The Great Big Bacon Picnic

Transportation Alternatives, NYC’s biggest advocate of human powered travel, has a brilliant idea they packaged into a “challenge” summoning our most inner competitor. The goal of the Five Boro Pizza Challenge is to conquer Greenwich Village through pizza slices, our favorite of all quick hit street food. Once you’ve made all your stops the challenge culminates with an after party where, just like in kindergarten, everyone is a winner. What’s more fun that eating 5 pieces of pizza with a bunch of active, pizza loving NYers? Really, what’s better? Yeah, thought so. Saturday, July 30 at 11AM in New York City.

For 7 years now, The Jamaican Jerk Festival has brought together some of the best in island music and food. In a time where music/food festivals seem to hop the bullet train to corporate run monsters, this little indie festival guarantees true local flavor. Even though the title sponsor is one of the largest producers of West Indian food products, you can’t rattle the “real” out of the 5 borough Caribbean community. This year will be the biggest, best and booyakasha of all years with Barrington Levy anchoring the vibes and a quarter mile of jerk stands to spice up the day. Appropriately hosted by our new home borough in Roy Wilkins Park, take the E train to Jamaica center and then get cozy up on the Q5 bus. We promise a Sunday adventure in sound, culinary and transit. Sunday, July 23rd from 12-8pm in Queens, NY.

We can’t wait for the porking tasty (see what we did there?) good time we’re gonna have at Pig Island, NYC’s definitive pork fest, where the hogs come from small local farms, the chefs are top-notch. The eats are crazy, as in, crazy good and plain old crazy. Especially if you’re not in the habit of consuming obscure cuts of pork on the regs. Where else is it possible to eat locally sourced pig head tacos and crispy pig ear lettuce wraps in the same meal? But if that’s not exactly your jam, don’t worry, there will be lots of tamer fare to pig out on, too. Although we wouldn’t exactly call last year’s bacon banana bread with caramelized bacon “tame.” If you’re still not convinced, maybe the all-inclusive ticket with unlimited pork and free-flowing beer, wine, and cider will push your to snap up a ticket. So go ahead — go completely hog wild. Saturday, September 10th from 11:30am to 4pm in Brooklyn.

Going down in one of our favorite spots in Manhattan, Porktoberfest is an all you can eat and drink gastro-malay kicking off cider week. As if the rest of this month hasn’t been a beer dizzying, pork face filling entry into the fall season, you now have one more way to anchor your binging before we’re into November. Fleishers Craft Butchery will be dealing up the piggies. There will be something called Harry Hawk “Schnack” burgers and “Bigos” Pork Stew. We have no idea what this is code for but we’re going to throw it down our throats with huge smiles. Saturday, October 22nd, from 12PM to 4PM.