Published: June 8, 2013
Take the A Train to Little Guyana
By Kirk Semple
James Estrin/The New York Times
An Arab neighborhood in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
On an old building at 12 St. Marks Place, hovering above the sushi counters and tattoo parlors, is an inscription chiseled in the stone facade: Deutsch-Amerikanische Schützen Gesellschaft. It marks the location of the German-American Shooting Society clubhouse, long defunct, and is a rare vestige of the German immigrant community that dominated the East Village and the Lower East Side for much of the 19th century.
Known as Kleindeutschland, or Little Germany, the community had German saloons and social clubs, German theaters and churches, German stores and workshops, and, of course, tens of thousands of German residents.
Little Germany is long gone — the clubhouse now houses a Yoga to the People studio — and other European enclaves that once defined immigrant life in New York City have also faded or disappeared altogether.
But in their place, a welter of immigrant neighborhoods have formed, populated by newcomers from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America. This shift was triggered by the passage of immigration reform legislation in 1965, which opened the door to greater numbers of non-Europeans and changed the ethnic composition of the United States.
Since 1970, the number of foreign-born New Yorkers has more than doubled, to about three million, or 37 percent of the city’s total population, according to the Census Bureau. About 32 percent of the city’s immigrants today came from Latin America, 26 percent from Asia, 20 percent from non-Hispanic Caribbean nations, 17 percent from Europe and 4 percent from Africa.
As with earlier waves of immigrants, many of the newcomers fled economic hardship, armed conflict and other adversity, and have settled near their compatriots for convenience and mutual support, organically forming communities within the ethnic mosaic of the city.
Here are 10 such newer enclaves — the Kleindeutschlands of the 21st century — in various states of evolution. Because the foods and goods of home are such a central part of these communities, we have included places to find typical fare in each neighborhood, as well as retail spots that cater to the immigrant population. Think of them as possible starting points for exploration.
Poh Si Teng/The New York Times
Bay Ridge, Brooklyn
Take the R train to the Bay Ridge Avenue or 77th Street stop.
Friday Prayer at the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge is so popular that the mosque often fills to capacity and late-arriving worshipers have to find a free spot to pray on the sidewalk, which the staff covers with carpet.
It is an amazing sight, and a dramatic manifestation of the emergence of a thriving pan-Arab enclave in northern Bay Ridge. The population — from Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Morocco and elsewhere — has mostly settled in an area bounded by 65th and 77th Streets to the north and south, and Seventh Avenue and Colonial Road to the west and east.
Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American community activist who grew up in Sunset Park, the next neighborhood to the north, said Bay Ridge’s population was the latest in a series of Arab enclaves that began with a settlement of mostly Syrians, Lebanese and Palestinians in Lower Manhattan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Under the pressure of development and gentrification, that enclave splintered and a new one took shape in Brooklyn on the western end of Atlantic Avenue. In recent years, the Arab population of Brooklyn has gradually migrated south to Bay Ridge.
The entrepreneurial zeal of the new arrivals is quickly transforming the face of the neighborhood, with restaurants like Yemen Café (7130 Fifth Avenue; 718-745-8000) and Tanoreen (7523 Third Avenue; 718-748-5600), and shops like Balady Halal Foods (7128 Fifth Avenue; 718-567-2252).
“Every time there is a closed store, an Arab will get up and open it,” Ms. Sarsour, executive director of the Bay Ridge-based Arab-American Association of New York, said, sounding both amused and celebratory. “They’ll just look around and see what’s missing. They just open stuff!”
James Estrin/The New York Times
A Bengali celebration in Kensington, Brooklyn.
Kensington, Brooklyn
Take the F or G train to the Church Avenue stop.
When Ansar A. Lovlu immigrated to the United States from Bangladesh in 1995, he settled near the intersection of Church and McDonald Avenues, where a fledgling community of Bangladeshi immigrants had taken root.
At the time there were only a few Bangladeshi-owned businesses in the area. Now, there are more than 80, supporting what has become the city’s most dynamic, and perhaps biggest, Bengali enclave.
“I feel like I’m living in my own country,” said Mr. Lovlu, executive editor of Thikana, one of several Bengali newspapers published in the city. “You don’t have to learn English to live here. That’s a great thing!”
