Williamsburg 30-Second Mystery Theatre: Marone! Who Tore Down Our Old Italian Restaurant? 3/6

Williamsburg 30-Second Mystery Theatre: Marone! Who Tore Down Our Old Italian Restaurant? 2/6

As night descends on the Williamsburg waterfront, Claudia Cardinale is approached at the soccer field of Bushwick Inlet Park and told a shocking story about her friend Rose's favorite old Italian restaurant on Havemeyer Street.

Williamsburg 30-Second Mystery Theatre: Marone! Who Tore Down Our Old Italian Restaurant? 1/6

Having solved the mysteries of the dead nun on Conselyea Street, the disappearance of the Hasidic landlord's Trustafarian tenant on the Southside, and the missing Sternberg Park b-boys, Williamsburg's amateur detective Claudia Cardinale contemplates her future one evening while reading Taipei in Bushwick Inlet Park.

Tuesday Night at the Williamsburg Waterfront: Watching Soccer and Listening to Death Cab for Cutie for Free from Bushwick Inlet Park

We joined our fellow members of the Sneak-a-Peek Freeloader Indie Music Appreciation Society tonight on the fringes of Bushwick Inlet Park's soccer fields at the Williamsburg waterfront to watch some amateur soccer, enjoy the skyline through the mostly covered-over fence,

and loll about as Death Cab for Cutie played a sold-out benefit concert practically next door at East River State Park.

We have four Death Cab CD's, more than any other sexagenarian we know. (That should inspire pathos, not admiration nor envy.) And, yes, we came to them, embarrassingly, through The O.C.'s Seth Cohen character's neurotic patter.

Did you know Ben Gibbard is very polite? Not only was a gentleman when he dated our friend's daughter in Florida, but tonight he said "Thank you very much" after every song. And it was sweet that he dedicated "I Will Follow You into the Dark" to Frightened Rabbit, who opened the night's show.

Anyway, the sound always comes over clearly to the soccer fields and it's sort of contemplative there, without crowds. Christina can lie in the artificial turf in her own little world.

Others can fix their bikes.

And there's always good soccer. We kicked an errant ball back at least fifteen feet to an ardent player. "Soul Meets Body" always sounds good, even when the sun had stopped wrapping its arms around us.

And all we could see were occasional white, blue and red lights blinking or flashing. Yet when Ben asked (twice -- he's really polite), "You guys okay?" -- well, what could we say but yes?

At midnight on December 31, 2003, we were in Apache Junction, Arizona, playing "The New Year" instead of "Auld Lange Syne."

It's always nice to hear, even if it doesn't feel any different when it's live.

According to this photo from Samantha Files on Instagram, this is what it actually looked like onstage for the paying guests:

We're grateful to Death Cab for being on our Chevette's cassette player as we drove around South Florida in 2004, and we're grateful we got to remember those times at Bushwick Inlet Park tonight.

Friday Night in Williamsburg: Weezer at the Williamsburg Waterfront (as seen and heard at Bushwick Inlet Park)

(Photo courtesy of the extraordinary Alexis Maindrault at The Music Slut)

We really enjoyed the Weezer show at East River State Park on the Williamsburg Waterfront tonight, although we had to take it on faith that the microbe-sized dot we saw hurtling himself around the stage was Rivers Cuomo. It was his voice, though.

We were one of about fifty free riders who were not camped in cars or on ledges or just standing by the fences near the show's main entrance on Kent Avenue and North 9th Street. Instead, we were at the soccer fields at Bushwick Inlet Park.

We learned during the Faith No More concert that the sound was perfectly fine at the soccer fields and it was well-lit, not crowded, with nicer (if fake) grass than at East River State Park, more convenient portable toilets, and a cheerful sense of camaraderie. The only real disadvantage is that you have to watch sweaty, shirtless in-shape young guys playing soccer.

Our group on the southeast corner, where if you stand up on the ledge, the best view can be had,

included about a dozen people, including a tween girl with her cool parents. Mom lay down first on the grass.

It was also discovered that there is a not-so-secret passageway. Soccer players often have to go back to the land between the soccer fields and the river to retrieve the ball. We could clearly see how, by walking through two different big gaps or holes in the fences, you could get closer to the concert and perhaps to East River State Park itself.

