DUMBO Arts Fesitval

Yesterday my friend Meghan and I headed over to DUMBO in Brooklyn to attend the DUMBO Arts Festival. Meghan beat me there by a few minutes and she texted me that she was right by the singing. Sure enough, right across the street from the subway was our first musician of the day.

Meghan and our first show of the day

While we waited for Meghan's friend Carla and two of her friends, we grabbed a bite to eat at the little sandwich shop on the corner. I had a delicious tomato, mozzarella and basil sandwich. Mmm mmm mmm. Hopefully I can replicate that for myself in a few days! Carla and the boys weren't too far behind our sandwiches and we set off to see some arts. As we walked down the street checking out all the tables with art, jewelry and clothes we came across a white van with the doors open. There was a sign on the door that said "Come on in! Hear a song!" Carla and Meghan bravely went in to check it out. As we moved along we ran into a performance art group. Performance art makes me a little uncomfortable. I'm not really sure what to do with it. Kyle said the same thing and added he's never sure if he's supposed to clap or just move on. It's true.

Performance art on the street corner

Throughout the day we saw a lot of other cool stuff: The Pigeonhole (an indoor maze made of THOUSANDS of cardboard boxes), a group stilt walk, film art, a hand shaking painting, loads of musicians and even contributed some of our own art at the children's interactive section:

Carla and Kyle adding some art to the murals

After awhile our group parted ways and Meghan and I went to get some ice cream down by the Brooklyn Bridge. Heaven in a cone, people, heaven in a cone. Well, not quite heaven in a cone because that's Carvel to me. Something like a heaven holding place. We headed over to one street corner to check out this musician named Heidi Kole. She was described in the program as playing Motown, classic R&B and soul on the acoustic guitar. Sounded cool to me! She told us a story about the other day when she was busking in the subway. This guy came up to talk with her and during their conversation she began the intro to the next song she was going to play. All of a sudden, he started rapping over the intro. She loved it so much that she invited him to join her that day! Together they did a really interesting, cool version of "Ain't No Sunshine." Definitely my favorite that she did.

Heidi Kole and the rapper

It had been a really long day so Meghan and I decided to head to the subway and back to Manhattan. During our walk, we heard some New Orleans style brass band music so we followed our ears. Good choice, ladies! On the corner was a band called Lucky Chops. Definitely check them out - they are SO GOOD and loads of fun to dance along with. We hung out on that street corner until they played their finale, the ever popular "When The Saints Go Marching In."

Lucky Chops

I'd like to say that we continued our walk to the subway and found it with no problem but we actually got a bit turned around. It was fine at first, we just had an adventure trying to figure things out on our own. Eventually though our long day caught up with us and we got tired of searching. Meghan spotted a cop sitting in a car and we asked him for some directions. He was semi-helpful, enough that it got us to the station, on a train and back to Manhattan. Later on I found a second wind and wrote a paper for school. Sweet!