More than 74,000 Bangladeshi immigrants live in New York City, according to the latest figures from the Census Bureau, a 20 percent increase since 2009, making them the 11th-largest foreign-born population in the city. In addition to the Kensington enclave, there are significant concentrations of Bangladeshis in Queens, as well as in the Bronx, in Parkchester.
On Church and McDonald Avenues, grocery stores like the Bangla Nagar Supermarket (87 Church Avenue; 718-633-0114) sell Bangladeshi staples like radhumi spice and atta flour, while places like Ghoroa Sweets & Restaurant (478 McDonald Avenue; 718-438-6002) and Sugandha Restaurant (483 McDonald Avenue; 718-438-8773) serve biryani and pulao. There are Bangladeshi law, accounting, medical and insurance offices; Bangladeshi tailors, travel agencies and architects; and four mosques within a few blocks.
Bangladeshi activists have for years tried, unsuccessfully, to attach a sobriquet to the area, from renaming a stretch of McDonald Avenue after Sheik Mujibur Rahman, the first president of Bangladesh, to anointing the intersection Bangla Town.
On a recent Sunday, thousands of Bangladeshis packed McDonald Avenue for a block party to celebrate the Bangladeshi New Year. A band played Bengali pop music, and merchants tended scores of food and clothing stalls.
Mr. Lovlu was there, too, taking photos of the event for his newspaper — mostly shots of women in colorful saris and shalwar kameezes. “People need to see in the newspaper beautiful women,” he announced cheerfully.
James Estrin/The New York Times
One of the neighborhoods in Brooklyn where many of the city's more than 350,000 foreign-born Chinese live.
Homecrest/
Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn
Take the Q train to the Avenue U stop.
For generations, New York City knew one Chinatown and only one Chinatown: the world-famous neighborhood in Lower Manhattan. But today, if you ask an alert cabdriver to take you to Chinatown, he might respond, “Which one?” There are now more than 350,000 foreign-born Chinese spread across the five boroughs, coalescing into several Chinatowns and making them the city’s largest immigrant population after Dominicans, according to the latest American Community Survey, a continuing study by the Census Bureau. In Brooklyn, the Chinese population has spread south from its stronghold in Sunset Park in a crescent covering parts of Dyker Heights, Bensonhurst, Bath Beach and Gravesend. The tip of that crescent points to a neighborhood that straddles Homecrest and Sheepshead Bay.
At first glance, the area does not necessarily look like a classic Chinatown. On Avenue U, the neighborhood’s main commercial corridor, the Chinese-owned businesses — including grocery stores; restaurants like Golden “Z” Chinese Restaurant (1410 Avenue U; 718-382-4328), serving dishes like roasted duck and garlic shrimp; 99-cents stores; and beauty salons — are interspersed among those owned by everyone else: Georgians, Vietnamese, Italians, Russians and Greeks.
Even several Chinese business-owners and store employees questioned the notion that they were part of a new Chinatown. A cashier in a local store looked doubtful. “I live in Sunset Park — and that counts as another Chinatown,” she said.
But she was working the register at a branch of New York Mart (2309 Avenue U; 718-891-8828), a thriving immigrant-owned chain of grocery stores in growing Chinese enclaves. And the latest statistics from the American Community Survey show that the area’s population is increasingly Chinese: At least 40 percent of the residents in three nearby census tracts are of Chinese descent.
All of which suggests that if you want to see what a Chinatown looks like in its zygote phase, go there.
James Estrin/The New York Times
Assemblyman Francisco P. Moya, an Ecuadorean-American, in Corona, Queens.
Corona, Queens
Take the No. 7 train to the 90th Street-Elmhurst Avenue, Junction Boulevard or 103rd Street-Corona Plaza stop.
Assemblyman Francisco P. Moya, local boy made good, is piloting his sleek BMW through dense midday traffic on Roosevelt Avenue in Corona, one hand on the wheel, the other pointing out the indicators of his community’s ascendance. There are now more than 137,000 Ecuadorean immigrants in the city, making them the sixth-largest immigrant population.
“The restaurant there,” he said, gesturing toward a building on the south side of the street, under the elevated tracks of the 7 train. “Ecuadorean.”
“Look,” he continued, pointing to the other side of Roosevelt. “Two restaurants and a grocery store. We have the whole mall here.”
He waved his hand to encompass the entire streetscape: “All of this is Ecuadorean.”
