Williamsburg Waterfront Pool Party
September 5th, 2010by Ethan
So here we all are at the Williamsburg Waterfront last Sunday. It was the last of the free summertime Pool Party shows, and there were crazy rumors going around about who the secret headliner was going to be. People were saying it was going to be Jay-Z (spoiler: not Jay-Z). We showed up around 6 and got our over-21 wristbands and headed to the “beer garden”, which is Brooklyn for “area with fence around it full of Porta-Pottys”. As soon as we got our drink tickets (“Excuse me, is this the line for the beer, or the line for the tickets to the beer?” “I don’t know, faggot”) DMC, formerly of Run DMC, took the stage. Not too shabby. Is this the headliner? We asked each other. Nobody had any idea because we were all going off of hearsay… not even sure whose hearsay.
So that was pretty cool. They were on top of their game, and there was a girl dancing really awesomely off to the side of the stage. Never really seen many hip hop shows in the past, so I don’t know how this one stacks up, but I am thoroughly entertained. Then they stop and start saying something, but I can’t understand what they’re saying. Then Andrew W.K. runs onstage. Fuck yeah! As a card-carrying pussy little white boy, that was a lot more exciting for me than Jay-Z or whoever else. I’m still a little unclear, at this point, as to what exactly the set-up is, but it turns out that Andrew W.K. is basically banging on keyboards while DMC raps, and occasionally he grabs a mike to shout some stuff that I can’t hear. He looks absolutely awesome while he does it, of course. I really would have rather had him do some of his own stuff, but that’s neither here nor there.
Got some good photos of that before they retreated offstage. Turns out that dynamite duo wasn’t the headliner, and out came Doug E. Fresh. That would probably be incredibly awesome for a whole lot of people, but he was really before my time and, again, pussy little white boy. Still, very good stuff. Next up, the moment you’ve all been waiting for… Gucci Mane. Cool, thanks the for the free concert, Brooklyn. I’m not complaining. Hopefully I paid my share by losing my 2nd beer ticket after they closed the ticket booth and having to bribe the guy at the Brooklyn Brewery booth to give me another beer. On to the bars!
I should mention that Peter Wallner came to visit, and this was his last day in town, which is how I got convinced to leave the house instead of toiling away in the Internet mines all day like I was supposed to. It all started at brunch….
There was a whole big group of us at brunch… Joe, Peter, me, Andrew, Courtney, Peter’s friend Shannon, two guys whose names are either Jeff or Chris (hopefully one of each), a guy named Andrea or Antonio… etc. Really should have taken some pictures, as much to jog my memory as for any other reason. The morning (early afternoon) was dismally hot, and I headed over to Life Cafe near my house to meet them. Never been to Life Cafe, heard it has a really good brunch, which was corroborated by the fact that people were spilling out onto the sidewalk and Joe informed me that we looking at a 30 minute plus wait time. That, combined with his “waiter’s shame” that our party kept growing every time someone texted him, spurred us to look elsewhere.
We went across the street to the Wreck Room, a dive bar that allegedly also does brunch. There were no other patrons when the 11 of us entered, and the bartender got kind of a deer-in-the-headlights type expression on her face. “I’ll go check with the cook”, she said. She returned shortly to report, “We don’t have any potatoes, so we can’t serve any of the items that have potatoes in them.” “That’s OK”, Courtney said, “do you have any champagne for mimosas?”
Turns out there was only 1 bottle of champagne, and they decided they didn’t really want to do brunch. “We’re all pretty hungover.” “That’s OK, so are we.” She set us all up with lunch menus while she ran across the street to get ingredients for bloody marys. It wasn’t exactly the brunch we had been expecting, but the burgers were good, there was a pool table, and she didn’t charge us for our High Lifes, so all in all a successful brunch.
The night ended with Joe, Peter, Shannon and me alternating between playing King’s Cup and improv games at Shannon’s apartment in Clinton Hill, while Austin was dragged to various bars by a new friend and played giant jenga (really giant jenga?!?). All in all, this day goes in the win column.
Tags: Andrew W.K., DMC, Doug E. Fresh, Gucci Mane, Peter Wallner, Pool Party, Williamsburg Waterfront, Wreck Room