And Finally, A Bit of Self-Promotion

Hey blog followers and other readers who haven't declared their allegiance! Just because the Bushwick Rooftop Festival is over doesn't mean you have to stop checking in with me. As it happens, I have a blog of my own and I'm on the Twitter. So come say hello and let me get some of that sweet Blogspot ad money. God knows I'm barely getting by selling fish heads.

Drink Hard Liquor Then Fall Over

We did it! Two days of music, booze, and heatstroke went off mostly without a hitch! Plus someone stole and crashed a delivery truck. Whoever you are, that’s some Neal Cassady shit right there, so good job. Our dreams may have been smaller than Biggie’s but the feeling of accomplishment should be just as B.I.G.

There was fire dancing, there were crowds in the triple digits, there was so much music it was easy to get spoiled and just decide you were going to skip a band to catch up with friends or flirt or just stare at the skyline. I moved to Bushwick two years ago this month and however much time I may have spent at Goodbye Blue Monday or the Market Hotel or the basement of the Northeast Kingdom, this weekend was the first one that I really felt like a part of whatever scene it is that exists when we talk about the scene in Bushwick. And I didn’t even need to play an instrument or show any discernible talent!

At some point Sunday night, I decided to take advantage of living up the block from 210 Cook and go use the bathroom at my apartment. As I walked down the street, I was enveloped by noise and saw people on every corner, talking, laughing, what have you. In what I like to jokingly refer to as a post-industrial hell, was the summer truly starting. To make it all the more exciting, I knew I’d been spending my time at the best damn Memorial Day party in the city.

It was all thanks to you guys of course. If no one had shown up to this it would have been a real bummer. Not to mention weird. I mean, come on, free shows two days in a row, outdoors on Memorial Day. Hell, if no one showed I may have suspected I’d woken up in some 28 Days Later horror world. More so than you guys, our lovely attendees, thank you to the folks gracious enough to host us. You put up with a lot and considering I haven’t heard from Bird Dog since the weekend ended, you may have killed him after all was said and done. I would totally understand that since the loud, raucous parties without broken glass in the stairwells that you agreed to host became loud, raucous parties with broken glass in the stairwells.



Speaking of the broken glass in the stairwells: come on guys, we can do better. I helped Bird Dog clean up 75 Stewart on Sunday afternoon and walking up there was like something out of 28 Days Later. Damn it, I need to watch more movies. While bottles everywhere is to be unfortunately expected, what is with you morons that just had to piss and break bottles in the stairwells? Selfish hedonism is great and everything, but you can’t expect there to be more parties if you burn the place down every time. The same thing goes for the genius that threw the first bottle off the roof Sunday night. Whoever you are, you’re probably the kind of asshole that groused about the cops showing up. Maybe they did because they were waiting for some brainless dolt like you to give them an excuse to clear the roof. You want to break bottles? First, go back to being thirteen. Second, go find your own roof.

I could have done better too though, so it’s not like I’m going to sit here and lecture you guys without critiquing myself. My buddy Tim, a real journalist, mentioned that the blog could have contained some information about, y’know, the bands playing. I’d roll out excuses, but no, this could have been better. I could have stayed sober enough to recap the musical performances. I could have manned up and kissed you that night. I could have spelled “Haiti” correctly when making a mean joke at its expense. Well, there’s always next time.

Let’s end on a high note. If there’s one thing I’ll take away from this weekend, it’s the experience of driving around in Bird Dog’s mini-van to go a restaurant he used to work at so we could get ice. The seats were ripped out to accommodate empty kegs that rolled around making their own metallic, clanking music, and it bothered Bird Dog to the point where he asked me to climb back and re-arrange them so as to stop the noise. So there I was standing up in the back of a car fiddling with kegs while Bird Dog zoomed down Flushing Avenue. It was dangerous, moronic, and definitely illegal, which are three ingredients you need for any good weekend.

I Surrender! I Surrender!

I guess I can't lead off this blog post with "Oh my god you guys" because I can't repeat myself like that in good conscience. Still, despite my usual ability to spin a story out of anything, I'm completely at a loss for words. People of Brooklyn, you know how to fucking party. I'd say revel in it, but if you're anything like me (sore and your body crying out for alcohol) reveling is the last thing on your mind. This recap going up on Tuesday as opposed to Monday, for instance, is a direct result of my having an after-party on my roof and being up drinking until SUNRISE.

