Located in the Hipster haven of Williamsburg/Greenpoint area in Brooklyn, NY, the McCarren Pool Parties ran for 3 seasons featuring free outdoor concerts of various indie rock bands. McCarren pool was built during the Great Depression in 1936, closed in 1984, and remerged in 2005 as a concert venue. Large crowds average 6,000 per week and 45,000 for the season, yet when it came to attending community board meetings to decide the fate of the pool, the hipsters just didn’t show up.
Luckily, according to the NY Metro, JellyNYC (the company behind the concert series) are looking to Inlet Park in Bushwick area of Brooklyn to continue the concert series. However, next time, I hope next time they won’t rely on the hipsters to get politically involved. I know the hipsters as indie rockers from my college radio days at Album 88, Georgia State University’s student radio station (WRAS, 88.5FM). It’s all about the music for them. And that music is normally indie rock so bad it’ll never become commercial (indie rockers are those fans who turn their backs on the artist if the artist achieve mainstream success or become “too commercial”. From my experiences at Album, indie rockers can be (and at times are) cliquish & elitist in being anti-mainstream – which I also see in the hipsters in Brooklyn.
The Manhattanites are accused of being elitist, yet the Brooklyn hipsters in Williamsburg are just on the opposite end of the spectrum (whereas the former is said to be materialistic).
McCarren Pool is being closed down for a renovation due to be completed in 2011 and will accommodate between 1,400 and 1,700 swimmers. So in 2011, the hipsters will have to share McCarren Pool with all those commercial people.
Out of the Pool
http://ny.metro.us/metro/local/article/Out_of_the_pool/13431.html
McCarren Pool Closes
http://www.pollstar.com/news/viewnews.pl?NewsID=11124
Rafiq Jennings
