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This Is a Public Service Announcement

Joy, Labor, and a Pink Sound System in the Middle of Brooklyn

There are parties in this city that feel like secrets, even when they’re hiding in plain sight. Not tucked behind velvet ropes or disguised with password-only entry — just out there, in the sun, where anyone can stumble in. The music’s already going. The pink speakers are sweating. Kids are weaving between coolers. A pit bull is licking spilled seltzer off the concrete. You’re probably overdressed. Or underdressed. Doesn’t matter. You’re here.

This is Public Service

It’s not a brand. It’s a frequency. The party that doesn’t announce itself with fireworks or influencer flyers. It builds slowly, speaker by speaker, hand by hand. There’s a rhythm to the setup that mirrors the day itself — intentional but unhurried, scrappy but precise. Someone’s always lifting, plugging, taping, or rigging. Someone else is dancing already, just to test the floor. It always starts like this: a few people milling around, the first drops of bass bleeding into the open air, and then — a shift. Someone twirls. Someone whoops. Suddenly, the space rearranges itself around joy.

It’s not nostalgia. It’s not an aesthetic. It’s not trying to be anything but exactly what it is: a party in the park, the kind that makes people remember why they need to dance in public. Why sound belongs outside sometimes, with trees and children and aunties and barefoot weirdos and people who don’t usually go out but came because their friend said, “Trust me, it’s different.”

It is different. Not because it’s perfect, because it’s real. Because the stakes are low but the feeling is high. Because you don’t need to buy anything to belong. Because the people throwing it aren’t doing it for ego or capital or clout — they’re doing it because it’s how they care for the city that raised them.

Public Service is a dance floor built from memory and muscle. A little heat, a lot of heart, and a shared understanding that this kind of thing — free, unlicensed, uncynical — is precious. It only happens because someone wakes up early, hauls gear across boroughs, and believes it’s worth it to make this small miracle happen one more time.

That belief is the throughline behind every Public Service, but the frequency — the thing that makes it sing — starts with the two men at its core.

Toribio behind the decks and Mickey taking a smoke break (Alexandra Clear)

Mickey is the firestarter — a genre-agnostic DJ with an encyclopedic love of Latin rhythms, diasporic dance music, and high-energy party sonics. A veteran of New York nightlife and global radio circuits, his sets feel like controlled chaos: joyful, unexpected, full of sweat and surprise. He’s the one who shows up in a funky bucket hat, already halfway into a groove before the first track even drops.

Toribio, by contrast, is all intention. A musician and producer by trade, his DJ sets stretch wide and breathe slow. There’s space in them — for people to land, for energy to build, for rhythm to settle into the body like breath. He doesn’t shout over the crowd. He lets the crowd find him. Where Mickey leaps, Toribio grounds. Where Toribio flows, Mickey flips the switch.

Together, they bring Public Service to life — not by force, but by feel. Years of playing together have turned their back-to-backs into something almost telepathic. There’s no setlist, no script. Just trust, rhythm, and a shared love of watching a party bloom from nothing into everything.

They start slow — mellow grooves for early arrivals — and build in long arcs. Every thirty minutes or so they trade off, letting the energy stretch and shift. Toward the end of the day, they tighten the handoff: three tracks each, then two, then one. Never rehearsed, never pre-planned. Just instinct and muscle memory.

For Mickey, part of the mission is to carve out a musical space that reflected more than just the usual disco-to-house pipeline. So many dance parties in the city – especially those orbiting house – stayed in the familiar territory of deep cuts, extended mixes, rare edits. Few brought in the sonic languages of the African, Caribbean, and South American diasporas that shaped his own New York experience. Public Service was a way to change that.

Socially, I also wanted to create the kind of space I would've loved to experience when I first moved to NYC.

Mickey

“It felt important to incorporate those sounds — not just because of my roots, but because it reflects how I came up here. Socially, I also wanted to create the kind of space I would've loved to experience when I first moved to NYC.”

Toribio was chasing something similar — a space where sound could realign the body, not just move it. His vision was always inward-facing first. The external community flowed naturally from there.

“The space I like to aim to create first of all is an internal one ... A space within oneself that allows for connection of your mind, body, and soul through music.”

The two of them started plotting Public Service long before it ever had a name. In 2019, after countless late-night conversations about what they weren’t hearing in New York, they began dreaming up a new kind of party. That idea first came to life in the form of a short-lived block party series called BAILA, organized by their friend Felipe Mendez outside La Superior in South Williamsburg. It only ran three Sundays before the NYPD shut it down, but the response was electric.

The loss of BAILA became the seed for Public Service. Parks, they realized, offered a different kind of freedom — legally, spiritually, emotionally. In May 2022, they threw the first official Public Service at Herbert Von King Park.

It did not go smoothly.

As Mickey recalls, “We had to go to Home Depot, get a generator, and fill that bitch with gas. Our sound guy couldn’t figure out how to get the rig to work, so I had to run home and grab my two little speakers.” 

We blew the power on the entire park block ... but somehow people still danced. That was the moment we knew we had something.

Mickey

Toribio remembers it as both a mess and a breakthrough. “We blew the power on the entire park block ... but somehow people still danced. That was the moment we knew we had something.”

Out of that chaos came one of their smartest decisions: bringing on Karl – aka Karlala Soundsystem – as their dedicated sound engineer. The difference was immediate. What started with scrambling and improvisation became something with texture, power, and clarity. A real system. A real collaboration.

A scene from the July 11 Herbert Von King Public Service (Alexandra Clear)

The start of the party has become a ritual. Every Public Service opens with Elegua by Merceditas Valdés — a spiritual invocation named for the Orisha of crossroads, beginnings, and opportunity.