Some kids who'd finished playing soccer noticed that the NYPD also discovered this security breach,

and from a distance we could see about eight officer went out through one passage by the river, and soon a few people started straggling back. But others went in later.

Others sat on the benches on the north side of the field, often with bikes, sometimes with food and (usually soft) drinks. Some hung out on the field, blissed out. (Twice we were asked if we had a light.)

The most organized group arrived early and picnicked on the turf on the northeast corner. They were a group of twentysomethings, all African-American, who seemed to be having a great time.

Every once in a while some of them would yell out "'Beverly Hills'!" until finally the band finally played the song, just before the encore (first one). Weezer put on a good show, as far as we could tell from our distance in physical space (and generationally: The Blue Album was released around the time we graduated law school, but we were also 43 years old then), for what Rivers Cuomo called us "denizens of Williamsburg." It felt like a party, and maybe it was more of a real one at East River State Park.

But those of us in Bushwick Inlet State Park felt we were at the show too. There was sometimes a little applause at the end of a song, and we even saw a soccer player clap at the end of Weezer's cover of "Kids."

Friday Night in Williamsburg: Faith No More OSA Benefit Concert at East River State Park (as seen and heard from Bushwick Inlet Park)

We really enjoyed the music of Faith No More at tonight's benefit concert for the irreplaceable Open Space Alliance held at East River State Park. The weather was perfect, the band's sound was superb, the waterfront setting was romantic and intimate, and there was good food and drink and good friends all around us.

We had what seemed like the best seats in the house, at the soccer fields of Bushwick Inlet Park, just north of where the show was.

We made our way down Kent Avenue before 8 p.m. past the scalpers (they were at the Bedford Avenue station too) holding up tickets

and the main entrance

and the people at the Mexican food cart, some of whom were probably going to try to listen from the street

to Bushwick Inlet Park's soccer fields, where three or four games were being played, one with really little kids, maybe four and five years old. We didn't know if we'd hear anything, but the view was quite arresting, and if it wasn't the World Cup, it was fun to watch good soccer players.

Some people sat on the concrete ledges (suprisingly comfy) at the south edge of the park by the river, from where there was a pretty good view of the stage.

People brought food and drink from Sunac, and we don't know what the vibes were like at the concert, but at the soccer fields the mood was festive but low-key.


Behind the concrete, there was a good place for drinks. Um, soft drinks, we presume. We don't drink, but Busch beer is like root beer, right? (We did learn that big bottles of Hawaiian Punch don't always contain Hawaiian Punch.)

Others stayed at the four or five real benches for soccer moms and dads at the north end of the park, where one group who'd biked over also were having a little picnic.

The sound system came over loud and clear from the first words onstage. After a nice introduction from someone who said he was Rudy Giuliani and had wanted to turn the area into a big sanitation facility before community activists from Open Space Alliance had beaten him and created East River State Park, there was a truly terrible comedian who made a lot of vomiting noises and told awful jokes like these (we apologize for printing them but it's necessary to capture their true imbecility:

Why did Justin Bieber ejaculate on his hot fudge sundae?
Because his managers won't let him ejaculate on his fans until he's eighteen.

Why was Courtney Love denied admission to an airline flight?
Because one of the passengers was allergic to nuts.

What's the difference between urinating on the American flag and urinating on Courtney Love?
It would be wrong to urinate on the American flag.

Mercifully, he was finally offstage and we heard the sounds of "Reunited," Faith No More's opening number, which never sounded better. Afterwards, there was some "Brooklyn!" talk, but not much, just good music. Morning after update: spotcoffee has posted some videos (looking at the camera movement causes us a little motion sickness):

Anyway, we hung around for almost the whole show as the sky darkened and the soccer players started leaving.

Even the restrooms at Bushwick Inlet Park were convenient and relatively non-disgusting.

It was really a perfect evening.

We could see the lights and occasionally a really, really tiny Mike Patton or someone moving.

The 20 or 25 of us there to listen to the music enjoyed it; most of the soccer players didn't seem to notice, however.

There's another Faith No More show - this was their first East Coast concert in a decade - on July 5 at East River State Park, or for the ticketless, at a park nearby.