Morning Antics

The Atlantic Antic, that is. This morning we walked over to the annual street festival that runs across Atlantic Ave. from 4th Ave. to about Clinton (10 long city blocks). The weather was great and the usual street fair suspects were represented, including the omnipresent Atlantic Yards and New Jersey Net booths that are trying to win over the hearts and minds of the community before they turn Brownstone Brooklyn into mini-Midtown Manhattan.

It was still fun walking down the street, engaging in some people-watching and taking in the sights. Plus, I brought my camera with us to capture some of the scenes. One of the highlights was the Park Slope indie-kid band called Care Bears On Fire. They’re actually pretty darn good. Heck, I can’t hate since the only guitar playing I do is on Guitar Hero. But these twelve year-olds have got serious indie cred. I remember first hearing them somewhere around 7th Ave./6th Street last summer as I walked down to South Slope. All I could hear was a band covering The White Stripes’ 7 Nation Army at some block party. Intrigued, I walked over and sure enough it was a bunch of kids. Subsequently, I saw the New York Magazine piece on them and now we got to catch them live at the Antic. If they ever make it to adulthood as a group, maybe I’ll bemoan that they were “so much cooler when they were just tweens” or talk about how I “really like their earlier stuff. You know, before they went to high school.”

After making it pretty much to the end of the festival, we turned around and headed back toward Park Slope. We came across Maracatu NY, a pretty cool Brazilian rhythym ensemble that I’ve seen before in our neighborhood (I think they walked down 5th Ave. in Park Slope about a year ago during the World Cup).