The best NYC events in August 2019
Plan your month with the best NYC events in August 2019 including the Jazz Age Lawn Party, street fairs and more
Get ready to use our NYC events in August calendar as your guide for ending the summer with a bang! Now that we’re stuck in a heat dome, now’s the time to take advantage of New York beaches before they close for swimming next month. There are many more things to do outside this month, like incredible summer concerts, festivals and delicious alfresco food and drink opportunities too. And use August as your last change to take advantage of all the outdoor movies at the best NYC parks. This is the last full-month of summer—make it count!
RECOMMENDED: Full NYC events calendar
Featured NYC events in August 2019
Summer Streets NYC 2019
During Summer Streets NYC 2018 around seven miles of Gotham turf along Lafayette Street and Park Avenue is completely car-free in order to create a pedestrian paradise. Hundreds and thousands of revelers descend upon the asphalt for invigorating sight-filled tours, plus free activities including a rock climbing wall, a zipline, outdoor art installations and misting stations. You won’t want to miss this year’s five rest stops which normally include fitness classes, a dog park, arts and crafts workshops, plus walking tours that explore NYC parks and some of the most beautiful NYC buildings. This is one of the best NYC events in August, so make sure to hit the streets for the first three Saturdays. We'll be sure to alert you when it's time to sign up for popular attractions such as the water slide and other hot-ticket items.
Color Factory
Color us stoked! The Color Factory—a collaborative and now traveling art exhibition—promises to give you even more opportunities to flood your Instagram feed with rainbows post-Pride. After a successful run in San Francisco, the creators have transformed a 20,000-square-foot Soho space (located at 251 Spring Street) into an immersive selfie nirvana that is meant to help folks explore and appreciate how fun and joyful being surrounded by vibrant colors can be. Not only a sight for sore eyes, the event is also meant to be a fun zone filled with whimsical installations to explore.
The U.S. Open tennis tournament
For two weeks, Flushing Meadows–Corona Park will be the tennis capital of the world for the U.S. Open tennis tournament. While Wimbeldon has its white, New Yorkers bring the party to the National Tennis Center with a celebrity-studded crowd, international food vendors and live musicians performing on the grounds—not to mention tennis's top pros.
Afropunk Festival 2019
Afropunk Festival is an annual event that takes place in late August at Brooklyn’s Commodore Barry Park (City Park). Over the course of a weekend, the outdoor summer music festival—which celebrates multicultural arts—hosts a wide array of well-known musical artists (including some of the biggest hip-hop artists), as well as “BITES & BEATS” food trucks, live artworks and the SpinThrift Market. Additionally, Afropunk strives to raise multicultural awareness in New York City with its Activism Row initiative.
NYC Cocktail Expo
Expect to see the room spinning after your tastings at the cocktail expo. Sample the spirits from craft distilleries, along with cocktails mixed by local bartenders competing in the “Best Cocktail” competition.
Smashing Pumpkins
What better way to endure the dog days of summer than with a good dose of ’90s angst? The alt-rockers hit town on their reunion tour, which has an almost-complete original lineup. (Alas, bassist D’Arcy Wretzky will be absent because of a feud with Billy Corgan.)
Secret Summer
It’s a summer blowout disguised as a cocktail party. Yes you can enjoy great drinks made by city mixologists, but you’ll also watch aerialists, listen to live music and chow down on trendy eats in the verdant space.
Blues BBQ Festival
Get ready to chow at this 20th annual riverside bash with barbecue from local grillmasters like Dinosaur Barb-B-Que and Mighty Quinn's, while tuned to live blues and roots performances by The Campbell Brothers, Sugar Ray and the Bluetones, Terrie Odabi, Dumpstaphunk and more.
