Hanging with the hipsters

Melissa and I had a lovely day out on Sunday hob nobbing with the hipsters at the free Blonde Redhead gig at McCarron Park Pool in Brooklyn.

McCarron Park Pool is a giant empty public swimming pool in Greenpoint, supposedly one of the largest pools in the world - the size of three Olympic pools - which, in its day, boasted a capacity of 6,800 simultaneous swimmers according to this article on Freewilliamsburg.com. 6,800!!! Can you IMAGINE!!! I can attest to the size of it, it’s bloody enormous!!! It must have been hell to clean.

After falling into disrepair the pool was closed in the mid eighties and was pretty much left to rot due to lack finances to repair it, that is until the last couple of years when it found a new lease on life as an outdoor performance venue gaining recognition for the phenomenally popular pool parties each Sunday in summer.

It had been on my list of places to check out, but I always found myself in a bit of a dilemma about going since, being on the fairer side, I didn't want to be stuck in what seemed to be such a suntrap for hours and end up frazzling my bits off, however Melissa twisted my arm this weekend and wow, am I glad she did.

Words fail me at expressing what an amazing music venue McCarron Park Pool is, hard to believe I know. Telling people I spent my Sunday afternoon standing in a giant abandoned swimming pool in Brooklyn listening to live music earned me a few funny looks from my co-workers today. I’ll admit, it doesn’t sound like an especially fun thing to do, but it's fan-bloody-tastic. It has an amazing atmosphere, very chilled out and despite the 80F temperatures it was pleasantly breezy and cool. Not a snifter of a sunburn. It’s easily one of the best concert venues I’ve ever been to...and Blonde Redhead - one of my fave bands - weren't half bad either :-)

Alas I've heard 2007 is the last year for the pool parties. Renovations are coming and they are going to spend trillions turning it into a leisure facility. Great for the community, but I shall miss it as a venue. I'm just glad I got to go. I highly recommend it if you ever get the chance to go!!

From this....
Image c/o Brownstoner

To this...

Image c/o http://www.mccarrenpark.com/

And back again???