We had no idea this party had been rocking for a full 42 years! If you haven't visited during any one of those, make this the year you turn out for the West Indian American Day Carnival — you won't be disappointed. Countries from all around the Caribbean are represented (gregariously, always) in the parade, with blaring speakers stacked atop flatbed trucks and the roofs of buses; women in outlandish Carnival costumes (aka feathers, sequins, and not much else) dancing along side; and stand after stand of the best Caribbean soul food in Brooklyn. Fill up on curries of every kind (we've even come across a vegan goat curry), fried fish, callaloo, plantains, coco bread, and of course, jerk everything. Our advice: go with an empty stomach, and head over earlier in the day, as by the end of the parade things can get a bit hectic.

At 11 subway stations in Brooklyn, small candy colored issues of One Story, each of which will contain one story by a Brooklyn author, will be flying fast, furious and free right into your hands if you're part of the morning rush hour crunch. While we'd love to think this was timed with the launch of our Brooklyn site, it's actually aimed to get the word out about the reading by One Story authors James Hannaham (God Says No), Reif Larsen (The Collected Works of T.S. Spivet) and Caedra Scott-Flaherty at the Brooklyn Book Festival on September 12. To make your rush hour travels even sweeter, each issue given out will include an invitation to the reading.

In Phytoremediation plants are used to pull pollutants from the environment and make them innocuous. One way of doing this is to create floating restoration devices or gardens of water plants attached to structures buoyed in polluted bodies of water. Sounds like fun to us, but we're sure it's more complicated than sticking a houseplant on an old cereal box. But maybe not. Luckily Scott Kellog, co-founder of Albany's Radix Ecological Sustainability Center, will guide you through the basic concepts and techniques of  phytoremediation. Then you make your very own mini floating trash island with wetland plants and sail it down the Lavendar Lake (aka Gowanus Canal). Save the date and stock your trash up. What else have your old soda bottles got goin' on?

DIY concert producers Bikes in the Kitchen celebrate 5 years of staying alive with Never Forget, a concert produced in conjunction with Jelly at Rock Yard featuring DeathSet, NinjaSonik, Snakes Say Hiss and DMC of RunDMC. The mission of Bikes in the Kitchen is to eradicate "delineation between talent and audience," according to founder Carlos Valpeoz. And the concerts get hectic. "I don't attach any morals or ethics to my shows," says Valpeoz who started the enterprise in his kitchen bike repair shop to provide a space for people to let go, listen to great music and have good sloppy fun. While his parties are known to get tossed out of venues, this one is legit. But please don't ask him where the green room is.

Writers in bars. Like websites that capitalize on already extant internet memes, Litquake is passing this off as a new idea. But old or new, we're always up for writers and bars. So we're thrilled that Lit Crawl NYC is pairing writers from some of our favorite magazines like The Paris Review, BOMB and Fence with some of our favorite watering holes like Home Sweet Home, KGB and Botanica Bar. Check out the venues, and set your crawl itinerary. And no worries if you're feeling sedentary or have had one too many — an expected upshot. Pick your poison, nestle in and let the different magazines come to you. See the full schedule here. Some events we're hitting up: In Phase I (6-6:45): Soft Skull Night and/or Literary Trivia with Harper Perennial; Phase II (7-7:45): Welcome to the Jungle and/or FSG on Sex, Love, Friendship and Literature; and Phase III (8-8:45) is a toss up between Open City/Gigantic's Sweet Home New York, the Paris Review Sneak Preview and the Bomb-aoke! And after 9, it's all party at Fontana's.

No other book festival holds a candle to the Brooklyn Book Festival in terms of program variety, interestingness and intimacy. With venues from Borough Hall to the Bell House, come see your favorite authors get down and personal. Nobel-winner Paul Krugman heads up a panel on the economic crisis; Naomi Klein and Kurt Anderson reflect on the “Culture of Disaster”; Paul Auster converses with John Ashbery; John Hodgman and Sloane Crosley talk humor writing and Nick Flynn speaks to the atrocities of conflict. More notables include Stephen Elliott, Rosanne Cash, Melvin Van Peebles, Monica Ferrell, Joshua Cohen, Elizabeth Wurtzel and Mary Gaitskill. Book-ending the panels this year are special events such as an intimate conversation with John Waters, the PEN Quiz Night and an opening night Indie Press Celebration at Greenlight Bookstore. And if you think this is all just an elaborate ruse to schmooze, stroll the tents, pick up the latest output from Dalkey, Electric Literature and Drawn & Quarterly and chat up some small press publishers while taking in events at the outdoor Mainstage.