Here's a stat: Bird Dog bought twenty thirty-six packs of premium Budweiser beer and we ran out of them well before the party was over. You animals drank seven hundred and twenty beers and then demanded more! One of you was so drunk and spoiled that you thought you could claim to have been Saturday night's bartender and come back to the trough and steal the beer that belonged to my friends and me. Listen up you fucking waif: being young and pretty doesn't last forever, so don't get used to trying to pull that shit. Furthermore, don't get angry when you get called out, that's just embarrassing.

Sorry, didn't mean to get angry. Sunday night was great even if the cops came and even if you all eventually disregarded the whole thing about not throwing bottles off the roof. It probably makes me a shitty official festival blogger but I can't pick a standout band because the music was incidental to me running around with my shirt off and trying to figure out how many beers I could fit in my body in one weekend. How were Darlings? I wanted to see them but by the time they were on I was, well, this is where I was at:

I don't know about the love Sunday night either. I definitely saw some of you getting close to each other Saturday. All I saw Sunday was a drunken couple having one of those cringe-worthy arguments that happen in public sometimes, what with the grabbing and the crying and the carrying on like no one else is around. I'm sure they're nice people otherwise.

Aside from the fact that it brought the wrath of New York's finest, kudos to the person or persons who brought fireworks with them. Troy Patterson might think otherwise, but Sunday night, there was something about those magnificent whistles and pops that made the atmosphere that much anarchic and celebratory.

I don't know, I think this post was kind of downer. I didn't mean for it to be, I'm just sad that it's all over. BUT! Stay tuned for another post or two about what did it all mean and what does the future hold.

Again! Again!

Oh my god you guys. Man. Anyone else fall asleep with their shoes on? Was it just me? Because I definitely did that. I was supposed to go for a nice day of no rain and free music and got just what I was asking for. So hooray for that. I was there for almost all of it, from the calm, beach-like atmosphere when the sun was out to Ava Luna's darkness destroying set to the Trader Joe's late-shift kids showing up to that moment where I knew I had too much of everything and was just wandering around the roof grinning.

1000 internets to all the wonderful bands that played last night, hopefully you got to catch all of them and weren't just spending all your time on the line for the bathroom. One of my roommates said that toilet line must be what it's like to live in Hati, and at the risk of stirring up the Brooklyn Vegan hornet's nest again, I'm going to wholeheartedly agree with that. So when you see Bird Dog, thank him for letting you experience a piece of life in the Third World.

Hey did anyone find a camo shoulder bag? It had my notebook in it, I'm kind of bummed it's gone. Also because that means I need to buy a new one I guess? Uggggggggggh. I blame the introduction of Turbo Shandy to my drinking diet and the fact that at some point I was actually drinking coffee brandy straight out of the bottle.

I argued with someone as to whether or not Day One of the festival delivered on all the promises of the blog and then offered to make out with her just to make sure it did. Because bloggers = sexy. Regardless of my misadventures, I saw you all there, including you sketchy people who didn't want to be friendly, and you were all poor and beautiful and some of you were actually making out with each other. Way to go.


Did anyone have a moment with a guy or a girl thought you inextricably screwed up with him or her? Was there anything off about the night and you wish you had a chance to do it again? Well good news, there's a whole second day of music and sun and booze! It's like Bonnaroo in your backyard!

Tonight's outlandish promise: your intrepid correspondent actually manages to get his shoes off and fall asleep in his bed.

A Final Word

C'mere a minute, I have to speak to you.

NUMBER 1: WHAT ELSE ARE YOU GONNA DO?

I’m not gonna lie to you folks, I’ve about exhausted my repertoire of persuasive rhetoric in convincing you to come the Bushwick Rooftop Festival. I’ve appealed to your laziness and gluttony and your insecurity. I’ve mocked your poverty and tugged at your heartstrings. At this point, if you don’t want to come to the Bushwick Rooftop Festival, I don’t know what else there is to say.

Except for this: what else are you gonna do?

I know, it’s Memorial Day weekend and you’ve been invited to a million different things. Probably barbecues for the most part. Maybe even a barbecue hosted by the rich family of that girl you’re shtupping and you need to make a good impression. Well the Bushwick Rooftop Festival is a barbecue too. Really, we’re gonna have burgers. We’ll also have live music, lots of live music, plenty to go around. So bring the rich girl’s family, I’ll distract the father with a long pointless story about one of my many romantic failures and you the girlie can get drunk.

