Friday July 5

Location: Bushwick, Brooklyn
Music: Gigawatts Festival
Show time: 8 PM
Venue: Silent Barn
Food: Potion Café
Drink: Life Café Nine 83
Miscellaneous: Stain

Celebrating their one-year anniversary, the Gigawatts Festival will feature performances by Team Spirit, Total Slacker, Heaven’s Gate, Dead Stars, Celestial Shore, Lost Boy?, Slonk Donkerson, Life Size Maps, Island Twins, Grand Resort, Haybaby, Honduras, Eastern Hollows, Dead Sexy Sheila, Hippy, Lil Kids, Surfing, Chimes, Turnip King, and Lunchbox. For food in this neighborhood, Potion Café offers organically grown and traded food that’s part of the “slow food” movement and make delicious and creative food like the poached eggs in white wine sauce. For drinks, check out Life Café Nine 83. While it’s THE same Life Café that the RENT musical features in the play, it’s not the same location. This new Bushwick locale also possesses a boho vibe, an Americanized menu of ethnic food, and a fun selection of mixed drinks including martini’s and lemonade cocktails. A HUGE space decked out in old couches, Stain is an artsy bar that looks like an old-school coffeehouse yet serves local wines and beers.

Friday July 5

Location: Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Music: Ladytron (DJ Set) featuring Reuben Wu
Show time: 11:30 PM
Venue: Glasslands
Food: Dumont Burger
Drink: Radegast Hall & Biergarten
Miscellaneous: Verb Cafe

If you don’t know who Reuben Wu is, Reuben has remixed artists including: Gang of Four, Goldfrapp, She wants Revenge, The Faint, Nine Inch Nails, Placebo, Sonoio, Indochine and Christina Aguilera and has written and produced tracks for Aguilera’s 2010 album, Bionic. Also performing are Adventure (live set) and Prism House. With one of the best burgers in Williamsburg, Dumont Burger offers theirs with gourmet toppings, sandwiches, salads, and their amazing mac & cheese. So you consider yourself a beer connoisseur and like to party. You can do all that and eat at Radegast Hall & Biergarten. The Austrian/German menu perfectly compliments the 12 beers on tap and more than 30 German and Austrian bottles at this large beer hall. One of the oldest and best hipster hangout coffee shops, The Verb Cafe offers up excellent coffee and baked goods, a boho vibe, and big windows to watch the days pass while collecting unemployment!

Saturday July 6

Location: Greenwich Village, NYC
Music: James Chance & The Contortions
Show time: 8:00 PM
Venue: (Le) Poisson Rouge
Food: Koo Sushi
Drink: Blind Tiger Ale House
Miscellaneous: Peanut Butter & Co.

If your fiending for the days of the No Wave scene in NYC, then you should check out James Chance & The Contortions , one of the most experimental sax players that came out of that scene and is still making noise while turning James Brown style funk on its head. Also on board are openers SAL PRINCIPATO (LIQUID LIQUID), R. Stevie Moore, and Endless Boogie. A little known sushi joint, Koo Sushi offers affordable and fantastic fish with an impressive number of specialty rolls. For a bar that looks like any other, Blind Tiger Ale House offers an impressive number of beers including draught, bottled, cask and one called Louise’s Bloody Beer. Try it if you dare! If you’re in the mood for some comfort food, Peanut Butter & Co., offers some PB heavy hitters like the Elvis, a PB, banana, and bacon sandwich that tastes better than it sounds.

Saturday July 6

Location: Union Square, NYC
Event: The Awesome 80s Prom
Show time: 8 PM
Venue: Webster Hall
Food: Thai Me Up Sandwich Bar
Drink: McSorley’s Old Ale House
Miscellaneous: Mudd Cafe

Relive the best and worst of coming of age in high school at The Awesome 80s Prom. This interactive show is part musical and full-on party as the audience gets to drink, dance and vote for the Prom King and Queen. For eats, check out Thai Me Up Sandwich Bar, a sandwich shop offering Thai sandwiches with 7 Steamed Fried Vegetables and a choice of chicken, veggie, tofu or beef on a baguette with 3 types of sauces for $7. One of the city’s oldest bars, at McSorley’s Old Ale House you can feel the history when you enter as memorabilia, since its beginnings in 1854, are all over the walls. Aside from it being a frat hangout nowadays, it’s worth the trip. You’ve seen that orange Mudd coffee truck parked on Astor Place and on various other streets, but check out their Mudd Cafe on East 9th for coffee and a healthy, vegan, and vegetarian menu.

Sunday July 7

Location: Upper East Side, NYC
Museum: PUNK: Chaos to Couture
Show time: See website for schedule; Through August 14, 2013
Venue: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Food: Barking Dog Luncheonette
Drink: The Auction House
Miscellaneous: Uptown Lounge

The Met’s spring 2013 Costume Institute exhibition, PUNK: Chaos to Couture, will examine punk’s impact on high fashion from the movement’s birth in the early 1970s through its continuing influence today. Featuring approximately one hundred designs for men and women, the exhibition will include original punk garments and recent, directional fashion to illustrate how haute couture and ready-to-wear borrow punk’s visual symbols. If you love dogs, not hot dogs but real doggies, then you’ll really love the Barking Dog Luncheonette, as the décor features everything with a dog on it. The food, is your regular diner fare with plenty of burger, sandwich, and hot plate options. Grab a drink and feel like you were transported to the late 1800’s at The Auction House. With ornamental red velvet couches, exposed brick walls, and vintage chandeliers, this hidden gem of a bar is cozy. Beautifully designed, Uptown Lounge is a bar and restaurant serving American fare like Apple Peppercorn Pork Chops ($18), while being big enough to stick around afterwards for drinks.