Monday Night in Williamsburg: The 8th Annual Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival presents "Hello Brooklyn: The Show and Prove Super Bowl" at Brooklyn Bowl

After spending a pleasant day with our bingo-playing friends at the Swinging Sixties Senior Center on Ainslie Street, we had the early bird special dinner -- macrobiotic pad thai from Sunac -- at home, took a nap, and got the B62 bus to take us to Brooklyn Bowl for the kickoff to this week's eighth annual Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival, the Show and Prove Super Bowl, opening with performances by the three Show & Prove preliminary winners - Rasheed Chappell (April winner), 330 (May winner), and Charmingly Ghetto (June winner) - and close with performances from headliners 1982 (Statik Selektah & Termanology) + REKS, Freeway, Young Guru and Evitan.

We were happy to again be part of the audience at the Show and Prove Super Bowl, as we were last year.

The fabulous people at Brooklyn Bodega do a wonderful job every summer with the Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival, New York City’s largest Hip-Hop cultural event, showcasing "the positive aspects of Hip-Hop culture by highlighting Hip-Hop’s legacy as an agent of artistic progression, community building and social change."

We were impressed with all three of the preliminary winners. After each set -- by D.C.'s 330, the clowning, intellectual Amanda Carter (like us, a law school graduate); by the dynamic, crowd-pleasing Rasheed Chappell, who's obviously immersed in hip-hop history; and by Boston's Charmingly Ghetto, whose boisterousness doesn't hide the intellect behind his challenging rhymes -- we were sure that each performer in turn would win.

Ultimately, Charmingly Ghetto won this fourth Show and Prove Super Bowl, but we thought they were all still winners: they're all smart and energetic people who are doing dope work.

Given our advanced age, and being urged to come home by the performers waiting us there -- Flomax and Inderal -- we didn't stay at Brooklyn Bowl for what we're sure was a great show after the Show and Prove Super Bowl ended.

But we're grateful we got to go to the start of this year's Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival.

And of course we got all these great pics while we were there.

Thanks to everyone associated with the Show & Prove.

Monday Night in Williamsburg: The 7th Annual Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival presents the Show and Prove Super Bowl at Brooklyn Bowl

Tonight we walked over to the always-fun Brooklyn Bowl

for the seventh annual Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival's first night event, the Show and Prove Super Bowl,

with a thrilling competition between three extraordinarily great acts, each of whom won one of Brooklyn Bodega's Show and Prove contests in a different month this spring.

All three rocked the house: Chris Faust of Brooklyn, who had incredible energy (and who we were betting on),

the dynamic and dope Clear Soul Forces from Detroit, who had some amazing moves,

and the eventual winner L.A., also a Brooklyn homegirl, who ended her set by jumping off the stage and rapping from the floor of Brooklyn Bowl surrounded by the enthusiastic crowd.

It was all really impressive.


Our little O.G. dumbphone camera is pretty useless in dark venues

but we pretend the effects are "artistic."

Like this pic of our wonderful host, sort of as he might appear to someone on some random drug.

Congratulations to Clear Soul Forces and Chris Faust putting on a great show and especially to L.A. (we really loved her violinist!),

who won the right to be performing at the Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival's Saturday night Main Stage.

We're grateful we got to go to Brooklyn Bowl for the opening night.