Park Slope was swarming with people this past weekend: You Gotta Have Park on Saturday, and the Fifth Avenue Fair combined with the Park Slope House Tour on Sunday. Plus there was the Park Slope Artists’ Tour and numerous block-wide stoop sales to inaugurate the official stoop sale season.

Usually the Fifth Avenue Fair is quiet until noon or so. But this year, by 11 a.m. the Avenue was absolutely teeming with people. Looking up Fifth toward Ninth Street, there was a sea of bodies, Shish Kabob booths, Scooby Doo balloons and rides.

I prefer the Fifth Avenue Fair to its Seventh Avenue equivalent because it still has a specific sense of place, despite the presence of the generic vendors (fruit shakes, sheets and sunglasses) that show up at every NYC fair. You really get a feeling for Fifth Avenue from this fair: artist Jonathan Blum with his paintings of dogs with birds on their heads; Diane Kane with her lingerie and Park Slope Reader table; the Fifth Avenue Committee with its programs for affordable housing and jobs.

Fifth Avenue between Third and Union has been completely transformed in the last few years. I have followed its transformation with great interest and some pleasure. The changes started from the ground up and it took a while for it to really take hold. At the beginning, you had to be a bit of visionary to put down roots there.

The first settlement of the new Fifth Avenue came in the 1980’s: Cucina and Aunt Susie’s were the only restaurants there for years. The Coolectibles shop between Union and President was also an early settler.

Then came Ozzies. And not long after that, Al Di La, which was the first of the new wave of Fifth Avenue restaurants, the first one to get a big deal review in the Times.
Then came the interesting retail experiments that suceeded like Eidolan, Scaredy Cat, Kimera – cutting edge designers and retailers who took a risk.

Vaux (named for Prospect Park designer, Calvert Vaux), an elegant bistro which, unfortunately, went out of business after little more than a year, was ahead of its time. But Bonnie’s Grill, the tiny, retro diner that specializes in the cuisine of Buffalo*, New York, has managed to survive.

Beso, that big nouveau Cuban brunch place with the cool design, also laid its foundation early.  And let’s not forget the now-defunct, Albert and Piccolo, that strange and funky  gallery and shop for local artisans.

Blue Ribbon’s arrival just after 9/11 really signified that the stakes had changed: Fifth Avenue was a bigger deal than anyone imagined. It would surpass Smith Street in coolness and that surprised everyone.

The latest wave includes, La Villa, Goldy and Mac, Beacon’s Closet, Gourmet Grill, and many more: I don’t even know all the names and this list doesn’t even include Fifth Avenue between Union and Flatbush

Fortunately, there is still a bit of the real Fifth Avenue left: the pork
shop, Joe’s Shoe Repair, whose hand-painted motto is: "Shoe problems?
Call Joe!", the tiny donut shop near Union, and the store for children’s dance supplies, presided over by
a large woman and her dog.

The easy co-existence of the old and new is what makes Fifth Avenue interesting. With the arrival of all the new condos, things should change again. I am bracing for what’s coming next. 

Sunday’s  fair was a frothy mix of  business, culture, and politics. Commerce Bank, gearing up for their new building on Fifth Ave. and Garfield, was trying to make make nice nice to the community with plastic shopping bags. There was also a bunch of  anti-overdevelopment groups with petitions mixed in with the local artisans, and the newer shops displaying their wares.

And the food was, of course, as good or better than ever. Newcomers like Stone Park Cafe sold pricey but delicious fried oyster Po Boys for $10. and really good white wine. Blue Ribbon had a long, line for chicken burgers, a new Japanese restaurant called Sakura, was offering California Rolls, and Thai Sky had really tasty Pad Thai.

My daughter managed to slide down the firetruck slide 6 times at $2.00 a pop, jumped up and down on the space ride for three bucks, rode a pony ($3.00) had three more rides on the firetruck slide ($6.00), had her face painted and a balloon sculpture made ($3.00 for both), cotton candy ($2.00)  and that weird string stuff ($3.00), ah, all in the course of four hours.

I don’t want to count how much we spent on this expensive and rambunctious Sunday afternoon. But it was worth it.

Every penny.

*Chicken Wings slathered with blue cheese and beef on weck (a kind of hero bread) are Buffalo specialties.