Slavic Sheepshead Bay

Earlier this week, Forgotten NY spotlighted Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, home to a couple of thought-provoking Slavic sites.


First up, check out Babi Yar Triangle (Corbin Place and Brighton 15th Street), a park named after a 1941 pogrom led by Nazi Einsatzgruppe soldiers and Ukrainan militiamen at Babi Yar, near Kyiv. Nearly 34,000 Jews were killed in just two days, and over the course of the 778 days of Nazi rule in Ukraine a ravine in Babi Yar became the final resting place for over 100,000 people - Jews, Roma, handicapped people, Soviet POWs homosexuals and others. This park was dedicated in 1989.


Sheepshead Bay is also home to the only Holocaust memorial park in New York City, dedicated in 1985.

The monument in the park also commemorates the mass killings at Jasenovac, a concentration camp run by the Croatian Ustase from 1941 to 1945. Hundreds of thousands of Serbs, as well as Jews, Roma, anti-fascists and others were put to death there, and Jasenovac has been a wedge between the Serbs and Croats ever since.
The neighborhood is also home to the Bethel Russian Baptist Fellowship (2310 Voorhies Avenue), and the (gay?) bar Secrets (1321 Avenue Z between East 13th & East 14th Streets). And in nearby Gravesend Neck you'll find the Russian restaurants Elrisha (2364 McDonald Ave between Gravesend Neck Road & Villa) and Anyway Cafe (1602 Gravesend Neck Road), as well as the Russian Baths of NY (1200 Gravesend Neck Road, Gravesend Neck).

New York Soviet Socialist Republic

News broke on Monday that a Cold-War-era fallout shelter has been discovered within the foundations of the Brooklyn Bridge (see Sewell Chan’s “Inside the Brooklyn Bridge, a Whiff of the Cold War,” from The New York Times).

The bunker held a stockpile of supplies intended to keep some part of the local population going in the event of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. According to the Times, they included “water drums, medical supplies, paper blankets, drugs and calorie-packed crackers — an estimated 352,000 of them, sealed in dozens of watertight metal canisters and, it seems, still edible.”

Boxes were stamped with dates including 1957 (when the USSR launched Sputnik), and 1962 (during the Cuban Missile Crisis).

The location is being kept secret, but if you want to relive the Cold War yourself, check out some of the city’s other Soviet-esque sites. As we’ve discussed before, the Municipal Building (1 Centre Street) may have been an inspiration for Stalinist architecture, and Manhattan has not one but two Red Squares, one even bearing a monumental Lenin.

You can buy Soviet gifts at Russian Souvenirs (227 14th Street between Second and Third Avenues) or Revolution Books (9 West 19th Street between Fifth Avenue and Union Square).

And there are also a number of Soviet-themed bars, like KGB Bar (85 East 4th Street), Pravda (281 Lafayette Street near Prince), Eastern Bloc (505 East Sixth Street at Avenue A) or Siberia (356 West 40th Street). In Brooklyn, check out Sputnik (262 Taaffee Place in Bedford Stuyvesand) and the Russian Baths of New York (1200 Gravesend Neck Road), featuring a café with a Soviet hockey theme.

One Soviet-esque footnote: We somehow managed to miss it but, Cafe Trotsky (192 Orchard at Houston) closed late last year. Via Eater, the café’s story is told in “Bitter Brew,” by its owner Michael Idov.

(Photo: John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times)

GLBT Slavs of New York

The East Village, Manhattan's Slavic heartland, is now home to the city's first official Slavic gay bar (sort of). Back in December, Eastern Bloc (505 East Sixth Street at Avenue A) opened for business with a decidely SocArt theme. The clientel might not be Slavic, but the decor is ochen' Soviet.

Meanwhile, Siberia (356 West 40th Street) has recently started up a Saturday night GLBT party called Cruising. Cover is $5.00 before midnight, $10.00 after. And the 23-29 November 2005 issue of the NY Press mentions Secrets (1321 Avenue Z between East 13th and East 14th Streets) out in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, near the Russian enclave of Brighton Beach. Though it is surrounded by Russian bars, the Press does not indicate that this bar is itself frequented by Russians.

GLBTs from the former Yugoslavia aren't quite left out in the cold, either. Though it (so far) only has a website and a message list, Queer Ex-YU Diaspora is doing its job to link like-minded people from the Balkans, many of whom are in the five boroughs. There is also apparently a Polish organization in the city as well, called Razem (email razem@juno.com), but it does not seem to be active at this time. Email Slavs of New York if you have any additional information.

And for the sake of being comprehensive, it also stands to point out that New York has seen its share of prominent GLBT Slavs of New York, first among whom is surely the Carpatho-Rusyn Andy Warhol. Another is the Russian artist Yaroslav Mogutin, a.k.a. Slava Mogutin. Born in 1974 in Siberia, he became the first Russian to be granted asylum in the US on the grounds of sexual orientation in 1995 and settled in New York. Since then, his celebrity as a poet and photographer has grown so much that he is now able to split his time between New York and Moscow, where he has also found an audience. Check out this interview from a 2002 issue of Index.