TPM Reader KM gives us some color on the El Caribe social club …
Being from Brooklyn, I wanted to drill down on exactly where it is and give it some color.
It’s actually in Mill Basin. It may not matter to a national audience, but that’s actually a few neighborhoods away from Russian immigrant communities of Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay. It’s off the Marine Park / Flatlands neighborhoods.
Mill Basin is essentially a small peninsula with only about four roads/entrances off Avenue U (practically fortified/hidden and outpost-like behind the Kings Plaza mall and now also Lowe’s and Home Depot).
El Caribe itself is surrounded by most sides by high hedges, a school bus parking lot and on one side by the water/marina. Mill Basin is an affluent neighborhood largely made up of Russians and Israelis now (it used to be mostly Italians). It’s across Jamaica Bay from JFK Airport. So the idea that the Russian Mafia would set up shop out of there just makes a lot of sense. That whole area past the Kings Plaza mall is not very dense the way most of Brooklyn is. It’s relatively remote and I’ve hardly ever seen the NYPD in the area (but that’s just my own experience).
Anyway, just some color from some time I’ve spent biking around there.