Come Saturday or Sunday, the artists, authors, advocates, families and, it must be said, dancing fools, of Clinton Hill and Fort Greene like to do one thing: get together and party. Winter brings sledding parties in the park, while summer weekends are filled with block parties and street fairs --  from the annual Afro-Punk Block Party to the Urban Assembly Academy of Arts & Letters' SummerFest.

The first-ever "Move About Myrtle" kicks off this year with a pedestrian plaza on Myrtle Avenue every Saturday in September. From 11 am to 7 pm, you can walk, bike and dance in the street (just not naked) from Clinton to Emerson. Slightly farther down Myrtle, the Brooklyn Urban Arts Market will have live music, fashion shows and local culture.  On October 21, the Pratt Area Community Council will celebrate its 45th anniversary with a dinner and dance celebration at Irondale Theater.

During the rest of the year, residents can look forward to some celebrations that are just so good, they're held every year. Each August, the New York Writer's Coalition hosts the Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival. The event, which concludes a six-week outdoor creative writing youth workshop presented by the Coalition each year, most recently featured Colson Whitehead, Touré and Nelson George and has been frequented in years past by Jennifer Egan, Amiri Baraka, Gloria Naylor and Quincy Troupe.

The Society for Clinton Hill sponsors an annual Halloween Walk to bring out both the goblins and the goodies. In early November, there's an international street scene when neighborhood residents, local bands and volunteers line Lafayette Avenue to cheer the New York City Marathon runners through mile 8.

In warmer months, the South of the Navy Yard Artists (SONYA) host a yearly studio stroll.  In early summer, you can see if the grass is greener in the back yard during Brownstone Brooklyn Garden District's annual self-guided Garden Walk through private and community gardens in Fort Greene, Clinton Hill and Prospect Heights. If that's not enough to make you go out and buy a lottery ticket, the Society for Clinton Hill's annual House Tour will be.
 
By Jeca Taudte