Add These Four Fun NYC Activities To Your Weekend Plans!

Ticket tent and crowds at the Stone Street Oyster Festival at Manhattan's Financial District.

Weekend activities, festivals, events, and exhibitions are coming thick and fast these increasingly autumnal days. So, in addition to the hundred (or so) new gallery shows and the sprawling Maker Faire in Queens, here are a few more ideas, just to make your head spin. 

Stone Street Oyster Festival (Saturday)  

On Saturday from 12:00 noon to 6:00, some 10,000 bivalve- (and beer-) lovers will descend upon the Financial District's historic Stone Street for the 10th Annual Oyster (and beer!) Festival. This event is always a party, and last year more than 25,000 oysters were gulped down by revelers, as all the restaurants on the pretty cobblestoned street set up oyster (and BEER!) tents. No surprise, given the promised "raging party atmosphere", the crowd here skews toward twenty-somethings, but plenty of families are usually on hand as well.

Artsy books at the NY Art Book Fair in Ling Island's MoMA PSA1.

Printed Matter: NY Art Book Fair, at MoMA PS1 (Saturday and Sunday) 

Taking over the entire building of Long Island City's MoMA PS1 and free and open to the public all weekend long, the eighth annual NY Art Book Fair makes for a lively, thoroughly engaging afternoon of browsing and buying and looking at all kinds of fun, original, sometimes kind of crazy art. Last year the NY Art Book Fair featured more than 280 different independent publishers, artists, antiquarians, and booksellers from around the world, most of whom decked out their booths in interesting fashion. I've always had a blast here, and am definitely going back for more. Bonus: excellent food at PS1's "cafeteria", M. Wells.

Photos on containers at Photoville art festival in Brookly Bridge Park Pier 5, NYC.

Photoville NYC, in Brooklyn Bridge Park 

Speaking of free and fun and cool: the pop-up "gallery district" Photoville is back again this (and next) weekend, turning the uplands of Brooklyn Bridge Park's Pier 5 into a photographic art festival of exhibitions, workshops, panels, nighttime projections, and installations, including a new piece by the great André Feliciano, whose Greenhouse from last year in pictured below. If you're bringing the kids, know that Pier 6 next door has a great playground complex; if you're bringing an appetite, know that there will be food trucks and a beer garden. This is a well-curated, well-organized event, and it's all housed in shipping containers and tents.    

Kids resting by André Feliciano's Greenhouse at Photoille art festival in Brookly Park NYC.

Brooklyn Book Festival, at Brooklyn Borough Hall and Plaza (Sunday)

Also free and fun? The extraordinary Brooklyn Book Festival, which transforms the Brooklyn Borough Hall and Plaza into New York City's largest literary gathering of the year. Dozens (and dozens!) of authors are on hand, signing books, giving readings, talking in one of the dizzying array of panels and workshops that happen all day Sunday on some 14 different stages. I tend to just show up and wander and sit and listen to whatever's happening next, but you can plan your day with the full Brooklyn Book Festival schedule and map!

Tshirts, tents and crowds at the Brooklyn Book Festival, at Brooklyn Borough Hall and Plaza.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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