Vitali Vitaliev on Brighton Beach, or “Little Odessa”. I haven’t been to Brighton Beach myself; as I see it from afar, it is a Soviet neighborhood in New York City that speaks Russian with a slight provincial Jewish accent. Most of my peers — still-young educated urban Russians — look down with contempt at Brighton and similar immigrant compounds. It’s too Soviet and too small-town for them. And I… well, as I’ve said I’ve never been there. Business seldom takes me to the center of Moscow these days (except two or three places); thanks to our Turkish friends construction and renovation go fast; so sometimes, when I find myself surrounded by unfamiliar buildings that have arisen (from the dead, too) with mushroom speed inside the Garden Ring, I ask myself, “Quis hic locus? Quae regio? Quae mundi plaga?”
So what’s the point of sticking to the old crap?
And no, the real Odessa wouldn’t be flattered a bit by the comparison.