All I’m saying is that you know that no matter what you’re going to be doing this weekend, nothing will come close in quality to 24 hours of music on two enormous roofs in the heart of New York’s most vibrant art scene. BAM! I can write like a real promoter, I was just fucking with y’all all along.

On a personal note, I’d like to thank Bird Dog for giving me the opportunity to say whatever the hell I wanted and call it promotion. I want to thank you kids for reading (you DID read all these, didn’t you?) and coming along on this magical journey. The blog isn’t totally dead yet, I’m sure we’ll have a postgame wrap-up at the end of the weekend with pictures and other things, but until then, it’s been a blast. Find me during the festival and let’s chat.

The author, in his natural habitat

WE ARE AGAINST IT WITH YOU

I know that this is the second LCD Soundsystem video I've used to introduce a post, but James Murphy is the King Of Brooklyn and he just, speaks to me man. Ya dig?

NUMBER 2: IT'S REAL

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the Bushwick Rooftop Festival occurs the same weekend that Sex and the City 2 opens. Bird Dog will never admit to it, but the completely antithetical nature of the two events give the kind of stunning contrast to your potential weekends that can only come from careful planning.


Go on, gaze in horror at the Photoshop-smooth face of Sarah Jessica-Parker. Do so and know that this movie is not for us. I know people want a little escapism every now and again, but think critically for once in your miserable life. This is a movie about four incredibly rich women completely unaffected by the worst financial downturn in a generation who have so many problems being rich and bored that they get away from it all in Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi is located in the United Arab Emirates, which is famously home to Dubai, a place whose wealth vanished into the sands it was built on when we realized the entire fucking world was overleveraged.

In short: four cartoon characters with no connection to the real world visit a cartoon fantasyland that represents everything that was wrong with the world in the days of the real estate bubble. Perfect fit.



But oh that escapism. I’d ask what you have to escape from but I’ve already gone over the fact that you’re poor and the only thing you can afford to do is attend the Bushwick Rooftop Festival. But really, I think air conditioned movie escapism isn’t even necessary in New York City. Why escape into some movie studio’s fairytale version of New York when you can escape into the real New York, a place with endless options and adventures in every bar, if not on every corner? Why escape into something that’s not only an obvious cash grab but is apparently grossly offensive to anyone who can record a reading on an EEG? Sex and the City 2 is plastic consumption porn for desperate souls living someplace where a movie is the only option.

The Bushwick Rooftop Festival, on the other hand, is alive! It’s unpredictable and ramshackle, which is just beautiful. Shit, Bird Dog hasn’t even found enough people to bartend yet (which by the way, if you’d like to drink for free, you should volunteer). Yeah maybe we’re hipster scum, but we’re just a couple days away from turning a lot of hard work into an explosion of passion and energy. I’ll escape into that any day.

If You Feel Compelled Towards Me, That's Just Gravity

VERSUS

The current thinking likewise requires women to divest themselves of all their antiquated notions, and pants, and thereby “free” themselves to couple according to “their own wishes.” By this reckoning, it is the duty of every enlightened female to put across in order to show how enlightened she is. She won’t submit or succumb, perhaps she will even aggressively pursue. And because banging a lot of guys is a demonstration of enlightenment, the traditional blandishments are no longer required in order to get girls into bed. Also de rigueur for girls is a lot of noise about the condition of their own libido, which evidently makes them not unladylike or blabby, but “equal.” Any woman with the slightest bit of restraint is going to be yelled at for being a dowdy, outmoded essentialist. An enemy of the state, practically. And meanwhile, no romance for anybody. (via The Awl)

NUMBER 3: EVERYONE GETS LAID

It was bound to happen, no? When you spend over a week trying to convince a group of people why they should attend the event you’re throwing, eventually you’re going to end up aiming for the groin. I don’t think that’s a problem though. Even paragons of lameness Blink-182 recognized that one of the primal motivators that sends young people to see live music is the chance that they can meet that special someone, even if she’s only around for a couple days or he ends up being a total psychopath.

It won't be like this. I promise.

When I say, “Everyone gets laid” what I’m really saying is that you have the chance to do so. But the line wouldn’t have been as funny if Al Czervik had included the possibility of failure.



