FRIDAY: Pride Ride, Baby!

FIPS has your plans for Friday night (and yes, they involve beer): Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Night at Ride Brooklyn.  Here's what's up:

Area bike shop Ride Brooklyn (whom we lurrve) is kicking off NYC Pride Weekend with booze, bikes, music. This Friday, the BK LGBTQ, straight ally, and cycling communities will be meeting up at Ride Brooklyn (468 Bergen Street) for some celebratory events: First, a bike maintenance clinic happening from 7:30-8, then discounts on bikes and bike schwag from 8 to 9:30, and also (our fav part) a raffle for couple of sexy prizes from Babeland.

After the sale, everyone's assembling for a casual pride ride down to Pacific Standard on Fourth Ave for some happy hour drinkies to celibrate gay pride and, obvi, bikes. 

Since all we apparently talk about on FIPS these days is bikes, we figured it was only fitting to alert you to this rad event going down.  Here's the full schedule if you're planning on heading out.

Watch What You Eat: NYC Food Film Festival

Okay, okay, you can file this one under "technically not in Park Slope."  BUT, if you can get your lazy asses on the train and go a few stops up to DUMBO, you'll be in for a treat.

The fourth annual NYC Food Film Festival features an array of short films that are food-centric.  On tap for this year, we have Smokes & Ears, a doc about how good a pig ear sandwich can be (what?!), The Perfect Oyster, where a guy waxes poetic about—you guessed it—the perfect oyster, and many more.  THEN, they've got food events where you can eat some of the things you saw on-screen. 

Genius, right?

There are a few events happening throughout Manhattan (including the unfortunately named oyster bash, "Suck 'n' Shuck"), but check out the sick events happening right here in Brooklyn.

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Breakin It Down: The Mermaid Parade

Be nice and welcome, Kitty. She blogs here and may write about some shit HERE.

I’ve been living in Brooklyn all of my thirty-one years, and while the bulk of the borough has become somewhat of a big cluster-fuck of benignity, the one place you can consistently count of seeing some bona fide Brooklyn attitude is down in Coney Island. I was raised on the mainland of Coney, in Gravesend, and for whatever reason, I regularly forget just how straight insane the area is.

And when I say insane I mean that in the good way –-like the aunt everyone is scared to invite to family events but winds up being the life of the party each and every time. Coney Island is attitude. And Coney Island on Mermaid Parade day takes that attitude and clumps onto it a nice serving of huge boobs, libidoed up boys and way too much alcohol. This is the combo meal that keeps me comin back year after year.

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The Northside Festival: It's On Like Donkey Kong

The 2nd Northside Festival is almost upon us. True this shit is in Billyburg, but it looks like there is a load of good crap goin on there next weekend, June 24-27.

The L Magazine sent along a little cheat sheet for your asses, so take note and party hard:

Music:

There'll be shows at practically every single venue in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, with performances from over 250 bands including Titus Andronicus, Les Savy Fav, Liars, ?uestlove, Elvis Perkins in Dearland, and more; plus showcases curated by industry influencers like Consequence of Sound, Brooklyn Vegan, Kanine Records, Baeble Music, Green Owl Records, American Myth Recordings, Duke Street Blog, DailyVinyl.com, and I Rock I Roll. Some bands will also be taking to the streets: we'll be announcing impromptu outdoor performances throughout the festival through @thelmagazine on Twitter (For the complete schedule, go here, or check out our streaming channel Northside Radio).

Film:

This will be the inaugural year for film at Northside, and we're showing 5 feature films and over 20 shorts at Williamsburg's brand-new and much-anticipated movie theater, indieScreen. Highlights include a short directed by James Franco ("The Feast of Stephen") and a new feature from Todd Solondz ("Life During Wartime"), plus the Animation Block Party, an annual marathon of animated shorts featuring a Q&A with participants Odd Todd, Lisa LaBracio, Aaron Hughes, Dan Meth and Emily Hubley (For more on the film programming, please go here).

Art: 

We're teaming up again with the Williamsburg Gallery Association to highlight exhibitions and openings at neighborhood galleries like Momenta Art and Like the Spice Gallery. This year, the shows will focus on local artists and performers (For more on the art programming, please go here).

More:

There will be badge deals aplenty, including specials at Barcade, Nita Nita, Iona, The Gutter and many more bars and restaurants across the neighborhoods. The L is giving away some badges (plus an iPad!) on its site to a few lucky readers. We'll also be offering badges of the Foursquare persuasion: users can unlock the special "Northside" badge by checking into Northside HQ, the brand-new outdoor venue on the Greenpoint Waterfront, or any 3 official Northside venues. (For more info on purchasing badges and individual tickets please go here).

The Annual 7th Heaven [Or Hell?] Street Fair

I'm going with hell this year since it is easily 500 degrees in the center of 7th Ave at this very moment, surely an indicator of hades-like conditions.

I'm heading back out now that I've dropped off the beast, who is still panting pitifully to the beat of the keyboard clickety clacking. Had to carry him the last two blocks and he's no lightweight. 

In defense of our street fair, it's getting a lot better, which is to say that the ratio of local or cool stuff is way up from the days when it was only tube sock and sheet set purveyors.

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