It’s baaack! .
After a rocky two years, one of Brooklyn’s largest annual gatherings,
the Atlantic Antic, is back on schedule, and organizers expect
Sunday’s festival to be the biggest yet.
The Atlantic Antic, along with all other street fairs, was canceled
by then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani following the events of Sept.
11, 2001. The Atlantic Avenue Local Development Corporation (LDC)
held a substitute event in May 2002, but did not realize that
the city’s policy on street closure would allow them only one
permit per year, quashing plans for the full Antic’s return last
September.
The May 2002 festival was shortened by three blocks and barely
broke even. Normally, the September festivities run from Hicks
Street to Fourth Avenue, grossing between $35,000 and $50,000,
according to Candace Damon, the LDC president.
"For the last three or four years we’ve been working very
hard to maintain the fun of the Antic, but also bring it back
to its roots," Damon said of this year’s event, which will
run from 10 am to 6 pm, on Sept. 21.
The festival, regarded as Brooklyn’s second most heavily visited,
annual outdoor event (besides the West Indian American Day Carnival
and Parade) gives merchants, residents and street vendors the
opportunity to open their neighborhoods to a wider audience.
More than 300 multiethnic food vendors will mingle with just
about as many musicians and musical genres. Meanwhile, puppets
and pony rides, comedy and criminals – well, the Performance
Criminals, a classic rock and blues band with ties to Park Slope
– will compete for the attention of more than 300,000 expected
Antic attendees. In all, 30 acts on four stages will be featured
this year.
In addition to the main stage on Boerum Place, outdoor stages
in front of the Magnetic Field bar, between Hicks and Henry streets;
the Downtown Atlantic Restaurant, between Bond and Hoyt streets;
and Pete’s Waterfront Alehouse, between Court and Clinton streets
will play host to jazz, blues and rock bands.
But don’t worry. The usual suspects are scheduled to appear,
as well, like the Gowanus Wildcats Drill Team and Eddie the Sheik
and his belly dancers.
Still, the Antic has always been open to new acts, and this year’s
eye-popper will likely be the World Cheesecake Eating Competition,
a new event sanctioned by the International Federation of Competitive
Eaters (the ones who do the Nathan’s hot dog eating competition).
With nearly 250 cheesecakes baked by the Downtown Atlantic Restaurant
& Bakery, gluttons for punishment and pastry will race to
devour as many slices of the creamy stuff as they can stomach
in 12 minutes. Ed "Cookie" Jarvis, the American hot
dog-eating record holder, and Eric "Badlands" Booker,
a competitive eater and train conductor, are among those vying
for the title on Sunday.
Eat your heart out, Coney Island.
"These are real champions who will be competing," said
LDC spokeswoman Liana Hawes. "This is a real sport."
The festival sprung to life in 1974 as a booster shot to the
area’s ailing economy, which, like the rest of the city, was
suffering from a crisis unmatched since the Depression. But fearing
that blocked traffic on the avenue would hurt, not help, some
businesses along the avenue were slow to get on board. Longtime
merchant leaders such as Charles Sahadi, who owns the Atlantic
Avenue specialty food store Sahadi Importing, and restaurateur
Joel Wolfe, kept the idea afloat.
"A lot of them were very protective," said Wolfe, who
during the early ’80s owned Lisanne, a French restaurant at 448
Atlantic Ave. "If I asked them to participate, they wanted
to see what their neighbor across the street was doing. They
didn’t see that there was anything to gain from it."
In its beginning, the festival was neighborhood-oriented, drawing
hundreds, but not the half-million that the event can draw now.
Foot and bicycle races often opened the activities each year,
followed by parades and dozens of other crowd pleasers.
Wolfe recalls that in the mid-1970s, area merchants and politicians
began sponsoring enormous helium-filled balloons, which local
artists would then decorate and waft above the throngs on Atlantic
Avenue. But the idea deflated when it became clear that too many
of the balloons were bursting prematurely.
But neither bursting balloons nor dreary September weather got
in the way of the Antic, which ran uninterrupted until 2001.
Now, with scheduling and permit problems behind them, the LDC,
said Hawes, is again looking to the future of Atlantic Avenue.
On Sunday, summaries of the master plan for the future of the
bustling, six-lane boulevard, which has long been the focus of
redevelopment efforts, will be handed out to the public. Damon
and Frank Cannon, the project manager, will unveil the plan at
12:30 pm, at Boerum Place, in front of the Brooklyn House of
Detention. Borough President Marty Markowitz and other elected
officials will also be on hand.
"People are sick of mourning," said Hawes. "It’s
OK to get outside and have some fun. This event is something
the community needs."
The Atlantic Antic takes place Sunday,
Sept. 21, on Atlantic Avenue between Hicks Street and Fourth
Avenue, from 10 am to 6 pm. For more information, visit www.atlanticave.org
on the Web or call (718) 875-8993. This event is free.