Don’t worry about the failure. I know, some of us you are too awkward, too unfashionable, too skittish to pick a guy or girl up at a party. Meeting people and convincing them that you’re a person worth hanging out with is hard enough. Meeting a person and convincing her that letting you stick your tongue down her throat is a good idea can be even harder. Especially when you’re prone to blurting out things like “Spines can be sexy!”

It won't be like this either. Way too cute.

Of course, there’s going to be alcohol. Alcohol always helps. There will also be music. Glorious, sometimes sensual music. You’ll be drunk and you’ll be dancing when you see someone that’s on the same wavelength as you. Talk to him! Ask that girl if you can buy her an exceptionally cheap beer, maybe she’s out of money! It’s a big roof, wander until you fall in with a group of strangers and start talking with them. At some point it’s just going to be you and one other girl. Then a break in the conversation, a shy smile or a maybe a flash of recognition at what you both want. Go with it.

Maybe like this. You could do worse.

I also can’t, in good conscience, make the promise that everyone gets off, because like the quote above argues, the sexual revolution has probably been way better for dudes than for chicks. Maybe we can start this weekend on making it more equal. We must be more excellent to each other. I can’t speak for ladies because I am not one, but guys, maybe we can not be complete assholes? Don't do something dumb like letting her hear you call her a slut the next day when you talk to your boys. In fact, it's 2010, guys: stop calling girls sluts. For starters, your peers judge you on how often you can GET IT WET with as many partners as possible, so why should women have to bear the brunt of your scorn just because they want to fuck guys other than you? Also, in attempt to make things equal, some genius came up with the term “manwhore”, which, in the spirit of every 21st century portmanteau, is fucking retarded and meaningless. Do you understand your regressive views on open and equal sexuality are killing the English language? Have some fucking respect, if not for your partner then for us poor slobs who like decent goddamn prose.

This dude knows what I'm talking about.

Still, the promise is there. If the promise of ecstasy is there, there’s also the promise of heartbreak, believe me I understand that.

I am CONSTANTLY on this tip.

There’s also the promise though, of lying in bed next to each other, where you feel like you can live for days. That’s a Rescue Bird line and if they play “Melt” I swear I’ll start weeping like a child.

If you see me wandering around and singing this song to myself, don't worry, I'm just drunk/on drugs.

In Which We Enter The Romantic Section Of The Advertising

Hey guys, I know I've been a little mean the last couple of posts, but sometimes in advertising and promotion you have to break someone down a bit and make him question himself before he'll be willing to listen to your pitch. It's like how High Life tells you you're a dumb bitch for drinking Bud Light but then they roll out this ad:



Things will be nice for the remainder of the blog though, so no hard feelings?

NUMBER 4: THAT VIEW

I read somewhere once that people who have a roof in New York always try to make a “thing” out of it. That is to say, we can’t just enjoy the fact that we’re on a roof and it’s nice out, it has to mean something in the greater scheme of living in New York. Yeah, guilty, we’re navel gazers, so what? If you could go up and see the world’s most awesome skyline every time you were on your roof, wouldn’t you be super inspired and want to share it with everyone? Let’s face it, some second tier cities might claim otherwise, but New York’s skyline is by far the best.

Sometimes I go up on my roof to look at the skyline. I live on the top floor of a three floor walk-up and while the roof isn’t huge, the view up there still stretches from the Brooklyn Bridge to the Citi building. I stare at the lights and as hard as I try, I can’t see anything in front of me that isn’t under the control of a nebbish billionaire with a God complex.

Sometimes I wish it really did look like that

Jonah Weiner, writing about Staten Island’s relationship to Manhattan in Slate, calls the Manhattan skyline a “twinkling kingdom” in the eyes of Working Girl’s Melanie Griffith. Like Melanie Griffith, so many young people in the city are strivers, even if they aren’t willing to admit it. We come here and move to Brooklyn, in part because it’s all we can afford and no one wants to live in Queens. Then we work and when we’re not hustling, we stare at the skyline and tell ourselves that soon enough we’ll be in those skyscrapers looking down on the next generation of kids trying to get into the kingdom.

So you’ll be up there on the expansive rooftop of 75 Stewart Ave, listening to Gunfight. In between one of the songs maybe you’ll stop to look around and see the same things I do: history, beauty, a reason to keep moving forward.

