THE RIDER: Parks Department's Top 10
The band on mulch pits, Pét Nats and their PG-13 lifestyle
New York is pretty great at a lot of stuff. Bagels! Broadway! Bridges! Beaches! Bodegas! Pizza! Rats! Pizza Rat!
But tied for #1 on our list of reasons We <3 NY are two very wonderful things that really make life here (in NYC / on earth) worth living: music + parks. And smack-dab in the middle of that very Venn Diagram is exactly where you’ll find who else BUT… our new favorite Brooklyn band, Parks Department.
Parks Department was started by singer-songwriter Woody Thomas and his ~actual~ NYC Parks Department co-workers in 2020, and has since involved into a kind of collective—a cast of rotating friends and acquaintances who sing songs about slides and swings and squirrels and bushes and birds and baseball fields…
JK. Just regular band stuff. AND BOY IS IT GOOD.
The band released their first EP Thank You For Leaving in 2023, and they are currently gearing up for the release of their debut (self-titled) album — coming soon.
We first caught Parks Department al fresco (fitting!) at a backyard show we booked this spring, and now you have the chance to experience these sweet sweet tunes live WEDNESDAY NIGHT when the band hits the stage alongside Go Home, Lane Moore & It Was Romance and Sam Zalta for THE LAST BANDS DO BK SHOW EVER at Our Wicked Lady before the venue closes.
💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔
It’s gonna be a good one.
GRAB YOUR TIX HERE, then read on for Parks Department’s Top 10 — a list featuring grab-bag baked goods, an insider’s park pointers and hot tips for partying while avoiding micro-plastics. (Don’t say you never learned anything here...)
PARKS DEPARTMENT’S TOP 10
1. Denim / other natural fibers
As a band, Parks Department highly recommends wearing natural fibers. You gotta look out for it, though - microplastic-filled synthetic material is hiding everywhere! Polyester? Nylon? Synthetic athleisure? Bad for your skin, bad for the world! 100% cotton denim (secondhand, ideally) is a safe bet instead.
2. Woody’s parlor guitar
A large part of the Parks Department sound is this unidentifiable parlor guitar I got years ago at Main Drag (they have a great rotating parlor-guitar selection). It’s the main (pun intended) instrument on nearly every Parks song. I’ve tried to find other parlor guitars off craigslist/pawn shops but none have resonated to same extent.
3. Working out in the NYC Parks
A lot of the parks in NYC have great workout stations. I have scoliosis and used to see a chiropractor, but it didn’t do that much for me (no disrespect to chiropractors) - but then I started doing pull-ups regularly and it was the best thing I’ve done to mitigate back pain. The NYC Parks workout stations have great pull-up bars, and if you can’t find out - or its in use - just use a sturdy, big tree branch (not a small tree, though, that could hurt the tree!).
4. David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs
David Graeber’s book Bullshit Jobs brilliantly articulates the absurdity, inefficiency, and purposelessness of so many jobs today. I always like to say Parks Department is a pro-labor, anti-work band (the original band lineup was largely NYC Parks coworkers of mine from Local 983), and this book critiques the completely antiquated, often oppressive schedules of jobs today and how much busywork there is to justify working longer hours than anyone should post-digitization.
5. TooGoodToGo
We’re big fans of TooGoodToGo - an app where you can get discounted, surplus food from restaurants/groceries/bakeries. When I was working for NYC Parks I’d get a TooGoodToGo nearly every day, and we often get them now at practice.
6. The Mulch Pit in Prospect Park
This is my favorite spot in Prospect Park. It’s technically a mound, but pit is more fun to say. It’s a giant mound where all the felled trees in Prospect are chopped up. It’s where we shot the music video for our single ”Switchback”.
7. Remembering that Zohran hasn’t won the election yet and we still need to vote in the general
(Plus voting in smaller elections all the time.)
8. Limbeck
Limbeck is one of the most underrated bands from the ‘00s. Way ahead of their time. They were an emo-ish band that went alt-country/powerpop before that was an expected thing to do, but sadly never broke out of their emo label/scene, and thus never got the recognition they deserve.
9. Pét Nats
We used to (and still are) big fans of beer, but all the new studies on micro plastics show that, sadly, even glass bottled beer has dangerous amounts of micro plastics in it, so now we’re drinking more pét nats - fermented, natural wine (shout out to Scyrine, the OG wine plug).
10. Coyote Club
Our music may be family-friendly but our lifestyle is a bit more PG-13. The Coyote Club in Bed Stuy is one of our favorite bars, and it’s where we met Julia, our backup singer, whom we started a new band, Provider, with.
Top 10 written + provided by Parks Department. Follow the band at @parksdeptband, buy music on Bandcamp and add the songs to your Spotify playlist.
Feature image provided by the band.
Flyer by: @laurel_works3