This weekend Bedford Avenue from Metropolitan to North 12th Street will be closed off for a summer music jam, art fest and neighborhood block party! If you are down to volunteer for Northside Art at Williamsburg Walks this Saturday June 10th or Sunday June 11th, you’ll get hooked up with a Northside Festival Badge! And you will be doing good for the community by helping reclaim Bedford Ave as a pedestrian-friendly art space!
Are you the style queen or king of minimalism? Oak (55 Nassau Ave) has a pack of too-cool-for-school pieces that are perf for Greenpointers with a streamlined capsule wardrobe. With their simple-but-chic with rough around the edges aesthetic, it’s no wonder that this shop is a Greenpoint mainstay.
Browse some of our top picks for major swag and style.
It’s summer, y’all (temps almost broke 90 today so we can officially say that now), which means it’s time to get your butts out there and see some live music and DJs. North Brooklyn is awash with options this year, some of them free and some of them not so free, but all of them are awesome. We’ve got rooftop parties, music festival afterparties, soul and rap legends, indie bands, pizza and tacos galore. Also, booze. Check out our roundup of this season’s seriously massive music lineup.
GOVERNORS BALL AFTER DARK | Various venues around North Brooklyn & Manhattan Governors Ball is back again this year on June 2-4, and the epic music fest is also serving up some awesome night shows too, and most of them happen to be right here in North Brooklyn. Some shows are already sold out, so either jump on some Craigslist tickets or try to snag some for the shows with tix still left!
Here’s the lineup of shows in our ‘hood:
Thursday June 1: CHARLES BRADLEY @ BROOKLYN BOWL (61 Wythe Ave) // 8pm // Sold Out
Friday June 2: RÜFÜS DU SOL (DJ SET) @ SCHIMANSKI (54 N 11th St) //10pm // Sold Out MUNA @ BROOKLYN BOWL (61 Wythe Ave) // 1130pm // $20 tickets ROOSEVELT @ BROOKLYN BAZAAR (150 Greenpoint Ave) // 11:59pm // $16 tickets WELLES @ KNITTING FACTORY (361 Metropolitan Ave) // 1130pm // $12 tickets MARK RONSON X KEVIN PARKER @ OUTPUT (74 Wythe Ave) // 10pm // $15-25 tickets
Saturday June 3: THE AVALANCHES @ BROOKLYN BOWL (61 Wythe Ave) // 1130pm // Sold Out PARQUET COURTS @ VILLAIN (307 Kent Ave) // 11pm // $20 tickets ROYAL BLOOD @ WARSAW (261 Driggs Ave) // 11:59pm // Sold Out YG, CHARLI XCX & ANIK KHAN @ SCHIMANSKI (54 N 11th St) // 10pm // $25-30 tickets THE ORWELLS @ KNITTING FACTORY (361 Metropolitan Ave) // 11:59PM // $15 tickets
Monday June 5: FRANZ FERDINAND @ WARSAW (261 Driggs Ave) // 8pm // Sold Out
Dobbin St’s gorgeous rooftop at sunset, via Dobbin St
Ok, so we’ve been stuck in the weather purgatory that is Spring (it’s hot/it’s cold/it’s rainy/it sucks), but it’s already time to start planning out our summer outdoor activities—because before we know it we’ll be stuck in blizzard land. In North Brooklyn we’re lucky to have three awesome options for watching movies outdoors this summer! Because who doesn’t love a good excuse to sit amongst the fireflies and watch the sun set on a blanket next to their honey (or doggie) with a pre-hot-mess Lindsey Lohan snarling on the big screen? (See Mean Girls at SummerScreen in McCarren, Wednesday July 5th).
THE SUNSET SCREENINGS — ROOFTOP MOVIES AT DOBBIN STREET
A new free monthly rooftop film series, The Sunset Screenings, kicks off May 24th and runs through September. The free movies will screen at local event space Dobbin St (64 Dobbin Street) on their 3,000 sq ft rooftop terrace. Just as the sun sets over the Manhattan skyline, the films will begin. To complement the view, the series is“city” themed, representing the world’s most iconic cities from New York to Tokyo with a carefully curated list of films. Here’s the schedule:
OddFellows Ice Cream Co. in Williamsburg. All images via oddfellowsnyc.com
As co-founder Mohan Kumar tells it, OddFellows in Williamsburg has an origin as sweet as its ice cream.
“When Holiday was pregnant Sam [Mason] brought over ice cream, and she loved it. At the time I was looking to get out of what I was doing in real estate finance and do something more entrepreneurial, more creative,” Kumar shared. “A couple days later, she said, ‘Why don’t you talk to Sam about opening an ice cream shop?’ I said, ‘That’s a great idea.’ I approached Sam about that over a beer, I had half a business plan already written out, and that’s how it started.”Continue reading →
Waking up at 4 AM this morning, I fumbled around on my iPhone for podcasts to kill time until dawn. Garrison Keillor’s show came up first.
Keillor always ends with a poem, and on this episode it was Route Six by Stanley Kunitz, that follows the poet’s summer road trip to Cape Cod with his wife.
To get everyone into the spirit of our own quickly approaching day trips to the beach, I match the mood of Kunitz’ poem by quoting it alongside this weekend’s best live music. Continue reading →
In North Brooklyn we’re lucky to be surrounded with artistry—we have dozens of gallery spaces, hundreds of working artists, and street art on practically every corner. So if you live here and you’ve got kids, nurturing their creative side in this neighborhood should be a no-brainer. Of course summertime is a great time to do it, when they’re out of school and need to keep their busy minds and hands occupied. And lucky for neighborhood parents, there’s a truly unique opportunity to send the kids to Tumbleweeds Art Camp right here in Greenpoint.
Spring may be off to a patchy start, but ice cream season is here regardless and local producers Van Leeuwen are on a roll right now. February saw the opening of a new store in the West Village, closely followed by the relocation of their Greenpoint outlet to a newer, bigger premises on Manhattan Avenue. Now, plans are underway for a flagship store on Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg, due to open mid-May.
The all-natural Greenpoint ice cream company was started in 2008 by Laura O’Neill and Ben and Pete Van Leeuwen, who set out to make ice cream using the finest possible ingredients. After initially selling their wares locally from two buttermilk-yellow ice cream trucks, rapid success soon saw them opening their own brick-and-mortar stores around NYC, and even branching out to LA, where they currently operate two trucks and have new stores in the pipeline. Their upcoming Williamsburg flagship is a marker of just how rapidly their ice cream empire has grown. Continue reading →
Oh, to be a kid again: warm summer days romping through McGolrick Park, in between being immersed in my own imagination and bringing my ideas to life by experimenting with a wide variety of materials, long before my creativity was blocked by all the challenges of adulthood. Don’t miss this special opportunity to nurture your own child’s creative genius by sending them to Tumbleweeds Art Campthis summer. Continue reading →