Oh That Damnable Recession

Does anyone else but me consider the name "The Great Recession" incredibly stupid? Like, if you've got kids, are you going to tell them that's what it was called? I think I'd just die of shame, especially considering our grandparents lived through the goddamn Great Depression. Now THAT sounds like a terrible thing to live through.

NUMBER 5: YOU'RE POOR

Continuing with our ongoing coverage of how you’re broke as a joke, we come to perhaps the best part about the Bushwick Rooftop Festival. Have I mentioned yet that admission to this incredible party is the very reasonable NOTHING? No? Maybe I should have mentioned that earlier, because SHIT IS FREE LIKE AIR SON. Where else can you possibly see eleven bands in a day and then dance all night to DJs for no money? Not at your damn house, I’ll tell you that much. You can show up to the Bushwick Rooftop Festival with no money in your wallet and you can have as good a time as anyone else there.

Just picture yourself there in your skinny jeans

Well OK, maybe not, because food and beer cost money, but they will be reasonably priced. This ain’t Get Raped By A Guy Screaming Along To Sevendust ’99. HAH! Callback!

I Am Obviously Not Don Draper Either

This is a true story. The first Memorial Day weekend I spent in the city was spent like every other weekend here: getting drunk in Bushwick. Of course, back then, I lived all the way in Harlem, on 143rd Street and Broadway. For whatever reason, I decided to walk from the 6th Ave stop on the L to Penn Station to catch the 1. When I got there, it was just me and a gorgeous woman sitting on the bench waiting for the uptown train. She was reading and I was sitting there trying to think of something to say to her. That's when it happened.

A drunk as hell Asian kid approached us and asked if we lived in the city. Me and the woman looked at each other before telling him that yes, we live here.

"Oh awesome," he said. "So can you guys tell me where the party is at right now?"

We tried to explain to him that the city empties out around Memorial Day, but maybe he could try the West Village or the Lower East Side.

"OK, but like, where are the Asian girls?" he asked. That flummoxed both of us, and when we told him that he could probably just try the places we already told him, he told us again that he was on a search for Asian girls looking to party. Well, we kept insisting that it was Memorial Day weekend and everyone was gone, but he wouldn't accept that answer.

Finally, I pointed across the tracks and said, "Go take that train on the other side. Take it downtown and you'll find people who want to party." He thanked us and finally bounded off. Before he could come back, the uptown 1 came and me and the woman got on and sat across from each other.

We started talking about how crazy that guy was, but the conversation shifted to being about ourselves pretty quickly. She was reading a book set in the 20s, she loved pre-Depression America. I told her about how I couldn't get enough of Vonnegut and Hunter S. Thompson. She lived in the Bronx, I told her about how I worked for the Borough President. She told me she was a belly dancer. Finally the train got 145th Street.

"Hey," I said, stepping up, "this has been fun. You want to get a beer sometime?"

She looked at me and smiled. "I'm married." I'd been ignoring the ridiculously large ring on her finger in the hopes it wasn't the case. Then she gave me her number anyway. I stepped into the warm night feeling triumphant.

What was funny was that I didn't know her name. I didn't put it in my phone right when she gave me her number. Also, I was terrified of calling her because I thought maybe her husband was some old Mafia guy hanging out in Riverdale and that I'd wake up on the bottom of the East River. So I sent one lame text and never heard from her.

Uh, anyway, on to reason number 6 for you attend the Bushwick Rooftop Festival!

NUMBER 6: YOU'RE POOR

The only thing a New Yorker likes more than living in New York is one of those magical moments where they get out of the city for a weekend and enjoy a place that isn’t a hot, sticky mess of human interconnectedness. Memorial Day weekend is an excellent chance to enjoy such a lark. If you’re a rich jerk, that is. You live in Brooklyn and probably bartend or something. What, you’re gonna jet off for a weekend in the Hamptons or something. No, you’re not Don Draper, motherfucker. Then again, maybe you don’t want to be because he’s a contradictory jumble of terrible qualities that appeal to the worst in men and women.

(Pictured: Not you)

Not to mention you need a car if you’re going to escape the city limits. You want to put your weekend trip, with its limited amount of non-work hours afforded to you, in the hands of some junkie bus driver and surround yourself by MORE hot, sticky humans. No, of course not. And don’t kid yourself and say you’re taking an airplane, because then I’m going to have to get you all depressed again and mention that you have no job/money because the Great Recession (we’re really calling it that?) came and swallowed up both of those things.