Smorgasburg
Everything you need to know about visiting Smorgasburg (90 Kent Ave; East Dr at Lincoln Rd). At this massive grub hub, there’s only one rule: Come hungry. The Brooklyn Flea spin-off draws more than 20,000 to 30,000 visitors per week, with a slew of 75 to 100 incredible food vendors doling out everything from Dutch waffles to pasta doughnuts. Where is it?Depends on when you go. For the spring/summer 2019 season, the fest is in Williamsburg’s East River State Park (90 Kent Ave) on Saturdays and Prospect Park’s Breeze Hill (East Dr at Lincoln Rd) on Sundays. Additionally, starting April 12 2019, Manhattanites won’t have to cross the river to taste the treats. A Smorgasburg market at Westfield World Trade Center, Oculus Plaza is open every Friday from 11:30am to 7pm. When can I go?Smorgasburg is open year-round. The summer months might be the most popular, running from April through October at 11am to 6pm on Saturdays and Sundays, but in the winter months (November to March), the market joins forces with Brooklyn Flea and moves indoors. This past winter, the indoor Smorg was located at Atlantic Center (625 Atlantic Ave) on weekends from 10am to 6pm. Is there anywhere to sit?There are some picnic tables set up by the Smorgasburg team, but don’t plan on snatching one unless you have patience of steel. The organizers encourage you to bring picnic blankets with which to sit on the lawns of East River State Park or Prospect Park. Are there rain dates?Nope. The grub will be there rai
Bronx Night Market
This open-air, food-centric market features Bronx-based vendors serving up tamales, soul food, latkes, ice cream, pastries, elotes and vegan creations, plus libations from the Bronx Brewery and others. In addition to all of the delicious provisions, the market offers nifty wares from local artisans and live music performances from Bonx musicians. Come appreciate all that NYC's northernmost borough has to offer.
Music events in August 2019
Blood Orange
Albums like last year's stunning Negro Swan, and 2016's Freetown Sound, a complex, swirling affair have cemented Dev Hynes's status as a multi-talented alt-pop visionary. Expect songs from across his discography as he takes the stage for Lincoln Center Out of Doors.
Florist
Pastoral and tender in tone, Emily Sprague’s hushed tunes as Florist trade in poignant, unadorned imagery rendered with heart-on-the-sleeve intimacy.
Nosaj Thing
This LA beatsmith, who's remixed just about everyone (Drake, Radiohead, Little Dragon, Daedelus and many more), makes sinister, glitchy, instrumental hip-hop that's as indebted to Warren G as it is to Flying Lotus. He plays a free outdoors gig here for BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn!
The Rolling Stones
The world's grayest…er, greatest rock & roll band is back to get its rocks off with its first stateside shows since 2015. The reason to hit the road is, well, because they still can. The most recent album is 2016's covers collection Blue & Lonesome, and they seem to have fun adding a few blues numbers into their set of rock & roll smashes. Expect some harp-shredding solos by Mick, as well as the strutting and shimmying you've come to know and love. Here the band plays a show postponed from June due to Jagger undergoing medical treatment.
Mac DeMarco
It's 2019 and the reigning hooligan jester of indie pop is up to all his same antics—this time, announcing a new album titled Here Comes the Cowboy alongside a new single "Nobody," both of which he claims bear no relationship to Mitski's acclaimed 2018 release, Be the Cowboy, nor its main single, also titled "Nobody." The video for (Mac's) "Nobody" features the singer in a hauntingly elaborate lizard-man (or, lizard-cowboy) costume, which is none too out of place in an oeuvre of music vids that includes the artist surrounded by VR humanoid dog creatures or drowning in a bathtub of cabbage heads. Catch all the madness at this outdoor Celebrate Brooklyn! gig.
Smashing Pumpkins
What better way to endure the dog days of summer than with a good dose of ’90s angst? The alt-rockers hit town behind a newie, Shiny and Oh So Bright Vol. 1/LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun (a title that ostensibly indicates a continuing album series on the horizon), with an almost-complete original lineup. (Alas, bassist D’Arcy Wretzky will be absent because of a feud with Billy Corgan.)
Chance the Rapper
Chicago MC Chancelor Bennett has built a tidy following the past several years with witty, joyful, freewheeling mixtapes like 2013's Acid Rap and the follow-up, Coloring Book. Add to that a series of collaborations with Donnie Trumpet, confounding fringe-rapper Lil B, and soulful singer and keyboardist Francis Farewell Starlight and you have an impressively prolific series of mixtapes and singles to expect tunes from at this free early morning Good Morning America gig.
Joyce Manor + Saves the Day
To the chagrin of some and celebration of others, the last two albums from these Cali emocore types skew toward the former half of their "pop-punk" moniker—consider such divisive lines as "[she was] singing 'What do you think about Kanye West? I think that he’s great / I think he’s the best.' Unexpected namedrops aside, the band's newest developments continue to mature the same brand of jaded irony that makes frontman Barry Johnson's writing so effective. Don't miss them as they pop up with genre vets Saves the Day.
Flying Lotus
Brainfeeder honcho Flying Lotus has been masterminding the LA instrumental hip-hop scene for the better part of a decade. Catch his lush, forward-thinking electronic sounds at this massive open-air gig.