Weekend Guide: Saint James Joy, Miss Subways 2025, Found Footage Festival, and More

By Shawn Setaro

Yes, we know—many of you will be spending at least part of this weekend at the Tyler The Creator show at Barclays. But if you’re unwilling or unable to pay $300 for floor seats, we’ve got plenty of other ideas in the latest installment of the Weekend Guide. Rather than listening to Tyler muse about sexuality, you can watch a gender-bending new play. Instead of debating the meaning of Chromakopia’s visual aesthetics, you can see work by some fantastic emerging artists while chowing down on breakfast food. As opposed to being one of the tens of thousands of people taking the subway to Atlantic Center for the show, you can see who is crowned Miss Subways 2025.

Read on to discover all this, and plenty of other non-Tyler-related activities.

Courtesy of Jupiter Disco

Thursday, July 17

Mizik Ayiti! featuring Rasin Okan @ Brooklyn Botanic Garden
7 p.m.
The Brooklyn Botanic Garden is beautiful under any circumstances, which makes it an extra-special place to see a concert. Rasin Okan is a Brooklyn-based band that plays Haitian music, both original and folk songs. The show is free with admission to the BBG.

The Pancakes and Booze Art Show @ The Brooklyn Monarch
7 p.m.
Art shows can be intimidating and stuffy. But when you add in plenty of beer and free pancakes, all of a sudden, things get a lot less formal. That’s what you’ll experience at this pop-up art show, which has been keeping aspiring art collectors fed and drunk since 2009.

Cancel Culture, Free Speech and Gaza: A conversation between Norman Finkelstein, Nadine Strossen, and Cornel West @ POWERHOUSE Arena
7 p.m.
Norman Finkelstein rocketed to prominence a quarter century ago with his book The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. Since then, he hasn’t stopped taking controversial stances, as you can tell from the title of his book I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It: Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom, a brand-new, expanded edition of which is the focus of this event.

Mart-Z, LEONG, Matt Meade, and Mr. Melo @ Jupiter Disco
8 p.m.
Should your Thursday call for a dance floor, look no further than Jupiter Disco, where the action will be back-to-back and globally sourced by some of the borough’s finest vinyl selectors.

Courtesy of Signal

Friday, July 18

Tony Humphries All Night Long @ Signal
6 p.m.
The opportunity to experience a foundational house DJ in their natural environment (an all-hours club on a mostly industrial block) is not one to take lightly. Throw in the price tag (free?!) and you’ve got an easy sell on quite the evening of dancing ahead of you.

The King’s Men (Opening Night) @ Waterfront Museum
7 p.m.
A museum on a barge is awesome. A show about men who play women, acted by women, that involves both Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare, and that you can watch on that barge-slash-museum is way, way awesome-r. The King’s Men, written by Javen Turner, begins with a simple but layered premise: What if women played the men who famously played women? River Knight directs.

Miss Subways 2025 @ Coney Island USA Sideshows by the Seashore Theater
8 p.m.
The Miss Subways beauty competition began in 1941, and took off quickly—a fictionalized version of it, “Miss Turnstiles,” can be found in the classic Broadway musical On the Town from just a few years later, and its subsequent movie. Miss Subways ended in the ‘70s, but was revived in 2017, and again in 2023 after a COVID-necessitated shutdown. Of course, the contest has moved a long way since the 1940s. It’s now open to all genders and ages. And because it takes place at Coney Island, you know it’ll be a little weird and a lot of fun.

Caribb-esque: Burlesque Show & After Party @ About Last Night
8 p.m.
At this show, you’ll get burlesque and cabaret, but with a Caribbean flair. A signal that it’s going to be a good night is that organizers encourage you to bring cash for tips, and promise they’ll have singles ready for exchange.

Estúdio Junto & [Neu]Sette @ Car Park
10 p.m.
Get ready to dance the night away to Brazilian grooves in a club that, true to its name, used to be a parking garage. To add to the industrial vibes, it’s in a building that formerly housed a steel mill.

Courtesy of Saint James Joy

Saturday, July 19

Emily & Evan Play Records @ Anti Co Cafe
11 a.m.
Start your Saturday with a blast of wax, caffeine, and tarot readings in Stuyvesant Heights, and explore a yard full of handmade jewelry, plant propagations, and whatever “special treats” may bring.

Saint James Joy’s 5th Anniversary Celebration @ Fort Greene Park
1 p.m.
One of the borough’s best throwdowns is toasting to five years in circulation with a potluck and party in Fort Greene Park. Pull up with a tray and a plate and get fed on all levels.

BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! @ Brower Park
4 p.m.
Get ready for an epic day-long celebration of reggae and hip-hop, both live and on film. The evening begins with live performances by Johnny Osboure, Smif-N-Wessun, Chip-Fu, and Bush Babees, along with DJ sets. As if that wasn’t enough for one day, that concert is followed by an 8:30 screening of the 2024 doc Bam Bam: The Sister Nancy Story, about the legendary dancehall performer.

Abby Govindan: How To Embarrass Your Immigrant Parents @ Littlefield
8 p.m.
Govindan (yes, the same woman who had that hilarious “I created Emily In Paris” bit on Twitter a few years back) combines stand-up special and one-person show in this “storytelling experience,” where she grapples with family, expectation, mental health, and more.

Found Footage Festival @ The Bell House
8 p.m.
The Found Footage Festival has been giving viewers the best in random VHS footage for two decades. To celebrate, founders Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher have put together a greatest hits show, featuring the best, the craziest—and, yes, the dumbest—stuff they’ve found.

Octavia @ Brooklyn Music Kitchen
8 p.m.
One of the most important Bolivian rock bands of all time is returning to the U.S. Whether you’re a loyal fan who’s been down with them since the ‘90s or are just finding out about them now, you’ll want to catch them in person. There’s an additional 10 p.m. show if you can’t make it to this one.

Courtesy of Our Wicked Lady

Sunday, July 20

Usal and PR Present: Living Things – Becoming Trees with Mamoun Nukumanu @ Public Records
8:30 am
Sundays are for rest, good coffee, and apparently workshops on how to build sculptures out of living materials. And where better to knock a few of these off the list than the Public Records compound, where instruction will be handled by artist Mamoun Nukuman, beans provided by an excellent in-house program from the PR cafe, and the sounds will presumably be plentiful.

Love from Brooklyn @ AM:PM Gallery
1 p.m.
Billed as “a community-rooted experience celebrating the vibrant intersections of art, culture, and care,” this gathering at AM:PM in Williamsburg is sure to be both spiritually and creatively nurturing, with local food vendors, talks on community-building, a gallery exhibition, and a soundtrack provided by Everyday People.

The 69th Annual Old Jewish Men Rotisserie Chicken Eating Contest @ Roma Pizza
1:30 p.m.
Come one, come all, the historic and hilarious Old Jewish Men of Instagram fame are hosting what is allegedly the 69th installment of a rotisserie chicken eating competition in Park Slope, a place where old jewish men do occasionally gather to put down a bird or two. According to the description, each contestant will be given a $4.99 Costco rotisserie, and the first person to house it cleanly will get $500. A wilder spectacle we cannot imagine.

Cypurr Cinema: The Net @ Wonderville
2 p.m.
The hardware and software it shows may be outdated, but the uses of technology have only gotten more dystopian since this Sandra Bullock thriller came out in 1995. Now, you get a chance to revisit it in a friendly crowd, and there will be a discussion about tech and cybersecurity following the screening.

Resounding Silents presents: DREAM LOGIC – Live Scored Surreal Silent Shorts @ The Living Gallery
3 p.m.
This column is a big supporter of the Resounding Silents series, which screens classic silent films with live, new scores. That’s for several reasons. One, it’s an incredible idea. And two, they always choose such amazing movies. That’s especially true here, as they present not only Buñuel and Dalí’s Un Chien Andalou, but also two films by the one and only Maya Deren—At Land and her best-known classic, the incredibly influential (and still eerie more than 80 years after its release) Meshes of the Afternoon—as well as two movies by Windsor McCay.

Together with Livestream Q&A @ Alamo Drafthouse
6 p.m.
Real-life couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco teamed up with director Michael Shanks for this new horror film. At this event, you’ll not only get a chance to see the movie before anyone else, you’ll also get to watch a Q&A with all three of them.

An Evening with MonoNeon and Hannibal Buress @ Isola Brooklyn
7 p.m. & 10 p.m.
MonoNeon is a truly unique talent: a virtuoso bassist with his own unique and colorful artistic vision. What will he do when he teams up with Hannibal Buress? We have no idea! But whatever it is, it’ll surely be worth watching.

The Final Sunday Soul Scream with Jonathan Toubin, Mystery Band, and More @ Our Wicked Lady
9 p.m.
Our Wicked Lady is going out with a bang this weekend, welcoming Jonathan “Night Train” Toubin, the Mystery Band, and some special guests to the roof to send it off proper. Expect good bit of funk, soul, disco, and remembrances.