A crowd gathers to listen to U SAY USA play at this year’s McKibbin Street Fair. Click for more photos from this event>> — Photos by Dan Gill.

"It’s a year since they shut our venue down but we still goin!" intones Earthchild, a rare moment of seriousness between his soulful Lenny Kravitz gone gangsta RnB. And it’s true. Potion, the café, may have shuttered some months ago, but Potion’s importance to the local arts scene in Bushwick lives on, its role as a gathering point for the microculture of McKibbin Street surviving in the name of today’s organizers, the Potion Collective.

Early arrivals to the second annual McKibbin Street Fair may have dodged balls, water balloons, aspiring paparazzo, they may have indulged in Jen-N-Outlaws’ southern crawfish, perused local art, taken chalk to concrete in wild calamitous explosions; however the afternoon passes, come nightfall, there’s an unerring feeling that we are watching the artists of tomorrow taking their first fledgling steps onwards towards greater recognition.

Bushwick can at times feel like a bite-sized Berlin, an enclave with a can-do, will-do approach to nightlife, from Anarchist Book Fairs to four-level dance events, from after-parties on glamorous rooftops to functioning basement studios-slash-bars, but with an increasing NYPD intolerance to these quasi-authorized events, this enclave may be hanging in the balance.

Recently Surreal Estate‘s "3D 13 Dimensional Dance" party on Thames Street, a few blocks from here, was brought to a close just after midnight under a wave of blue shirts, pepper spray, and weekend holding cells. McKibbin’s original after-party venue plans at the War Room came undone for similar reasons. Fortunately today’s events continue under the thin blue line’s watchful gaze, the artists take to stage, to the mic, they collaborate freely and often — today they dance, clap, shout from the rooftops and Bushwick prevails.   

Today’s performances oscillate between hip hop on the Potion stage to emerging bands on the McKibbin Street stage. U SAY USA‘s arrival lures many locals out onto window ledges, onto stoops, the timid crowd inching ever forward, toes tapping, hips swiveling, as lead singer Steve Nelson showcases an Americana that speaks as much of the inner city as of open highways, as much of existential crisis as wasted youth; U SAY USA turns Americana inside-out and leaves it for us to feed from the carcass. 

By the time The Bright Room‘s LA diaspora takes stage, the crowd has grown immeasurably, local music luminaries notable amongst them. TBR Singer Kahan James alternates between tambourine-abusing, delicate keyboard playing and fire-side chats seated on the asphalt, front-and-center as the chorus girls propel us onwards. TBR balance the dark, earnest indifference of the likes of Interpol or the Cure with ambitious arrangements, an all-female choir, embracing a third way between the politics and progressiveness of Radiohead with the pathos of Depeche Mode.  And the crowd is grateful; today Kahan may just be our own personal Jesus.

With the festivities proper coming to a close, the tall shadows cast by Bushwick’s bygone industries enveloping the huddled masses, it’s time for the NSFW southern garage rock of FUCK FUCK to take final honors. It’s not as though they haven’t given fair warning. Their haggard, propulsive Deep South punkabilly grinding out an energetic set calling to mind the Cramps, or a grits n’ moonshine QOTSA, the barn-storming performance leaving many wanting more.  

In light of recent events, today’s McKibbin Street Fair feels like it may be amongst our final chances to remember what it felt like to be young again, to run reckless, drunk, naked through the streets of Bushwick be-glittered, three fingers of cheap whiskey running buck wild through our judgment centers. 

If you missed this, you did so at your peril.