Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Borscht By The Beach

New York

Continuing my tour round the outer boroughs I got on the subway to Brooklyn yesterday. I went all the way to the end of the line at Brighton Beach to have a look at the Russian part of town. The whole neighbourhood is right on Coney Island beach and has street names like Sea Breeze and Ocean Parkway, which makes it all the more bizarre to have all the signs in Cyrillic and everyone speaking Russian. It was just like being back in Siberia, except there weren't any holes in the roads.

I went into a restaurant for lunch and walked in on a funeral. I could tell it was a funeral because there were two long tables of Russians wearing black and drinking vodka. Keeping my distance from the soon-to-be-very-drunk hordes I tackled a salad before I got my hands on a bowl of proper hot borscht. There are some great soups in the world, but borscht is the big daddy. I'd been two months without any, and so that already familiar taste of beetroot and sour cream went down a storm. Eventually getting round to a main course I was pleased to see the place had a dish called 'meat and potatoes' just as every restaurant in real Russia seems to. So I had that, then a raspberry blini from a market stall, and staggered around for a while, happy to once again be weighed down with lots of Russian stodge.

The beach is big and has a huge boardwalk running the length of the front. It was pretty chilly and I needed my coat zipped and buttoned as I ambled around on the sand. A Russian girl in her 20s in front of me also had a big overcoat on, but then she stopped by the water's edge, took off her coat, jumper and jeans to reveal a bikini. Then she ran towards the sea, dived in and started swimming about. It must have been freezing but she managed a few minutes in there before coming back to the beach. She stood there for a couple of minutes as if drip-drying herself, then put her clothes back on and just walked off. All very strange.

I went to another gig last night, English singer Holly Golightly at the Mercury Lounge on Houston St. After a solid set from the International Shades, I thoroughly enjoyed Atlanta band the Woggles, although whether that had more to do with their energetic punk performance or the attractive young lesbians passionately snogging immediately to my left throughout the set, I couldn't really say. Since she appeared on the last White Stripes record Holly Golightly's become a bit better known and the small venue was rammed at the start of her show. Her bluesy rock was very good indeed, although the late hour meant the crowd thinned out by the time she finished up at 20 to 1. A good time was had by all though, and it's a relief to see someone actually justifying their 'too cool for school' status.

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