As Mickey described it, “When we play Elegua, we’re essentially saying we’re willing to go in whatever direction Elegua takes us. And if it rains, that’s how Elegua was feeling that Sunday.”

Over the years, the party has become its own kind of crossroads — one where dancers, DJs, artists, and strangers meet in a space held together by rhythm, effort, and mutual care. For Toribio, that feeling came through most vividly at a stormy Public Service in Maria Hernandez Park.

“People were jumping as high as they could while It’s Alright, I Feel It was playing. Eyes closed, mouths open — like they were trying to feel everything at once.”

For Mickey, that day still stands out as one of the most electric, but the season is not over yet.

That feeling only lands the way it does because the foundation has been carefully built — not just emotionally, but physically. What holds the party together isn’t just what’s played, but how it sounds. How it moves through the space.

The sound system isn’t just a backdrop — it’s a living, breathing part of the party. While Mickey and Toribio guide the arc of the day, it’s Karl who builds the skeleton it moves on. He shapes the pressure in the air, adjusting frequencies by hand, sculpting the feeling of the floor in real time.

Karl, standing in his pink shirt that matches the custom speakers he built (Alexandra Clear)

“The sound at Public Service is for the dancers, so I want it to be powerful but also clean,” Karl said. “The DJs are playing vinyl, originals, classics across a wide range of genres ... we keep the signal chain extremely transparent and ride the level and EQ through all the genre changes.”

The goal is to make it feel alive — to make the court sound as full in the middle of a jazz fusion warmup as it does in the middle of a breakbeat tear-up. That takes attention, patience, and the kind of behind-the-scenes labor most people never realize is happening.

“The equipment is only part of what makes a good sound,” Karl explained. “The sound crew is actively engineering through the whole party. Especially at a party like Public Service with such a wide range of sounds. We’re working the whole time.”

While Karl tunes the air, Mario – the party’s unofficial visual archivist – captures the atmosphere one frame at a time. His photography is what gives Public Service its afterglow — the way people remember it on Monday, or months later when summer feels far away.

Mario (Alexandra Clear)

Mario isn’t interested in spectacle. His lens is attuned to communion — the soft, glowing, spontaneous ways strangers turn into something more. He doesn’t come in with a shot list. He just watches, waits, and hopes he’s standing in the right place when magic unfolds.

I don’t plan the shots. I just hope I’m in the right place at the right time to capture it and enjoy it.

Mario

“There are moments at each Public Service that I can almost always expect — dance circles, someone bringing pizza to the floor, dancing in the rain, strangers becoming friends ... I don’t plan the shots. I just hope I’m in the right place at the right time to capture it and enjoy it.”

What he’s most careful about is not breaking the spell. He’s hyper-aware of presence — of how even the smallest interruption can shake someone out of a moment. That’s why he keeps his gear minimal, moves quietly, and lets the energy guide him.

“I never want to disrupt a genuine moment people are sharing,” Mario said. “I’d rather miss the shot than interrupt it.”

Over time, Mario has built trust with the people who show up. They know he’s not just documenting them — he’s part of it. He’s in it. He’s on the floor. They’ve become friends, collaborators, co-conspirators in preserving something fleeting.

“There’s a particular moment I try to capture every time — that 30-minute window in Bed-Stuy when the sun cuts through the trees and lights up a dancer like a spotlight. It’s magic. Especially paired with the sonic journey Cesar and Mickey are taking us through. I try my best to capture that feeling.”

Then, there are the dancers. The recurring characters. The ones who show up ready to pour joy into the space with every step, spin, and smirk.

“Estrella, our all-star dancer — I could shoot them forever,” Mario said. “Their energy is so contagious. And yes, I probably have hundreds of photos of you, balancing things on your head, taking photos of me ... it’s a nice moment we’ve been sharing. I plan to keep it going.”

Photo of me by Mario

When it comes time to end, there’s only one track they trust to close the day with grace: “Todo Tiene Su Final.” A reminder that every moment — no matter how joyous, how free, how alive — eventually gives way to stillness, but the feeling doesn’t vanish. It lingers in the air, in the muscles, in the memory of bass beneath your feet, because at Public Service, even endings are designed with care.

Public Service is more than the sum of its parts — but its parts are sacred. The DJ booth. The cables. The camera. The speakers. The sunlight. The city. Each one held and handled by someone who gives a shit. Each one part of the whole.

By now, Public Service has become a living being. A small but fiercely intentional ecosystem held together by trust, labor, rhythm, and joy. It’s grown without a business model. It’s lasted without sponsors. It’s survived blown fuses, sideways rain, and the quiet fatigue that creeps in when you’re trying to hold something sacred in a city built to forget.

Everyone keeps showing up. Karl still hauls the sound. Mickey still cues up the next record in a funky bucket hat like he’s hosting the best cookout you’ve never been to. Cesar still lays down records like he’s casting spells. Mario still catches the light when it hits just right. The rest of us — the dancers, the volunteers, the friends and friends-of-friends — keep showing up too.

The city shows up because it’s rare to find something that feels this open. This deeply cared for. This is joyful without being corny. This is cool without being cruel.

There are only two more Public Service gatherings left this season: Sunday, August 10 and Sunday, September 14, both at Herbert Von King Park, from 3:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Bring water. Bring friends. Bring the best version of yourself, or the version that just needs to move.

If you want to help make sure this keeps happening — not just this year, but next — the crew has launched a GoFundMe to support the fourth season. Donations go directly toward gear, permits, transport, and all the invisible labor that keeps this running.

Public Service will end the summer the way it always does — no headliner, no gate, no gimmick. Just a circle of strangers dancing as the sun sets, trying to feel everything at once.

Embedded in Brooklyn nightlife and the New York club scene, Alexandra Clear writes about Nightlife for Now Frolic.