Photos: BayFest 2012 Draws 134,000 Visitors!


by on May 25th, 2012

Photo by Vladimir Korostyshevskiy.

BayFest 2012 turned into the biggest BayFest ever, drawing as many as 134,000 people to Emmons Avenue for a day to celebrate the waterfront, organizers said.

Here’s the exuberant press release from Bay Improvement Group:

It was packed the first three to three and half hours BEFORE Jay & The Americans even came in to warm up. They didn’t start until almost 4:30pm!

Over 134,000 came to the BayFest2012 which also included the All Community Arts show combined covering over ten blocks. Biggest community event in Sheepshead Bay history!.

We hope people will come together to appreciate our great unique waterfront truly special place Sheepshead Bay. Thousands of people took the time to stop by personally and to our terrific BIG Volunteers to say, how fantastic, great, wonderful, fun, beyond their expectations, super day on the Bay, BIGBayFest surely was BIG this time, one person said, and having the Boro President come down to recognize this only all vendor free successful event was really an honor to us all as a community. One family came up to me and said, “this is the best thing I have ever seen with all the music and activities without being crammed in like all those other typical vendor street fairs. What a nice idea to support the community and local businesses.” To that I say, Amen. Maybe some of those restaurants will now get involved, we can only hope. Monica Bajrktarevic the Asst Director Amity School said, to BIG Ex Dir Laura McKenna, I felt so proud of our community that everyone came out to support this great event.

Our Councilman Lew Fidler, Assembly members Cymbrowitz & Weinstien, DA Hynes all sending us wishes on BayFest day coming by to enjoy the huge one of a kind waterfront party. Expanded crafts in the park with scribble,com and A2ZPartyplanning.com, from the Brooklyn Nets mobile Unit, Sandy the Seagull from the Brooklyn Cyclones, NY Aquarium, The Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Brooklyn Public Library, Amity School, all our great sponsors, from KINGS Auto Group WITH THE NEW electric Nissan Leaf, Con Ed, National Grid, IL Fornetto, Investors Bank, Knapp Street Deli,Comfort Inn, Astoria Bank and support for the volunteers by Knapp Street Deli and Jimmy’s Heros.

The United States Merchant Marine Academy Drill team, color guard and Rampart trumpets with the FDNY on land and sea really had people moved and inspired. Plus at least one or more bands at everyone of the ten piers besides Jay & The Americans by the Sheryll Princess and then our main stage line up.

We started with a huge crowd like never before. This is before we even started the first band! The chairs were put out about one minute earlier.

Then> Stout, Sonny Boy from Brooklyn, Sound Drive right from our local Sheepshead Bay area! Aviator Gymnastics, surprise local pop sensation Jenna Rose with over 25 million you tube hits and she is only 13 years old!! Aviator Gymnastics team & Dimensions in Dance(32 years dance school training young people) and the get up dance and party Bag Pipin Rockers- the Shots with the Bergen County Firefighters rocked the Bay through the 6pm end of the day and we had over 15 raffle drawings at end the day from many local businesses including four of the local boat owners with fishing trips and dinner cruise too! The power of BayFest from Stella Maris, feeding the volunteers both Knapp St Deli & Jimmy’s Famous Heros!

We had over 100 performers. As an all volunteer non profit event to celebrate our waterfront main street community and keeping with a touch of our heritage and history BayFest2012 was by an overwhelming margin the biggest community event in Sheepshead Bay history and the largest vendor free street event in NYC! We say, “Hello Sheepshead Bay!” And we are just beginning, so get involved ! Thank you all!

See you on May 19th 2013..Please see our web site for all info> www.BayBigBayFest.org !

Great work, Bay Improvement Group. See you next year!

Below you can check out more photos from the event, provided by Bay Improvement Group and our readers Vladimir Korostyshevskiy, nolastname and Bina K.

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  • Dtortoise9

    134,000 that’s a lot of Schnorrers

  • geneee

    i dont think that many people were there. not even 10,000. who took this count ???

    • ShadowLock

      Probably the fish hanging up side down…….

    • ZiggyZ820

      I agree with you, where did they get 134,000?  Don’t even think 10,000 were there.

      • http://www.flickr.com/photos/lisanne001 Lisanne!

        Maybe at some point there were 50,000. And people come and people go.

      • 90SBROOKLYN

        there was mayby 20,000..someone do a graff of what 130k would look like on that stretch….bullshit

        • nolastname

          The event lasted 6 hours, lots of people do a walk through without staying for the whole day.

    • Animo916

       NYPD!!

      • RealNumbers

        Except the NYPD stopped doing crowd estimates more than a decade ago.

  • ZiggyZ820

    Enjoyed the day at Bayfest….One recommendation for next year is to have food vendors like other street fairs and portable bathrooms……..We had to go  to Roller Roaster to eat,,,,,use bathroom, and have a drink……Also, have a better variety of music, instead of mostly loud, rock music……most people were 50 and older…..

