Ignore the calendar–you know it’s officially summer when festivals and fairs start sprouting up through the cracks of New York sidewalks. Among the dozens of quirky fairs last weekend, two reined supreme: the Bust Craftacular and Food Fair, and the weekly Brooklyn Flea’s Smorgasburg Food Market.

The Bust Craftacular was a raucous affair at 82 Mercer Street in SoHo, its seventh annual event. Equal parts Grandma-on-acid and militant political schtick, this much-beloved New York indie event offered up its usual fair trade/organic/vegan-optional beauty booty, clothing, jewelry and snacks.

Notables included Dolce Nonna Italian organic antipasti ($6–$8), Liddabit Sweets locally-sourced candy ($2–$8) and pop-ins and signings from Babycakes’ Erin McKenna and Prune chef (and author of the fantastic memoir Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef), Gabrielle Hamilton.

The Smorgasburg food market brought in the usual Greenmarket/chef all-stars (People’s Pops, SCRATCHBread, Brooklyn Grange, Ronnybrook, Txikito, The Meat Hook), exploding with caffeinated, vaguely elitist foodie energy. Flea newbies like Queen’s Dahn Tu and King’s Crumb spooned out their banh trang tron and homemade biscuits with seasonal jams.

The Bust is over, but the Smorgasburg is just getting started. To get hungry for next week’s feast, listen to the boys of The Meat Hook explain how their special blend of sausage will help you in the sack.

After shuttering Xiao Ye in a shame spiral of Four Loko fizz, General Tso prawns, Sam Sifton-mocked beef ribs and his mom’s hectoring, everyone’s favorite booze-and-hip-hop-loving chef Eddie Huang is opening another fusion restaurant in Brooklyn.

Dubbed Huang Way, the Taiwanese/Southern American vehicle is going to sport a carp farm on the roof and an über green food cart (powered by foot, according to Tasting Table).

Check out the video, below, in which Huang instructs Michael Bao to “kiss his ass,” offers a sneak peak into his new toast-point heavy menu and carefully analyzes the importance of hurting customers’ teeth.

Brooklyn-based rap duo Das Racist has been tap dancing on the line between ridiculous and sublime, vulture and culture, transparent and transcendent since their annoyingly addictive song “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” first cannon-balled into our culture’s collective unconscious.

That was way back in 2008. Since then, they’ve warred with music journalist Sasha Frere-Jones, held a “Cartoon-Off” with The New Yorker and spawned the smartest, funniest conversation about race America’s had, since, well, ever.

The game-changing Shut Up, Dude and Sit Down, Man mixtapes were released to a collective critical orgasm, with MTV, Spin and Rolling Stone moaning the loudest. They’re set to unleash the ominously titled Relax in June on their own label.

More significantly, however, they recently went cheese tasting for GQ, inspired by their timeless lyrics on “Rainbow in the Dark”: We could eat the flyest aged cave cheese for sheez, ma/ Yeah, we could eat gruyere as if we care/ we could eat Roquefort, or we could just kick it like Rockports in the periphery of Little Sicily.

The VP of Murray’s Cheese Shop in the West Village, Liz Thorpe, bravely donned a hairnet and brought the boys down into the cheese cave. GQ documented their intrepid cave-spelunking adventure–check it out for the boys’ take on cheese that smells “like ammonia and horses” as they search for a safe place to “cut a fart” and wax poetic about cheese.

Getting good barbecue in New York City is as tough as getting a decent knish in Memphis–unless you live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Then it’s as simple as rolling down to the Fette Sau (“fat pig”) at 354 Metropolitan Avenue.

Since 2007, the converted auto body repair shop has been providing a rendered-fat-loving populace with the finest smoked meats, craft beers (by the gallon!) and American whiskies anywhere outside of Tennessee.

Eating at Fette Sau is like listening to Anika–it seems like you’ve been there before because it’s intrinsically comforting and reassuring, but at the same time, surreal, exciting and never, ever boring.

Like all good Memphis pit-masters, the chefs at Fette Sau refrain from applying sauce during the cooking (and discourage the application of sauce afterward, though a pupu platter of delicious options is available for the non-purists, like me), believing that anything more than hunks of well-marbled pork and beef topped with spices and rigorously smoked protein is superfluous, if not anathema, to the experience of BBQ.

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Before we get started, Tanya Morgan is a hip-hop group, not a singer. Now then, moving on. We stumbled upon Tanya Morgan back in 2006 as they released their debut album, Moonlighting. They were all over mtvU that summer, and we ran across them a couple months later at the CMJ Music Marathon. By that point, they’d already spent a few years in the lab.

What began as a connection via The Roots’ online community, okayplayer, Tanya Morgan formed in 2003. Brooklyn MC/producer Von Pea teamed up with Cincinnati-based MC Donwill to create an album, along with fellow Ohioan Ilyas. In subsequent years, the crew released a couple of EPs, the aforementioned LP and a mixtape titled for clarity–Tanya Morgan is a Rap Group.

By 2009, the guys had done quite a bit of urban planning to promote the release of their third full-length, Brooklynati. An imagined hybrid reflecting the origins of the group, the album comes with a map and an accompanying website full of details about the city, including a tattoo parlor, clock shop, banks and a DMV (extra credit for an abundance of train stations).

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The best Lemonade is in Brooklyn. The San Franciscan transplants blend multi-faceted experimental arrangements, wafting vocals and tribal elements into meaty disco-influenced tracks intended to rock the dance floor.

Produced by Chris Coady (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Architecture in Helsinki, Beach House), the trio released their eponymous debut album in 2008 via True Panther Sounds. Tropical cuts like “Big Weekend” and “Blissout” barely manage to contain their own percussion and build into big bursts of energy.

Their sophomore record, Pure Moods, followed earlier this year, mixing in more dub and soca influences, and found the band zeroing in on their sound.

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The Dears will play a series of residencies in Montreal, Toronto and Brooklyn this fall to preview their new as-yet-unnamed album, out next year via Dangerbird Records.

Starting in September the band will be performing the new material live, and all profits made from merch sales at the shows will be donated to Montreal City Mission and War Child. Tickets for shows are on sale starting today.

The Dears also have a new lineup that features some new faces as well as returning players. Keyboardist/vocalist Natalia told us each album has a rotating cast of characters, and this one is no exception.