On a bright Sunday morning, Brighton Beach is all action and bustle: Piles of sodden carpet and dry-wall line the streets, with random crutches, mannequins (like the one at left), furniture and other detritus, as residents shovel what seem to be acres of sand from their sidewalks and shopfronts.
The sand is ankle-deep on the busy street, and banked up higher in apartment-building breezeways and carports. One longtime local found in the sand that filled her front yard a horseshoe crab– and said that the boulders that for decades separated her block from the ocean were lifted up onto the street by the waves. Still, she says,"we're ok, we're fine," and goes back to sweeping up.
Photo by Helen Zelon
