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By Will Bredderman
Brooklyn Daily
Brighton Beachers and visitors from around the city had cause for jubilation on Aug. 26 — the 36th annual Brighton Jubilee.
The festival is the brainchild of Pat Singer, founder and chief executive of the Brighton Neighborhood Association, which has fought to clean up the neighborhood and its image since 1977.
“We started the Brighton Neighborhood Association because we had deterioration and crime,” Singer recalled. “We wanted to show that we still had a good community here, and the Jubilee is one of our weapons for doing that.”
Singer estimated that this year’s event drew a multicultural crowd 100,000 people from around the city.
“We had people coming from as far away as Manhattan,” Singer said. “It attracted the world population. We had Russian people, we had Hispanic people, we had Middle Eastern people.”
The diversity might be due to the array of vendors and performers at the Jubilee. Singer said the festival boasted Russian, Turkish, and Mexican food sellers — as well as shoe merchants, pony rides for the kids, and a team of dancing cheerleaders from the Brooklyn Nets, one of the Jubilee’s sponsors.
Meanwhile, there were three stages for live entertainment at the event: one for the Brooklyn-Kingsboro Arm-Wrestling Championships; a second featuring Russian-language performers; and a third hosting rock groups visiting from Bay Ridge, including Frankie Marra & His Band, Out of the Blue, and High Tides.
For Singer, it was the result of seven months and 29 solid hours of work by her and her staff leading up to the Jubilee. But she said it was all worth it.
“People look forward to it as an end-of-summer event,” Singer said. “It’s a great time, and part of what makes Brooklyn, Brooklyn.”
Reach reporter Will Bredderman at (718) 260–4507 or e-mail him at wbredderman@cnglocal.com. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/WillBredderman