Our friend, Vincent, recently took up a job working with the Tribeca Film Festival and asked us if we would be interested in curating our own night of music. In all honesty, the old version of the festival felt like a super-niche industry event for snobby filmmakers, but this year, they dropped the “Film” from their name and adopted a more all-inclusive approach, incorporating TV, panel talks, and luckily for us, live music.

The music portion of the event was also being held at Baby’s All Right, which is one of our favorite Brooklyn institutions. It’s a venue that books all types of acts, from rappers to DJs to hardcore bands, and always brings together an eclectic group of people, which felt like a no brainer, so we kept that spirit in mind for this show.

We had our new intern, Wilson, on filming duty for the night. He’s just finishing up college and is a master at finding vintage skate gear, like this Zero skull hat that looks like it’s from 2003. Knowing how often Zero switches up their image (never), it also might just be another throwaway from 2019. The only way to validate its authenticity is to look for 20-year-old salt stains.

Although it looks like this was taken on a slightly rowdy night at a Panera bread, this is actually a shot from our party. This crowd of 20-somethings might read some poetry, talk about socialized medicine, or draw in an adult coloring book. Don’t piss them off or they may have to break out Settlers of Catan and ignore you!

Been Stellar was our opening live act, coming fresh off their first UK tour. They’re having a little bit of a moment, getting praise from a number of big music publications, so if you haven’t heard of ’em yet, it’s possible you will in the very near future. At least, that’s what we hope, so you can look back at this caption and be like, “Damn, Jenk knows how to pick ’em!”

Although some of these faces look like they are waiting in line for the DMV, I swear the event was fun! And even if it wasn’t that fun, it was a nice change of pace for us because there weren’t as many skaters as there were normal people hoping to hear some live music. There was less talk about who did what at Blue Park, and more talk about Summer fridays and how crappy inflation is. Believe it or not, these mundane conversations are a welcome change from thinking about skating 24/7 and if Bobby Puleo is gonna be pissed about something in the near future.

We rarely promote it but we do have a small record label called Jenkem Recordings that our friend Mike Bloom helps out with. Here’s a bunch of hyperlinks to shit we’ve released. For this event Mike tapped his buddies in Blonder to headline the show. They had just come off tour with Porches, another New York staple. Maybe you’ll like them? If not, you’re only one click away from listening to that Turnstile album again.

Here’s an artsy shot indicative of youthful rebellion. The movement of the lights also helps to make you feel like you just woke up tripping in Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Speaking of drugs, weed may finally be legal in New York, but this guitar strap still isn’t.

Similar to how skaters refuse to relinquish their VX1000s, New York-based DJ, Rahill, stays true to the art of DJing with physical records. Real music snobs are probably able to tell the difference between analog and digital, but due to the open bar, I don’t think I was able to tell the difference between the sounds of music and the sounds of people screaming their drink orders.

If you’re like us, it’s hard to listen to music with lyrics when you’re writing. And since that’s what we mostly do here, we end up listening to long lyric-less albums that are easy to space out to and achieve some sort of flow state. Know that many of Jenk’s articles were written while listening to some combination of Phillip Glass, Antonio Carlos Jobim and random Fabriclive mixes. (And when Ian gets really stressed he just listens to the Requiem on repeat.)

We know site content has been slightly slower than normal, but that’s only because we’re working on two books, a collab clothing capsule, and also trying to not forget how to skateboard in the meantime. Our next event shindig is also coming up on Sunday. It’s invite only but as a reward for sticking to the end of this article, DM us on IG and let us know you read this. You might find your way onto the list (:

P.S.: This last photo was shot by someone else, hence it being not as crispy and nice as the others above.

Words by: James Lee
Photography: David Mitchell
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