Ahh, the stoop. It’s hard to explain the beauty of the stoop to those not familiar: It is not Brooklyn’s answer to the backyard, no, and it’s not merely an aesthetic accoutrement meant to add a feeling of history, no no, it’s a place to smoke blunts, a place to have first kisses, a place to sit and think and cry and laugh with your neighbors. It’s a very good place to crush cockroaches, as the stoop retains few scars, and even roach guts will wash away from their surface eventually. The stoop is the epitome of the New York feeling that you’re experiencing multiple time periods at once, that you’re sitting on your stoop in 2017 and all the other butts that have sat there are sitting there with you too, your spirits co-mingling.
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Similar in theory, but not in practice, to open studios, Bed-Stuy’s STooPS Art Crawl uses the stoop as a stage. This month the outdoor art “experience” (this could be argued to be immersive theater, in a sense), now in its fifth year, will feature the works of over 20 local artists spread over stoops throughout the neighborhood. A “guided crawl” of the performances will cover a large portion of Bed-Stuy, and the pop-up art installations and stages will be up for viewing all weekend this weekend, Saturday August, 5 from 1 to 6pm and Sunday, August 6 from 2:30 to 7:30pm.
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There’ll be poetry, theater, music dance and visual arts, as well as a Kiddie Korner. For a full lineup and stoop addresses, check out STooPS of Bed-Stuy’s website.
The event is free.