As the sun went down, more than 8,000 revelers squeezed under a bridge in a desolate corner of Brooklyn.
They danced to pulsating music played by the South Korean D.J. Peggy Gou under flashing lights while cooled by a breeze. For a few hours on a recent Saturday night, they made this patch of asphalt into their underground nightclub.
It was the season opener at Under the K, a linear park that runs under the Kosciuszko Bridge, a gleaming, cable-stayed span that carries drivers on one of New York City’s busiest highways, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, over Newtown Creek.
The Under the K concerts have been a surprise hit in a city with no shortage of outdoor entertainment. Since 2022, more than 350,000 concertgoers have made their way to this raw industrial space, which doubles as a skate area by day. There is no general audience seating, only portable toilets and cars zooming by overhead.
“It’s kind of crazy,” said Zoe Maxey, 25, who was back for her third concert under the bridge. “When you’re here, it feels like you’re part of an underground culture. I was very skeptical, but you know what? It’s the best spot.”
This year’s season has grown to 33 concerts and festivals, with performers including The Prodigy, Interpol and Patti Smith. Two years ago, Björk headlined under the bridge. Madonna also showed up that year as a guest judge at the LadyLand music festival.
Curtis Sliwa, 72, the Guardian Angels founder and former Republican mayoral candidate, and his wife, Nancy Sliwa, were spotted dancing to the Chainsmokers during last year’s campaign. They were back again this month for the BUNT concert.
“It brings me back to my first raves in London and Berlin that I experienced in the late 1980s,” said Mr. Sliwa, who is a fan of electronic dance music. He said that soaking up the atmosphere of the Under the K concerts — the bridge, the crowd and the music — had been “a mood elevator.”
What makes the Under the K concerts even more unusual is that they are about “partying with a purpose,” according to the North Brooklyn Parks Alliance, which manages the state-owned park. The events have generated more than $5 million in revenue for the conservancy, including $1.7 million in 2025 alone, through site fees paid by concert producers and a $2 “park restoration fee” added to each ticket.
“The concerts kind of unearthed this geyser of revenue, and that revenue gets poured back into neighborhood parks,” said Dave Lombino, the co-chair of the conservancy’s board and the managing director of external affairs at Two Trees Management, a real estate developer.
The concert money has paid for horticulture and maintenance programs and services at more than 40 parks and open spaces across the Greenpoint and Williamsburg neighborhoods at a time when city parks have been chronically underfunded and are often neglected.
In recent months, parks advocates have renewed their campaign to increase city funding for parks to 1 percent of the total municipal budget. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s $124.7 billion budget proposal has allocated just over half a percent to city parks, though he has committed to 1 percent by the end of his mayoralty.
The parks commissioner, Tricia Shimamura, said the Under the K concerts are a creative way to reuse urban infrastructure while raising money for important park services that supplement her department’s work and help stretch its resources.
“More is more here when it comes to the care and maintenance of our parkland,” Ms. Shimamura said. “I would never say no to additional help.”
While many conservancies focus on a signature park, the North Brooklyn Parks Alliance regularly maintains two major parks, Bushwick Inlet, where it has an office, and McGolrick in Greenpoint, as well as a string of plazas, pedestrian crossings and dog runs.
Currently, more than half of the alliance’s $3 million annual budget comes from the concerts, with the rest from other revenue sources, such as donations, grants and other site fees, said Katie Denny Horowitz, the executive director. The conservancy has expanded to 25 full-time staff members, including 10 horticulture specialists, five maintenance workers, and five program and event planners.
The other day at Bushwick Inlet Park, Jeffrey Hewitt, the park’s manager of horticulture and stewardship, pulled out an invasive plant, mugwort, by the handful. “Mugwort is very tenacious,” he said. “But I like to think we’re more tenacious.”
Ms. Horowitz added, “We are north Brooklyn after all.”
The North Brooklyn Parks Alliance was founded in 2003 as an advocacy group, the Open Space Alliance for North Brooklyn, and joined a larger community fight for more open space and waterfront access in a fast-developing swathe of Brooklyn. The alliance officially became a conservancy in 2008, and changed its name in 2018.
The group’s early leaders found ways to activate underused open spaces while raising money to support them. It co-hosted a series of “pool parties” at McCarren Park from 2006 to 2008, holding concerts in the long shuttered pool to help push for its renovation.
In 2017, the new Kosciuszko Bridge opened to replace its older namesake. It was the first major bridge to be built in the city since the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in 1964.
Ms. Horowitz said the alliance saw the potential of all the space along and under the new bridge and worked with state officials to design and build a seven-acre park. Under the K, which was allocated $6 million in state funding, opened in 2021 during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Kosciuszko Bridge casts much of the park in shade, though a gap between the Queens- and Brooklyn-bound lanes lets in a sliver of sunlight, or moonlight. There is no running water, so an irrigation system was improvised from water tanks, rain barrels and hoses.
It takes a large ground operation to transform the park into a music venue. The Bowery Presents, the producer for most of the concerts, set up the stage and sound and lighting systems for the show with Ms. Gou. Another area looked like a street festival with food trucks and shipping containers selling drinks and merchandise.
While not close to any subway, the site has the advantage of being far enough away from homes to minimize noise and traffic issues. Workers also strategically position speakers to control the sound level, and during concerts, they monitor the sound on site and in surrounding neighborhoods.
Lincoln Restler, a Brooklyn councilman who represents neighborhoods around Under the K park, said he received about a dozen noise complaints from local residents last year. “In return for the concerts, we have major resources to invest in our parks,” he said. “In my opinion, that’s a really good deal for our community.”
To reduce trash and waste from the concerts, the conservancy has worked with Sure We Can, a nonprofit recycling center, and Cup Zero, a company that provides reusable plastic drink cups that are collected after every concert. In a back area, workers sort through piles of trash and pull out recyclables into the early morning hours.
Even before Ms. Gou took the stage, David Roucoulet, 58, was happy to be standing in line under the bridge. He had paid $169 for a V.I.P. ticket and driven three-and-a-half hours from his home in Bristol, Conn.
“It was pouring a little while ago and I did not get wet,” he said. “I would gladly come back.”
Winnie Hu is a Times reporter covering the people and neighborhoods of New York City.
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