Mr. Moya, 39, the son of Ecuadorean immigrants, was born and raised in the neighborhood and still lives there. He has seen the area change from a predominantly Dominican neighborhood to one with a mix of Latino immigrant populations to the home of the densest concentration of Ecuadoreans in the city. In several census tracts straddling Roosevelt Avenue in Corona, at least a quarter of the population is of Ecuadorean descent, according to Census Bureau statistics.
They eat at restaurants like Sabor Latino (95-35 40th Road; 718-457-3966) and Barzola (9212 37th Avenue; 718-205-6900), and they shop and conduct business at Ecuadorean-owned bodegas and bakeries, law and notary offices, money exchanges and travel agencies lining Roosevelt Avenue and its side streets.
The assemblyman, who was elected in 2010, turned south onto 104th Street. “I live right up this block,” he said, pointing down a side street, then drove slowly through the neighborhood.
When constituents have an issue and they want Mr. Moya’s ear, they sometimes bypass his district office and call his parents. “They’ll say, ‘I need to talk to your son. I need help,’ ” he said. “They come and knock on my door.” Ecuadoreans from outside his district frequently seek his assistance; he has even received requests for help from Ecuadoreans living outside New York.
“They say, ‘This is our guy.’ ”
James Estrin/The New York Times
Ghanaians in the Bronx, where their large immigrant group is centered.
Concourse Village, Bronx
Take the B or D train to the 167th Street stop.
The primacy of fufu in the Ghanaian diet is evident in the stock at Anokyekrom African and Caribbean Market (1152 Sheridan Avenue; 718-618-0717) in the Concourse Village section of the Bronx. There, a dizzying array of fufu powder mixes, made by companies in the Bronx, Newark, California and Ghana, fill an entire set of shelves. Along with the fufu, which is made from starchy vegetables, the store feeds other Ghanaian hungers. There are foodstuffs like kenkey — fermented cornmeal — and Star beer to drink with it, as well as natural black soap and CDs of Ghanaian high life, hip life and gospel music. Leaflets covering a wall advertise nightclub events, concerts, jobs and funerals.
A television broadcast of a European soccer match and the accompanying whoops of several men were audible through a closed door in the back. The business card of the proprietor, Kwame Danso, reveals an even broader range of needs that can be satisfied: “Phone cards, money transfer, fax, photocopy, travel tickets, etc. D.J. services available.”
The number of immigrants from Africa living in New York has soared over the past few decades. There are now more than 27,000 Ghanaians, the largest African immigrant group in the city, with most spread across several Bronx neighborhoods, and in pockets in Queens and Brooklyn. Amid this sprawl, the cluster of Ghanaian businesses near the intersection of Sheridan Avenue and McClellan Street, including Anokyekrom, may be the most visible commercial manifestation of the Ghanaian population. It functions for some not simply as a place for commerce, but also as a place to share ideas, cut deals, swap gossip and hang out.
There’s Papaye Restaurant (196 McClellan Street; 718-681-3240), which serves specialties like fermented corn balls in a fish stew and, of course, fufu in a peanut-flavored soup with goat; a second Ghanaian grocery store; a small CD shop; and two barber shops, one of which also advertises tax preparation services.
Poh Si Teng/The New York Times
Richmond Hill, Queens
Take the A train to the Ozone Park-Lefferts Boulevard stop.
On a Friday afternoon in early spring, his work done for the day, Kawal P. Totaram leaned back in his desk chair in his Richmond Hill law office on Liberty Avenue and dreamed of summer.
“You will be inundated by the different whiffs of curry and roti,” he began. “Your ears will be jarred by chutney music and Indian music. You’ll see women wearing short skirts and saris, men without a shirt, people with their cups, vendors yelling, the guys cursing. You’ll have the bars packed with young men drinking rum.” He smiled. This, he said, was Guyanese Richmond Hill at its fullest.
There are about 140,000 Guyanese immigrants living in New York City, according to the latest American Community Survey figures, making them the fifth-largest foreign-born population in the city. While many Afro-Guyanese immigrants have settled among other Afro-Caribbean immigrants in places like Canarsie and Flatbush in Brooklyn, Guyanese of South Asian descent are concentrated in large numbers in Richmond Hill and neighboring Ozone Park.
