On Saturday night Hepcat and I decided to head out for an evening of music and food on the shores of the Gowanus. We were curious about the bands  Asobi Seksu and Golden Triangle that were playing outdoors on President Street and we knew that vendors from the Greenpoint Food Market would selling be their home-made specialties at this event organized by Mean Red Productions.

Our evening walk in the Gowanus area was lovely. We passed the Trash Pony Bar on Fourth Avenue, which is Root Hill Cafe’s evening bar and music venture, and caught a little bit of music by Matthew Brookshire from Chapel Hill, NC.

Walking across Carroll Street is always a treat. We passed Monte’s Venetian Room, a now-defunct neighborhood Italian eatery, that I went to with my dad years and years ago. As we neared Bond Street we could hear the throbbing guitars and high pitched vocals of Yuki Chikudate, Asobi Seksu’s singer. When we got to the entrance at 8:40 we realized that the show was set to end at 9PM (duh we should have looked at the poster that was on the blog) but we paid the steep admission fee ($15) anyway just to see what it was like.

The music was fairly interesting and the scent of Korean BBQ was incredible hence we couldn’t resist ordering one plate of it and it was very tasty and only $7 (for steak, rice, salad and apple slices). There were other food vendors as well.

Mean Red Productions specializes in “non-traditional venues, word-of-mouth events and guerrilla marketing campaigns.” They produce shows in unexpected places and work with the city to produce large-scale community events like Summerstage.

They used to have a weekly events called BKLYN Yard right near the Carroll Street Bridge, but they were evicted from that location at the beginning of the summer and had to cancel their popular summer events there.

Mean Red does events like this all over town: “You may have eaten tacos with us on the Gowanus canal, sipped “rave juice” out of zip lock bags with us in Chinatown, tossed back artisanal beers with us at the Greenpoint Oktoberfest, or watched aerialists flip through the air at our Lose Your Shit loft parties. We brought you closer to your favorite artists, pushed you into spaces you’ve never been before, and led to you to scenes you never knew existed. That “oh shit!” moment? That’s MeanRed,” they write on their website.

The show ended around 9:15 and the crowd quickly dispersed. So much for our big night out on the Gowanus. We walked across Union Street, where there’s always much to see. An elegant wedding reception in an open industrial space  on Union Street near Bond Street looked enticing. Hugh took many pictures, including the shot of a face on the tree, a memorial sculpture, on today’s No Words Daily Pix. At Nevins Street we looked in the window of Claireware, the shop and studio of ceramic designer Claire Weissberg. e looked inside the Holiday Inn Express and marveled at the tiny, unattractive lobby.

Still hungry, we ended up at our current favorite casual dinner spot, Oaxaca, on Fourth Avenue near President Street. With one store in Cobble Hill, one in Park Slope, one soon to open on Franklin Avenue and Prospect in Prospect Heights and still another one set to open in Manhattan, they are rapidly expanding. And for good reason.

The Fourth Avenue location is perfect for especially fresh and delicious late night (and all day) tacos. Hugh and I enjoyed our favorite: fish and the Korean taco with beef.

Walking up Fourth Avenue we stopped in again at Trash Pony Bar and caught one song by The Drowning Lovers, who’s lead vocalist has an appealing voice, and later noted that Zora Space, an attractive new cafe and art space on Fourth Avenue near 3rd Street was closing but a small crowd was gathered outside.

To top off the evening, there were bright television lights in front of The Gate where Food Network’s Best in Smoke was filming the finals of a televised BBQ cooking competition. They’d already been all over the city—Yankee Stadium, Battery Park—and The Gate was the final location…