Since you’re going to be here anyway, might I suggest the Bushwick Rooftop Festival? It’s a two day extravaganza that will momentarily help you forget your godawful hunger-stricken existence.

In Which We Attempt To Grapple With Things Larger Than Ourselves

Oh fuck me running, I don't have anything clever to put here. Ummm...OH! It's almost three in the goddamn morning, I have work at eight and I'm sitting here WEB LOGGING FOR A MUSIC FESTIVAL. Time to play the 'ol "Where's my life headed?" game.

Yipes.

NUMBER 7: DIY: SO HOT RIGHT NOW

Personal history time! When I was a teenager, I never quite found a scene to be a part of, music-wise anyway. I liked ska and I liked punk, but I was never really running around everywhere trying to go to shows and publish zines. Even dyeing my hair blue was more of a “Let’s fuck around and see what happens” than it was a show of fealty to the Sex Pistols or the Pilfers. I liked Phish alright but definitely wasn’t a jam band kid and I fucking hated Top 40 and the Dave Mathews Band. I was an island to myself, or more accurately, a peninsula: connected to what was around me but still somehow apart. This is still very much the case these days, for better or worse. How else to explain how I’ve lived in the city for four years now but was surprised to learn about places like the Monster Island Basement, Death by Audio, the Market Hotel, or Goodbye Blue Monday? I didn’t know what the Market Hotel was when I first moved to Bushwick and I had unwittingly moved around the corner from it. If I knew how to spot a scene, would I have been to Glasslands before 2009?

DIY is in, kids, hope you know. Lo-fi is in. Got a song? Put some motherfucking fuzz on it. Got a band? Put its name in all lowercase letters. I dig the lo-fi thing, although some of it is starting to feel like people are trying too hard. Really Male Bonding, you sent people who pre-ordered your album cassette tapes? Those things sucked in the 90s and they suck today. The same goes for you, New York Times Sunday Magazine, you trend searching dicks. Yeah yeah, you read something in Pitchfork. Yeah yeah, our instant gratification culture is so bad, right? So bad you want to give me your iPod? I don’t have a motherfucking iPod dude, and I’m damn sure not gonna make do with a Walkman. I remember what it was like fast-forwarding past a song you liked and having to rewind back, that whole stupid little dance. Go make a fucking mixtape on cassette for that girl you’re crushing on you goddamn 13-year-old. Sorry, I get lonely. I think I just secretly wish I could do that for someone.

ANYWAY, DIY: I like it. I go to shows in godforsaken industrial areas and I go to shows in bar basements. I see people putting out their own CDs, doing their damndest to make it on their own terms. I’ve seen Bird Dog do it, and I’ll be damned if the Bushwick Rooftop Festival isn’t the pinnacle of his efforts so far. The man has put this together with spit and carnie sleight of hand, and he’s done the heavy lifting on his own. You think what I’m doing right now is hard? Pff, I could overshare with the internets in my sleep. I can’t book twenty-two bands and convince people in two different apartments to give let me on the roof and throw a party. Bird Dog could and did, and we are all the luckier for it.

Not That I Want To Call It "Our Woodstck," But...

My roommate said he used to play this song when he DJed parties and he would laugh at all the people dancing and not understanding that the joke was in fact on them. That's kind of cruel, kind of awesome, and kind of ironic all at the same time.

NUMBER 8: YOU CAN SAY WERE THERE

Hey here’s a “No duh” moment: we put a lot of cultural cachet in being an early adopter. I’m not going to go into the hows and whys or even criticize it, because right now pumping up that idea plays right the point I’m trying to make.

Years from now, when Bird Dog is an internationally renowned party promoter and DJ and I’m a bitter old failure and drug addict, your horrible, horrible children will be scrolling through your MP7 collection and making fun of all your music. At some point though, they’ll get to something like Ava Luna or Red Wire Black Wire. They’ll turn to you with those awful accusing eyes and say, “Parent, what is this incredible music coming over the holospeakers?”

For a moment, you’ll forget all about the bitterness you feel towards your spousal unit and with pride you’ll tell those little fuckers about how YOU WERE THERE when it felt like lo-fi was going to swallow up the world and when Vultures wormed its way into your heart and you looked over and your spousal unit was looking at you too and you were both tearing up and knew then and there you were meant for each other. You’ll babble on about how YOU WERE THERE when Bushwick felt wide open and untamed, when it was a place where artists went to make art and meet each other and be seen. Before we swallowed ourselves up in a Hipster Runoff apocalypse and sold out and got jobs and suits and spousal units.