The lively Liberty Avenue and its tributaries are lined with roti shops, restaurants and bakeries like Sybil’s Bakery & Restaurant (132-17 Liberty Avenue; 718-835-9235), two branches of Little Guyana Bake Shop (116-04 Liberty Avenue, 718-843-6530, and 124-11 Liberty Avenue, 718-843-4200), and The Hibiscus Restaurant & Bar (124-18 101st Avenue; 718- 849-4225); shops selling all manner of goods, from spices to saris, like Dave West Indian Imports (98-07 97th Avenue; 718-323-1200); dancing schools and political clubs; “rum shops”; and community associations. The neighborhood is peppered with mosques, temples and churches to accommodate the population’s Hindus, Muslims and Christians.
Describing life in the diaspora, Mr. Totaram said, “As I put it, you go to bed in America, you sleep in Guyana and you wake up back in America.” Still, for Guyanese immigrants, Richmond Hill, when viewed from the right angle, can be a pretty good approximation of home.
Poh Si Teng/The New York Times
Murray Hill, Queens
Take the No. 7 train to the Flushing-Main Street stop or the Long Island Rail Road’s Port Washington line to the Murray Hill station.
Someone arriving for the first time at the Long Island Railroad station in Murray Hill, could be forgiven for thinking he had somehow been magically transported to the outskirts of Seoul. The station is surrounded by Korean-owned businesses, their names rendered in Korean-language neon signage. The air is redolent with the smell of Korean barbecue. And the dominant language on the street is Korean.
The area immediately around the station is known in New York City’s Korean diaspora as the new Meokjagolmok, or Restaurant Street, and features about two dozen restaurants, bars, cafes and a bakery, not to mention a couple of karaoke spots.
The area is a quieter, quasi-suburban counterpart to the hectic, noisy and better-known Koreatown of Manhattan, centered on 32nd Street between Broadway and Fifth Avenue.
Korean immigrants in the greater Flushing area first gained a foothold along Union Street. As their diaspora grew in numbers and wealth, the population spread east along the line of Northern Boulevard, the area’s main commercial corridor, into Bayside, Little Neck and then into Nassau County. Korean restaurants, bars, karaoke clubs, supermarkets, salons, banks, malls, language and music schools, and businesses offering legal and other professional services line the boulevard.
Korean Restaurant Street around the railroad station is a distillation of those vast offerings, and the range of establishments offers a primer in Korean gastronomy: Each specializes in certain dishes or kinds of food, such as cold arrowroot noodles and pork belly barbecue at Han Joo Korean Restaurant (41-06 149th Place; 718-359-6888) and kalbi at Mapo BBQ (14924 41st Avenue; 718-886-8292).
James Estrin/The New York Times
A Mexican area of Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Sunset Park, Brooklyn
Take the R train to the 45th Street, 53rd Street or 59th Street stop.
Mexicans may be the most subtle immigrant group in New York City. For such a large population that has grown so fast — there are now more than 186,000 Mexican immigrants in the city, making them the third-largest foreign-born population — it has remained astonishingly low-profile, politically, economically and otherwise.
The reasons for this are complex and varied, but among them is the fact that Mexicans, geographically speaking, are remarkably dispersed. As a result, no neighborhood has been able to stake a claim to being the most Mexican. At some point, East Harlem acquired the moniker Little Mexico, though mostly among Manhattan-centric outsiders. And with the flight of Mexicans out of that neighborhood in recent years amid fast-rising rents, that name seems outdated at best.
Declaring any neighborhood as the definitive Little Mexico is a fool’s errand: The general population is still unsettled and shifting, particularly amid the pressures of gentrification. That said, Sunset Park’s Mexican community is relatively large and well-established, with a bustling commercial corridor along Fourth and Fifth Avenues.
“I think there are bigger roots here than in other communities,” said Leticia Alanis, executive director of La Union, a longstanding social services group based in the neighborhood. “People here are not, in the majority, newcomers. Most of the families I know have been here at least 10 years.” The densest population of Mexicans is in an area bounded by Second and Fifth Avenues to the northwest and southeast, stretching from about 35th Street to about 63rd Street.
Along Fourth and Fifth Avenues, Mexican entrepreneurship lends a powerful flavor to the mix. Grocery stores like Guadalupita II (3901 Fifth Avenue; 718-438-1080) are stocked with goods imported from Mexico, and restaurants and bakeries abound, including Casa Vieja Restaurant (6007 Fifth Avenue; 718-439-3502), Taqueria El Maguey (3910 Fourth Avenue; 718-768-2846) and Las Conchitas Bakery (4811 Fifth Avenue; 718-437-5513). Mexico’s tricolor flag is everywhere.
