This weekend All Points West brings the summer festival circuit to our area (albeit to New Jersey), and if you plan on making the trek, here are some helpful tips. Before You Go Coat yourself in sun tan lotion. Look over the list of things you can and cannot bring, it may surprise you! Some things you cannot bring include: stuffed animals, flags, blankets and instruments. You can, in an effort to reduce waste,......

Hometown post-punk heroes Sonic Youth played a free show for approximately 7,000 fans in Battery Park on July 4th as part of the River to River Festival. The decades-old band started the set with a spellbinding, spacey rendition of “She is Not Alone,” followed by the Kim Gordon-led classic “Bull in the Heather.” By the third song, a blistering “Silver Rocket,” 50-year-old frontman Thurston Moore seemed to have had enough of the photographers separating his......

Not too long ago there was a heated debate over the upcoming Rock the Harbor festival, making it the city's most controversial festival to date! The only source of conflict was geographic location...the fest will take place on Staten Island this coming Saturday. For those who can get over the stigma attached to the borough, you're in for a treat. Pat Duffy, who also runs the blog Pop Tarts Suck Toasted, has helped organize a......

In a couple of weeks Staten Island will hold its very own music festival called Rock the Harbor, something Brooklyn Vegan posted about this week -- instantly sparking a lot of "discussion" about the borough ("Does everyone have to tan and work out before the show?" etc). With Manhattanites trying to pawn SI off on Jersey, and Jerseyites rejecting it, it was only a matter of time before Staten Island Advance caught wind of the......

Alan Alda, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Brian Greene announcing the festival. The World Science Festival is coming to New York, and starting tomorrow we'll become the hub of all things scientific. The NY Times pondered the idea of the city as a national science center earlier this week, saying "there’s plenty of science getting done here — it just gets overshadowed by everything else." The fest runs through Sunday with events spanning the spectrum;......

Photo of The Matchbox Shows by Laura Heit courtesy of the artist. While moviegoers pack theaters for summer blockbusters like Iron Man and Indiana Jones, it’s refreshing to find big crowds flocking to an entirely different spectacle, one celebrating the Victorian-era phenomenon of do-it-yourself “toy theater” kits. The cavernous St. Ann’s Warehouse in DUMBO was packed on Saturday night for the eighth annual Toy Theater Festival, presented by Great Small Works, a company dedicated to......

Barbecue fans will want to start bracing their colons for the 6th Annual Big Apple Barbecue Block Party, which has been announced for June 7th and 8th in Madison Square Park. Gothamist tore through the festival of regional barbecue last year, devouring everything from pork shoulder to Brunswick stew to candied ribs. New York will be well represented this year by Hill Country, Rack and Soul, Blue Smoke, and Dinosaur Bar-B-Que; other purveyors range......

Every year we're drawn to the Coney Island shoreline by the sirens...or at least, The Village Voice Siren Festival. This year they seem a bit more on top of things, announcing their initial lineup today -- a full two months before the show! This year's fest, their 8th, is being held on July 19th and promises some big names (drum roll please):STEPHEN MALKMUS AND THE JICKS, BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE, THE HELIO SEQUENCE, BEACH HOUSE, TIMES......

In 2006, Lou Reed revived his album Berlin by performing it in its entirety with a small orchestra for five sold-out shows at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. The 1973 album, which riffs on themes of drugs, love and suicide, was a commercial failure when it came out; Lester Bangs described it as “the bastard progeny of a drunken flaccid tumble between Tennessee Williams and Hubert (Last Exit From Brooklyn) Selby, Jr.” But in......

Hooray Brooklyn The summertime free music options keep on rolling out. Not to be outdone by the recent Summerstage announcement or River to River's Wire kick-off, Brooklyn's answer to free in-park music stepped up this week to show what they've got. The Celebrate Brooklyn series runs all summer long at the Prospect Park Band Shell, and will kick off with a free Isaac Hayes show on June 12th. From there, they'll host a number of......

Indie animator Bill Plympton has just finished his sixth animated feature, for which he hand drew every cell. Called Idiots and Angels, it tells the haunting and humorous story of a dyspeptic working stiff who wakes up one morning and finds, to his horror, angel's wings sprouting out of his back. Try as he may to rid himself of the grotesque mutation, they inevitably take over his life and soon become the wings of desire......

Photo of Orphic Memory Sausage by Matthew Weinreb 2008, printed with permission from the artists: Mimi Oka and Doug Fitch. Lots of chefs consider their food to be art, but few artists see their art as food. A new festival called Umami – a Japanese word meaning "savory" or "meaty" – is trying to change all that. The ten day smorgasbord, which started Tuesday, spotlights artists and performers who use food as a medium, and......

Goldenvoice concerts, the people who bring the West Coast Coachella each year, are now planning a similar concert for us East Coasters. And it's set to be right in our very own backyard. Sort of. We're told the event will happen at an outdoor space that we are not allowed to disclose at this time, but we will say it's in Sopranos territory (and not Vineland). We hear you may just be able to reach......