Soul Summit Is Still the Best Party in New York

Sunday evening, house music was emanating from the top of the hill at Fort Greene park in Brooklyn. From all around, you could hear the sound of four-on-the-floor. Vendors were chanting "ice cold!" to the beat of the bass drum, and selling nutcrackers to the dancing crowd tightly packed on the plaza. 

It was the Soul Summit DJ collective's twenty-first year throwing the free, ad-hoc house music festival in the park. The festival used to be held most Sundays in the summer, but yesterday's event was the just the second Fort Greene Soul Summit of this year. The last one, in July, was really something, with rain cooling off the dance floor twice. 

Sunday's party, as typical for the festival, brought crowds of all different ages: house music veterans and young guns partied together—one auntie sitting in a lawn chair wore a shirt that said, "House music will save the world," and drummers stationed beneath shady trees augmented the beat.

To younger dancers, the songs were mysterious, drowned in reverb and impossible to know,  but the elders taught through example how to engage with soul house–you'd see a brolic shirtless dude in his 50s with one gold hoop earring, bouncing up and down to some soul screamer and it would somehow transmit house music history straight to your spine. Even the nutcracker vendors were dancing at full tilt. Down the hill, by a water fountain, some festival goers laid out on blankets and chatted on the lawn. 

By 8 p.m., the sun was mostly down, and it was time to go. "We're keeping soulful house music alive," co-founder Sadiq Bellamy announced from the makeshift stage, "believe it or not we are Soul Summit music." The organizers thanked the 88th NYPD Precinct and Eric Adams, and there was some light booing. "Hey, we need sponsorship," Bellamy shrugged. Next, they thanked Letitia James, who is now the state attorney general but who was once the councilmember for the district surrounding the park, and the audience cheered.

Milling around by the stage afterwards, an old head bragged that he knew the Soul Summit crew when they were—he held out his hand—"this high," and selling cassette tapes with house music mixes on them. I caught up with Bellamy and thanked him for the show, and asked if they'll be back in the park again this year. He said he didn't think so, but they would be having paid shows at venues like Elsewhere and House of Yes.

Here are some links to keep your Monday alive:

• At Union Square on Friday, the NYPD smashed this kid's face through a taxi window but Eric Adams congratulated them on their "restraint."
• Groups in Sunset Park protested a new temporary migrant shelter.
• Meanwhile, the owner of an upstate hotel wants to house asylum seekers, but says he hasn't heard back from the Adams administration. That guy also owns a castle and survived an assassination attempt in 2014.
• The Adams administration is empowering citizen "bounty hunters" to test noise levels with their smartphones, then "hand out summonses directly," or file a complaint with the Department of Environmental Protection. The owner of one Midtown jazz club has had enough of that.
• A 17-year old has been charged with the murder of O'Shea Sibley at a Brooklyn gas station last week. Mourners rallied to remember Sibley on Friday.
• The vendors who were booted from Corona Plaza are fighting to return.
• This New Yorker profile of Eric Adams includes details like a "close adviser" of the mayor sleeping with her mouth taped shut and what amounts to an admission that yes, Eric Adams lived in New Jersey very recently.
• A Queens Library branch flooded in 2021 is moving to a new location a few blocks away.
• Why?