    • http://www.flickr.com/photos/lisanne001 Lisanne!

      A good portion of people over 50 like loud rock music. That’s not a personal expression, my musical tastes are too eclectic for me to expect something I’d really like at a street festival. But as the saying goes, give the people what they want. And it appears that this is what people want.

    • EndofDaze

      Hey Buddy or Bouby, for us 50 and older BB’s, Rock and Roll is Here to Stay! But what did you expect at an event like that, one of Haydn’s or Dvorak’s String Quartets?! Oh, forget about it anyway, you are probably clueless about my prior sentence?! Lol…B.T.W. We couldn’t have gotten better weather, or more finer Brooklyn folks in attendance.

    • Animo916

       Bayfest is the only Vendor Free Street event in the City.  The whole idea is for people to recognize any of the 37(or so) restaurants that the Bay has to offer, in addition to other attractions such as the dinner and fishing boats…to name a few.  Don’t get me wrong.  I loves me a good Jimmy’s sausage and pepper hero, or a nice Maria’s fried calzone!! But…as you mentioned, they are at all the other street fairs.

      Plus, those vendors come in from other communities, the other Fairs usually run several days to sometimes weeks.  It is not profitable for them to come to an event that only lasts a few hours.  And that’s what these vendors are all about…making money, which by the way, they take back with them to their community when the events are over.  BIG would rather support our neighbors in our community first, and that’s what Bayfest is all about. 

  • Barkingspider07

    No way there were 134,000 people there.  You can’t count the people who were just walking along Emmons Avenue.  I was on Emmons, not at Bayfest, that afternoon and just no way.

  • Andy

    ” Here’s the exuberant press release from Bay Improvement Group:”

    I think Steve counts all the people in cars passing by on the Belt during the day. Mind you, I grew up with Steve. But, this does venture into the land of hyperbole.

  • Ugman

    i didnt see any hot chicks there.

    • http://www.brucebrodinsky.com Bruce B

      Next year I’ll dress up for you.

  • BayFest sucked

     I agree with the others that no way was there 134,000 people there. I was there for a few hours and there was tons of open space throughout. Nothing close to that number.

    I certainly hope there wasn’t 134,000 people because that would be 134,000 who realized how much BayFest totally sucks. It was nothing but bands scattered around (not even taking turns on a stage in an organized way and mostly amateurs anyway), stands with people selling random nonsense like homemade jewelery, bland scraps of food like bagels and bottles of iced tea, and what else lets see…oh yeah! Advertising by different organizations.

    Boring, irrelevant, and two dimensional is how I would describe it.

    I guess I should have listened to my one friend who said that the website for the event probably tells a lot about the event itself. The website (bigbayfest.org) is a travesty as far as websites go. So many things wrong with it.

    Seriously, I would love to go to BayFest every year but its going to require some serious improvement for me to do that. Maybe BayFest isn’t targeted towards people like me and it makes more sense to the demographic that its targeted for? The Brighton Jubilee is more my kind of street fair.

    • nolastname

      Kinda harsh words for someone who stayed a few hours. Why submit yourself to hours of torture. 
      I enjoyed myself and saw plenty of people having a good time. 
      To me the Brighton Jubilee is not better, so different strokes.
      About the #’s…I don’t know how many folks were there but no one said 134.000 were all there at the same time. 
      People can be such ingrates. Don’t like it don’t go. I will enjoy myself next year none the less.

    • http://www.sheepsheadbites.com/ Ned Berke

      And what events have you produced lately? Which ones were free? Which ones were done on the backs of all volunteers, with no one making a dime off of it? Even the Brighton Jubilee is a fundraiser for an organization. BayFest doesn’t raise a cent for anyone (well, except for Courier Life who makes bank off of printing their guide and gives nothing back to the community). If you want to make suggestions, great. But I don’t see why anyone here needs to head off their suggestions with “BayFest totally sucks.”

  • Eunice

    Wouldn’t Sheepshead Bay be a bore withoun Steve Barrison?  People like Steve keep Sheepshead Bay alive.  Support you concerned citizens you need them.

    • http://www.brucebrodinsky.com Bruce B

      Like I’ve said before, I can fault his politics,but I can’t fault his dedication and hard work for the community.

      As for bayfest sucking, I regret that I couldn’t make it this year, because it’s quite a good time.

  • Eejlr38

    Sorry for the typing mistakes.
      Wouldn”t Sheepshead Bay be a bore without Steve Barrison?  People like Steve keep Sheepshead Bay alive.  Support your concerned citizens because you need them.

  • Barkingspider07

    Did Jay and the Americans show up, or maybe the guy from Alive and Kicking?

    • Animo916

       Yes indeed, and I got to see Sandy Dean again, who lived around the corner from me on Ave Y and E 11St.  His family and my family were very close when I was younger.  Both families kept our boats at Schatz Bros. and we would do a lot of fishing together on our boat (back in the late 60s). It was amazing how he remembered me 43 years later!