July 29, 2007

I covered a lot of shows at the McCarren Park pool. More than I have time to cover on this blog. This was back before the city turned it back into a public pool, during the years it was still an empty husk that lay empty until some folks decided to show music and movies there in the summer.

These shows were free, so press access seems pretty lackluster until you realize it meant skipping the hours-long line, and that you got access to the VIP area laden with free Dewar's and free hobnobbing with bands and other writers. Amy Davidson took this picture, one of the many, many photos she'd take for stories I wrote for New York Cool. I like this photo of TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe because that show - a highlight of the music series' second year - remains one of my favorites of all those that I covered at the pool. Past the super hipness of the clientele and the annoying lines, it really felt like there was a scrappy sort of community there, evident this day more than most.

It'd been raining all morning and when I showed up for the first opener I was actually worried that either nobody would show, or that they would cancel because of the weather. As the drops continued to lightly fall, however, people trickled in and the show went on. Not just the show, though. The summer-long wiffle ball tournament continued undaunted, and, maybe unsurprisingly, the line for the slip 'n slide was as long as it ever was. There was such a childlike air of playing in the rain that I didn't really expect at a place where you had to be 21 to enter, in a neighborhood were aloof detachment seemed to be the key to success.

By the time TV on the Radio actually took the stage the skies had since cleared and the pool had filled with twenty-somethings eager to listen, and to dance. For some reason, in my mind, that is Williamsburg in 2007 to me. Something that would otherwise be dumpy, and broken down, and several shades too concerned with cool, but something nevertheless that was fun, and memorable, and right where I wanted to be.