Bath Beach, Brooklyn

Bath Beach is a neighborhood in the New York City Borough of Brooklyn in the United States. It is located at the southwestern edge of the borough on Gravesend Bay.

Geography
Sometimes erroneously thought to be part of Bensonhurst, Bath Beach is actually separated from that neighborhood by 86th Street to the northeast. To the north, also across 86th Street, lies New Utrecht. To the northwest across 14th Avenue is Dyker Beach Park and Golf Course, and to the southeast across Stillwell Avenue is the neighborhood of Gravesend. To the south, across Gravesend Bay and Coney Island Creek, are Sea Gate and Coney Island. Bath Beach is served by the D/M elevated subway line of the New York City Subway system, also called the BMT West End Line. Stations that serve the community are 18th Avenue, 20th Avenue, Bay Parkway, 25th Avenue (D only) and Bay 50th Street (D only).

Unique Street Grid
While technically a grid, the streets of the neighborhood have a unique nomenclature. Four two-way northwest-southeast thoroughfares traverse the neighborhood, running parallel to Shore Parkway: they are Cropsey Avenue, Bath Avenue, Benson Avenue and 86th Street, with another, Harway Avenue, running northwest from Stillwell only as far as 24th Avenue. The one-way cross-streets are numbers preceded with the word "Bay" attached (to distinguish them, for postal reasons, from other numbering systems elsewhere in the borough), from Bay 7th Street in the northwest through Bay 50th Street in the southeast; Bay 1st to Bay 6th Streets are displaced by Dyker Beach Park. Confusingly for first-time visitors, every third "Bay" numbered street is displaced by a two-way numbered avenue extended (as is 86th Street) from a larger grid that encompasses other neighborhoods, from 14th Avenue in the northwest to 28th Avenue in the southeast. (Instead of 22nd Avenue, there is Bay Parkway.)

Demographics
Primarily a working-class community of semi-detached houses and small apartment houses, Bath Beach is becoming a diverse ethnic community, as recent Chinese, Hispanic, Arabic and Russian immigrants displace the immigrant and native-born Italian-Americans, continuing a cycle (the Italian-American immigrants displaced native-born German-Americans in the mid-20th century). The neighborhood contains a variety of small mom-and-pop businesses intermixed with chain stores, most of which are located at the Ceasar's Bay Shopping Center at the end of Bay Parkway as well as on 86th Street under the elevated West End (D) line.

Beginnings
The term "Bath Beach" once described the beach resort specifically as part of the community of Bath, New York. The name "Bath" has fallen into disuse. The population of Bath Beach received a boost at the end of 1863 when steam dummy railroad service connected the community to the then separate City of Brooklyn horsecar system terminal at 25th Street and 5th Avenue in what is now considered Sunset Park.

Shore Parkway Construction
Despite its name, the neighborhood no longer has an actual beach. The beach was paved over during the mid-20th century to create Shore Parkway, part of the Belt Parkway that encompasses Brooklyn and Queens. On the northwestern half, a promenade was constructed to allow residents access to a sea wall. The southwestern half, filled in with land excavated from the construction of the nearby Verrazano-Narrows Bridge during the 1960s, now houses a large park with ballfields and the Ceasar's Bay Shopping Center.



Saturday Night Fever
During the 1970s, Bath Beach's commercial strip along 86th Street was used for scenes in the 1971 feature film The French Connection, in the opening credits to the popular television series Welcome Back, Kotter and most famously in the opening scene of the 1977 feature film Saturday Night Fever. Tony Manero, the lead character (played by John Travolta), walks along the sidewalk, admires shoes in a storefront window, buys two (stacked) slices of pizza through a pizzeria window-counter and ends up at the hardware store where he works (based on a real hardware store on 5th Avenue in nearby Bay Ridge).