Your kids won’t be listening really, but they will like the music. A couple years later, one of them will have formed a band that sounds like what we’re listening to now but with a modern sheen and Pitchfork will give it a 9.2, for a debut album no less. Rolling Stone will catch up a couple years later, with a cover with big block print screamvertising THE BUSHWICK REVIVAL SOUND and you kids will be there smirking and ironically wearing skinny jeans (by then, denim will be almost totally obsolete). Your rotten kids won’t thank you for having such great taste and Rolling Stone won’t run your letters telling them how YOU WERE THERE when it all started, but that won’t mean they’ll be able to take that away from you. So if for some reason you want to miss out on all that, by all means, skip the Bushwick Rooftop Festival.

This Is Why You Never Trust Ze Germans

So one of the first things I said on this blog was that I was going to be listing reasons every day for why you should attend the Bushwick Rooftop fest. You may have noticed there's a big blank spot on Thursday, so here's a funny story for why that happened. See, it was my friend's birthday Wednesday night and he insisted on going to Der Shwarze Kolner. Despite working late that night, I decided to stop by for A beer. That was before I learned that the beers there were served in one liter glasses the size of your head. The next thing I knew I was drinking beer out of a giant glass boot and stopping in at a diner to eat what our waiter called "disco home fries," as he insisted the cook didn't know what disco fries were. Then it was 4:30 in the goddamn morning and I was swerving my bike down Lafayette Avenue so I could get home and go to work at 1 in the afternoon. So yeah, the dog ate my homework. The upside for you guys is that you get two reasons to attend today!

NUMBER 9: IT IS WHAT IT SAYS IT IS



A wise man once said:
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell just as sweet."

An even wiser man once said:
"Oh can't you see, you misjudge me
Look like a farmer, but I'm a lover
You can't judge a book by looking at the cover."

Noble sentiments both, but in this instance I'm advising you to ignore them. When you see the name Bushwick Rooftop Festival, you can rest assured that what you will be attending is the Bushwick Rooftop Festival. Sometimes music festivals are tricky in that sense, like how Woodstock was actually in Bethel or how Altamont should have been called "Get the Shit Kicked Out of You By Hell's Angels Fest" or how Woodstock '99 was really "Get Raped By A Guy Screaming Along To Sevendust '99." No, there's none of that here. Just a simple name, confidently assuring you it's the best possible way for you to spend your Memorial Day Weekend. See you there!

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Welcome! Welcome! Please, Come In, Sit Down! Pants Are Optional!

The required bribes have been received by the authorities and landlords, the soon-to-be-broken promises to the musicians have been made and incredibly enough, a blogger has been found. All of this means the first Bushwick Rooftop Festival is a go! For those of you not in the know, Brooklyn's best handsomest hardest working DJ, DJ Bird Dog, has rounded up a damn fine bunch of musicians to play for free, this Memorial Day weekend, for you lovely people. All you have to do is show up. And maybe be drunk. It always helps to be drunk.

"But wait," you're thinking to yourself, "I go to rooftop parties in Bushwick all the time. Who are these pissants to call their party THE Bushwick Rooftop Festival?" While your concern is appreciated, I can promise you that this is like no other rooftop party you've ever attended. Furthermore, this festival will be so good it will erase from history every other party thrown on a roof in Bushwick. Wait for May 31st and and then check your Flickr accounts and Facebook profiles. The pictures from those other parties will no longer exist. There will be, however, pictures of you having terrific amounts of fun with a whole bunch of your new best friends. "Is a mass memory wipe that safe?" Our tech guy assures us there's only a thirty percent chance everyone wakes up screaming with no memories of anything, but Bird Dog likes those odds, so I do too.

"What will I find on this blog?" What are you, the question police? Fine, I'll tell you. There'll be band profiles, some stuff about the patient souls working the festival, lots of convincing reasons for you to spend the weekend with us and exclusive Justin Beiber news a bunch of other things probably. I'm gonna admit it's not like we put ten years of planning into this. The blog I mean. The festival itself has been meticulously planned, don't let anyone tell you differently. For now, leave some comment telling me I'm not funny and be sure to check out the schedule to the left of this post if you want to find out more about the bands playing Saturday and Sunday.