With an elephantine name like DUMBO, you might expect the area Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass to be gray and lumbering.
Instead, it’s been Brooklyn’s hippest and fastest-growing neighborhood for the last few years, a home to pioneering artists and the trendy folks who have followed them there.
If you haven’t visited DUMBO for a while, you might be surprised how much it has changed. And this weekend is the ideal time to see it.
Thousands are expected to flood into the five-block waterfront neighborhood today and tomorrow for the area’s annual art fair, the DUMBO Art Under the Bridge Festival.
Organized by the DUMBO Arts Center, this event has mushroomed from a modest beginning seven years ago, when only 8,000 showed up, to a massive event last year, when 100,000 visited.
This year, some 250 DUMBO artists will invite guests into their studios, while 750 more show their work at the neighborhood’s many galleries.
The festival’s explosion mirrors DUMBO’s fortunes in general.
When arts center coordinator Joy Glidden moved in 13 years ago, DUMBO was “totally desolate and unknown to New Yorkers,” she recalls. The cops called the closest subway station (the F train on York Street) “the pit” and most of the area’s warehouses were deserted.
Now DUMBO is gentrifying fast, with a plethora of bars and restaurants.
The busiest is Superfine (126 Front St.), a funky bar, restaurant and lounge. Pool fanatics will appreciate the free billiards table, while others will be content to watch the parade of extraordinary haircuts – a massive Afro here, a skinhead there.
Just around the corner is an intimate bar known by its address, 68 Jay St. A long narrow room with a recording studio at the back, this hot spot caters to DUMBO musicians.
Across the street you’ll find the eclectic Mexican restaurant Pedro’s, with its ramshackle, brightly lit exterior and curious booths parked out on the sidewalk. Locals swear by the fajitas.
The Water Street Restaurant and Lounge (66 Water St.) is another lively spot, as is Pete’s Downtown Restaurant (2 Water St.).
Rice (81 Washington St.) is a great Thai place with a choice of 10 specialty rices. It also boasts the groovy Low Bar downstairs.
The DUMBO General Store (at 111 Front St.), is a café and wine bar popular with the art crowd, and in the next few weeks an art-supply shop will open on the premises.
DUMBO is also a place to find furniture: ABC Carpet & Home has an outlet store there (20 Jay St.) where you can expect 30 to 50 percent off the prices at the flagship Manhattan store.
And you’ll find even better bargains simply wandering through the cobblestone streets, stopping at DUMBO’s many working furniture warehouses, some of which have been here since before the neighborhood went up-market.
Teak chairs for $55 apiece, anyone?
If you don’t mind competing with workmen moving boxes around, and you don’t expect home delivery, you’ll find knockdown prices on slightly damaged pieces.
In a couple of weeks, the DUMBO furniture shopping will get even better as the trendy West Elm catalog line opens its 20,000-square-foot warehouse in the neighborhood.
But really, the joy of DUMBO is its artistic culture.
And this weekend, when the artists invite you into their spaces and most of the bars have licenses to extend the party onto the streets, is the perfect time to check it out.
If it grabs you, grab it
Wanna be an art collector?
You don’t have to be a millionaire to do it, and this weekend’s DUMBO Arts Under the Bridge Festival is a smart place to start acquiring your collection.
More than 250 artists will open their studios to guests this weekend, some of them selling their work for as little as a few hundred dollars. Nothing at the fair will cost more than $3,000.
If the past is any guide, some of those bargains could skyrocket in value.
Just one example: At 1997’s DUMBO art fair, you could have bought a drawing by rising artist Dan Zeller for about $150. Now that Zeller has become an art-world darling, that same piece could fetch more than $1,000.
But the key to a happy buying experience is to forget about making a buck and simply to buy work that you like, says Joy Glidden of the DUMBO Arts Center. “You should really buy because you love something. Don’t think of it as an investment,” she says.
It’s all about trusting your own intuition. If you don’t trust it, then you’ll have to trust an art dealer instead – and you will end up paying far more.
“Open studios give you a chance to cut the dealer out, so you’re getting direct access to the artists,” says Glidden. “If you fancy something, barrel in.”