In a small storefront in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Brighton Beach, a tiny television is tuned to ‘Judge Judy.’ The no-nonsense judge yells at the plaintiff from behind her desk in typical stern fashion, “She has to get a job! She’s LAZY!”
Behind a similarly large wooden desk—with the addition of a “herd” of decorative elephant figurines—sits Pat Singer, the founder and director of the Brighton Beach Neighborhood Association.
“She’s my idol,” Singer said of Judge Judy. “I like how she’s tough. I hate the court shows where they’re talking back to the judges.”
Pat Singer is an equally tough woman in a velour tracksuit, with short, fiery orange hair and shocking blue eye shadow. She started the BNA in 1977, when the neighborhood was, as she puts it, “going down the tubes.”
“There were problems with drugs, problems with prostitution,” Singer explained. So, after the twelfth mugging on her block, she gathered hundreds of residents to march in protest. “We circled, like covered wagons, and held traffic for four hours,” she said. “And being a drama queen, I played ‘Exodus’ over the loudspeakers.”