McCarren Park Pool Parties
On Sundays this summer, Bedford Avenue swarmed with hipsters heading west—of Bedford, that is. Every summer since 2006, McCarren Park Pool has been home to the vastly popular, free JellyNYC Pool Parties, though on August 25, the pool was unfortunately shuttered as a concert venue. After this summer, Brooklyn will spend $50 million to make the pool an actual pool again while adding a recreation center with a skate park and an ice rink. Farewell to boys, booze, and Brooklyn!
During these free concerts, McCarren Park Pool teemed with young people eager to while away their Sundays drinking beer, running on the Slip ‘n Slide, playing dodgeball, and enjoying live performances. The pool parties allowed less-established acts to have the opportunity to share the bill with the indie rock canon, such as when Matt and Kim opened for The Breeders this summer. The Hold Steady headlined the opening pool party in June, and additional acts this summer included Aesop Rock, The Black Lips, and many more.
This year, the pool attracted some huge names, provoking controversy as commentators on Brooklyn Vegan complained about the queue’s exponential growth. For many shows, especially MGMT, people would line up in the early morning for doors that opened at 2:00 p.m. Oftentimes, even after hours of waiting, many would not even be allowed entrance due to filled capacity.
Yo La Tengo closed out the last free JellyNYC show, drenching all the photographers in the photo pit as an ironic foreshadowing for the pool’s future. However, JellyNYC is currently drafting a petition to turn Bushwick Inlet Park into a venue, so don’t count your hopes out for more fun and sun next summer.
The Clearwater Festival
Whether gazing onto the cleaned-up Hudson, riding the famous Hudson sloops, checking out the activist tent, or simply attending a song circle on the lawn, the Great Hudson River Revival (popularly the Clearwater Festival) is a hippie’s paradise. Solar-powered and low-emission, the festival attracts a different type of concert-goer—the type that likes to sing along and wants to bring the kids. Clearwater is definitely a family-friendly event, so don’t expect hipsters, young people, or instruments that plug in—they may override the solar panels. In beautiful
Croton-on-Hudson, the festival is also a needed escape from the summer city heat. The day is a blast, though—90-year-old Pete Seeger performed twice—and there are so many different tents and events that the day sometimes feels overwhelming with good cheer and well-meaning activists. As long as the sunshiny spirit of the folk-loving masses staves off the rain, the festival is a sure hit, and one way to remember during the hot summer that not everyone is a jaded New Yorker.
Bonnaroo
Bonnaroo is technically a music festival, but it might be more accurate to call it a town—or a small civilization, a society founded around a mutual appreciation for live music, greasy food, late-night movie screenings, and walking around covered in increasingly thick layers of mud, sweat, and sunscreen for four days straight.
Yes, it gets pretty gross on the gigantic farm in Manchester, Tenn. where Bonnaroo is held every June. But the festival consistently draws some pretty awesome acts, musical and otherwise, so it’s hard to be bothered even by the filthy porta-potties.
This summer, headliners included the disparate Metallica, Pearl Jam, Jack Johnson, B.B. King, My Morning Jacket, and Kanye West, to name a few. But for the most part, the smaller acts (of which there were plenty, considering there were nearly 100 bands on the lineup) were a lot more fun. MSTRKRFT, an electronic duo from Toronto, for example, put on a show that can only be described as kick-ass—the atmosphere in the audience crossed the line into rave territory as MSTRKRFT themselves smoked cigarettes and chugged Courvoisier on stage.
The only frustrating things about Bonnaroo, besides the fact that many of the best acts take place at the same time, are the exhaustion and dehydration that come with living in a tent for several days in sweltering heat. But no matter—Bonnaroo is totally worth it, as hordes of satisfied hippies and hipsters will attest to.
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