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Atlantic Antic Festival this weekend

Posted Thursday, September 27, 2007, 6:11 PM by Lonely Planet

New York's best parties have never been in nightclubs or penthouse apartments - you find them on the streets and the best-kept secret (at least to the outside world, and possibly Manhattan) is Brooklyn's Atlantic Antic, held 10am to 6pm this Sunday.

Now in its 33rd incarnation, the annual Antic is a ten-block walk along Atlantic Ave (between Boerum Hill and Brooklyn Heights) past a catch-all of Brooklyn's diverse self: R&B bands in pastel suits, pulled-pork sandwiches, beefy grandmother belly dancers, free hapkido lessons, and indie bands in last-night's clothes.

If you're in New York this Sunday, go. Start from the Atlantic Ave subway stop (reached by B, D, M, N, Q, R, 2, 3, 4, 5 lines) and walk west along the avenue to Brooklyn Heights. Here's a few stopping points heading west, with all sorts of food stops along the way:

* Near the Atlantic Ave stop, Gumbo (493 Atlantic Ave), between 3rd Avenue and Nevins, stages Jamaican dub poet jaBEZ (at 2pm) and Bonga and Voodou Drums of Haiti (at 3pm). Nearby Hank's Saloon (46 3rd Ave) goes for rockabilly.

* Southern rock and white-goatee blues gets on at Downtown Atlantic (364 Atlantic Ave), between Bond and Hoyt Sts.

* Jolie (320 Atlantic Ave), between Hoyt and Smith Sts, goes for a bit more self-conscious folk.

* At the Antic's mid-way point, at Boerum Pl, you can climb aboard 1917 public buses as part of the nearby New York Transit Museum's annual display.

* A couple blocks west, between Court and Clinton Sts, is belly-dancer central, where Middle Eastern and Greek music is played on a giant stage all day.

* Walk on, for the Antic's trashy west end. The block between Hicks and Henry St gets trashy: Last Exit (136 Atlantic Ave) is all about go-go dancing and shameless burlesque, including the xylophone-punk of Anna Copa Cabana.

* And the nearby stage outside Magnetic Fields (97 Atlantic Ave) is all crunchy garage rock and swinging-London wannabes; Mary Weiss from the '60s girl-band Shangri-Las - and sounding like her ol' Ramones-inspiring self on her new album - plays at 4.30pm.

- Robert Reid