighton Beach boardwalk to shake off his “babushka”.

He followed her here years ago from his own neighborhood in the Bronx when she was young and beautiful - a “stacked Russian with my nuts in a vice”. She lets him “out” for a few hours a day and he comes down to the docks to smoke and think about his life choices while he flirts with several other women he may or may not be having relations with.

“It’s always a broad who’ll mess you up and leave you out on a boardwalk to dry.”

He sits next to his mostly silent friend who, when I asked how he got to Brighton Beach, replied, “different guy, same story.”

The boardwalk in front of Tatiana’s Restaurant is where, looking for a light for my smoke, I came to meet Nicky and his friend. I stepped away from our table, a beautifully positioned eight top outside under the beautiful wicker awning that we had to pay off the hostess to get. We had just ordered a bottle of vodka, our first of two - Grey Goose instead of Russian Standard because, honorably, my new friend Simon, a Moscow born/raised in the U.S. journalist, writer and war correspondent reminded us we are at war and boycotting tyranny. He made me feel at ease, this new friend.

I am, in fact, at a table full of new friends - all luminaries in their field. Two writers, both previous war correspondents and journalists of the Atlantic and Time pedigree; my sidekick Tatiana who organized this day; and three other new friends that I’d hate to reduce to their professions in this description for fear of sounding like a vaudeville joke (“two acupuncturists, a doctor and a war correspondent walk into a Russian nightclub…”) and because they were so much more than that. I fell in love many times that night. It was a table that proves to a person (me) that they (I) might be headed in the right direction in life. To be alight with new friendships with such immediate ease at a table full of people you instantly like and respect? That’s some kind of success.

Yet, I still found myself wandering off to smoke with Simon and to quench my curiosity about Nicky Crime. He was a fast talker, a charmer with his gold chains and tight, white t-shirt and sneakers. He looked you in the eye when you talked to him. He made easy jokes, asked you about yourself, made sharp observations about time and place and himself. No matter how good the company at my own table, I was fascinated by Mr. Crime. I took his portrait, which, sorry reader, I don’t feel right publishing online without first getting his permission. I’ll aim to tell you about so many other things that I learned and loved on Brighton Beach that day, but for me, it was nothing came close to Nicky Crime.

Here is how I travel: I talk to a lot of strangers. I daydream a lot. I do not seek out the “list” places and I don’t give two shits about being in the right place at the right time. You want my travel advice? Get lost. Be wide open. Be outrageously curious. Know nothing and like it. Engage with the spaces and people around you. Do not be a voyeur. Insert yourself and be sincere. Show up and mean it. Meet the Nicky Crimes wherever and however the hell you can.

We hopped off the Q line and crested onto Brighton Beach Avenue. Tatiana knew the best pirozhki lady in town. “She’s parked in front of a storefront under the train trellis” and off we went to find her. To my absolute delight, Tatiana rolls up on this lady and starts speaking Russian. Tatiana and her family have been coming to Brighton Beach since she was a child, her parents immigrants themselves. I was under the right tutelage. She was out of meat, the pirozhki woman said in dismay. Somehow, even though they spoke exclusively Russian, I understood the letdown. We ordered both a cabbage filled and a potato filled. Seems she forgot the salt in the cabbage filled (miraculously still delicious), but the potato pirozhki was outrageous and seasoned to perfection. I only had coffee on my stomach and Tatiana was kind: I greedily gobbled the entire thing as we walked to the legendary Tashkent Market.