Potato Fest 2025, This Saturday!
Potato Fest 2025 is Saturday, Oct. 11, 12–4 pm, at the Beach 91st Street Community Garden. This community event is a joyful celebration of the beloved root vegetable—and a chance to get together with friends and neighbors in the garden to share a meal of (mostly) potatoes. The dishes are home-cooked by community volunteers—thank you to everyone cooking!!
Expect hands-on, potato-inspired fun and activities: a hot potato showdown, a potato art craft, a Mr. and Ms. Potato Head play corner, and an education station to explore the fascinating journey of the potato through history.
The soundtrack is a mash-up— flutist Danielle Hanna (@louise_0405), vocalist Erin Moon (@erinmoonmusic) and Mikal Hameed (@rebaroque) keeping the beats sweet in between. I asked each musician to share about their work:
Re Baroque, it makes art you look at and listen to. Mikal Hameed’s large-scale, high-design works fuse visual art, music history, and modern furniture into functional mixed-media sculptures that restore music to a shared, out-loud experience.
Born to musicians, Hameed grew up immersed in sound. His father, Young Jessie, was a jazz/rock/R&B singer-songwriter who recorded the original “Mary Lou,” later covered by Steve Miller Band, Bob Seger, and Frank Zappa. His mother, Barbara Jean Prince, was also a musician; they met gigging. His uncle’s group, Otis Day and the Knights, appeared in the 1978 film Animal House. Preserving the communal joy of music is baked into his DNA.
Raised in South Central Los Angeles, Hameed’s creative path ran from graffiti and punk bands to spoken word, taking him to the Apollo Theater in 1999. He soon moved to Brooklyn and built a production-design career on music videos for clients including Jay-Z, Mike Myers, Moby, Sting, and Liza Minnelli.
In the hip-hop tradition of remix, Hameed reworks cultural hardware—iconic boomboxes, DJ turntables—into new forms with new purpose. His powered speaker sculptures invite audience participation, transforming viewers into listeners and making sound a public, collective event.
Rockaway native Danielle Hanna is a flutist, saxophonist, and composer based in Queens. She is currently pursuing her B.Mus. in Music Education and Composition at the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College, also in the Macaulay Honors program, where she was awarded a full-tuition scholarship. As an undergraduate, Danielle has performed in various Brooklyn College ensembles, such as the Wind Ensemble, Orchestra, and the Brooklyn College Musical Theater Collective. She was involved in the Macaulay Theater Club, where she served as Music Director/Conductor for its fall production of “Bells Are Ringing” (2024), and she is president of the award-winning Macaulay Musicians’ Collective. Recently, her work “Mood Meter” for piano quintet was performed by Conservatory students at the Winter Composers Concert (2025), and her newest piece, “Dust & Moonlight” for flute and piano, was performed at the May Composers Concert (2025).
Erin DeBarber (Erin Moon) is a musician, carpenter, community organizer, and mixed media artist based in Franklin, Maine. Her music is rooted in storytelling and transformation, exploring themes of love, depression, resilience, and relocation. Blending indie folk with shades of space rock, Erin’s lo-fi sound is anchored by clever lyrics, raw emotion, and melodies that linger.
Her conversational style invites listeners into her world… as she uses songwriting to make sense of the world and life’s changes and contradictions.
Erin began writing music during the pandemic and embraces the joy of being an adult beginner. In 2022, she left a career in advertising, moved to Maine, and bought a fixer-upper cabin in a coastal town. After studying carpentry, she now works full time as a house painter and builder, keeping her hands busy and her mind free to focus on music.
We have a wonderful day planned for everyone. I hope to see you in the Garden this Saturday! Bring your friends, bring your appetite, and bring your love of potatoes! This is a free event. All are welcome at Potato Fest 2025!