In the evenings and on weekends, Sunset Park proper teems with Mexican families. And Mexican Catholicism is on display at the neighborhood’s main church, the soaring Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. The parish was once almost entirely Irish-American. Nowadays, about two-thirds of the 3,000 or so parishioners who attend weekend services are Latino, the majority of them Mexican.
James Estrin/The New York Times
Alex Santiago, who owns a flower shop in a Polish area of Ridgewood, Queens.
Ridgewood, Queens
Take the M train to the Forest Avenue or Fresh Pond Road stop.
Alex Santiago knows which way the wind blows. Though he is of Brazilian and Puerto Rican heritage, Polish-language signs hang in the window of his flower shop, Forest Avenue Florist (67-01 Forest Avenue; 718-366-7100), in Ridgewood. A Polish flag hangs from the awning. And in day-to-day operations he takes a back seat, letting his Polish girlfriend manage the store, assisted by Polish employees.
“About 75 to 80 percent of my customers are Polish,” said Mr. Santiago, 32, who has lived in Ridgewood for most of his life.
When he was growing up, he said, the neighborhood was heavily Latino, and dangerous. It was a risky proposition to walk along the residential streets separating the area’s main commercial arteries, Forest Avenue and Fresh Pond Road, particularly at night.
But in recent years, an influx of new residents and entrepreneurs, particularly Polish immigrants, has helped to transform the neighborhood. Some of the Polish newcomers were pushed from older Polish enclaves in Greenpoint and Maspeth by higher rents and property values. Others, including many young émigrés newly arrived from Poland, bypassed those neighborhoods altogether and came straight to Ridgewood.
With the newcomers have come a surge in commerce and a drop in crime, residents said. New businesses, many of them Polish, have opened throughout the neighborhood, including a branch of the Polish and Slavic Federal Credit Union (69-03 Fresh Pond Road; 855-773-2848); cafes and restaurants like Krolewskie Jadlo (66-21 Fresh Pond Road; 718-366-6226); professional services, including travel agencies, dental clinics and law offices; and that classic institution of Polish enclaves everywhere, the deli. There seems to be one on every block.
James Estrin/The New York Times
A Sri Lankan New Year's celebration on Staten Island.
Tompkinsville, Staten Island
Take the Staten Island Ferry to the St. George Ferry Terminal, and then the S46, S52, S61 or S66 bus to the intersection of Victory Boulevard
and Cebra Avenue.
Food bloggers are among the city’s most adventurous explorers, venturing to far-flung neighborhoods and filing dispatches that chart the evolution of cuisine on the city’s fringes.
And so, while many New Yorkers may be surprised to hear that Staten Island has one of the highest concentrations of Sri Lankans outside Sri Lanka, connoisseurs of ethnic food began mapping that population, or at least its food, years ago. They wrote lyrically of the lampries and string hopper kothus, the fried lentil cakes and pithus, and the godamba rotis and dhosas, as if sending reports from a distant land. Sri Lankans, many fleeing the civil war in their country, began settling in Staten Island several decades ago; by some estimates, more than 5,000 people of Sri Lankan descent live in the borough. They are scattered throughout the island, though the commercial focus of the population is a short stretch of Victory Boulevard where it intersects with Cebra Avenue.
There are three Sri Lankan restaurants at that intersection — New Asha Sri Lankan Restaurant (322 Victory Boulevard; 718-420-0649), Dosa Garden (323 Victory Boulevard; 718-420-0919) and Lak Bojun (324 Victory Boulevard; 347-466-5338) — alongside two grocery stores selling Sri Lankan staples and specialty products like dry fish and jaggery, lotus root and banana blossoms. A third grocery store is further down Victory Boulevard, and two other restaurants are on Bay Street including San Rasa (226 Bay Street; 718-420-0027) and Lakruwana (668 Bay Street; 347- 857-6619), which was reviewed in The New York Times by the restaurant critic Pete Wells this year. On weekends, Sri Lankan men play cricket on the grounds of the South Beach Psychiatric Center and elsewhere.
On a recent Sunday, hundreds of Sri Lankans gathered at a campground in Staten Island for their New Year celebrations, which included a traditional oil-lighting ceremony, live baila music and competitive events, including coconut-scraping and bun-eating contests. The biggest-belly competition was canceled because of the lateness of the hour.