If you’ve ever dreamed of a festival that combines high-concept art toys, street art, burlesque, vintage Japanese monster movies, music, and exclusive craft beer in a sprawling outdoor setting by the Hudson River—well, you’re probably one of the people already buying tickets to Five Points Festival.
Launched in 2016 by the folks behind Clutter magazine and Clutter Gallery, Five Points Fest has long been a magnet for devotees of designer toys and the eccentrically creative subcultures orbiting them: indie resin makers, sofubi sculptors, street artists, action-figure obsessives, tattooists, and toy-centric oddities collectors. Think Comic-Con with better curation and worse impulse control. “It’s always been about throwing a party that we want to go to,” says festival founder Josh Kimberg.
This year marks a major evolution for the event: its relocation from Brooklyn to Beacon, where it will take over The Yard on June 7–8 with a global roster of artists and vendors, two days of live music, movies, beer, and very little of what Kimberg calls “the Javits Center vibe.”
“We don’t want to be trapped in a convention hall all weekend,” Kimberg says. “Five Points was always about throwing a party we’d want to go to. That means great art, great music, great food, and great beer.”
What began as a niche gathering for designer toy heads has grown into an international affair. “We’ve sold tickets to people from all over the world,” Kimberg says. “It’s wild. But I think Beacon’s the right place for this now. It’s got that international energy already—people on Main Street speaking every language—and an incredible art scene. Plus, it’s part of the Brooklyn-to-Beacon pipeline. We knew the crowd would get it.”
Kimberg and his wife, the British-born founder of Clutter, have been quietly turning Beacon into a hub of the designer toy world since 2012. Their gallery, now located at the KuBe Art Center, is a temple to the strange and collectible—figures that blur the line between toy, sculpture, and spiritual totem. One of their longtime collaborators, the ever-prolific Ron English, lives nearby and created this year’s official Five Points artwork.
So, what exactly are “designer toys”? Kimberg laughs. “It’s a global culture now. Artists all over the world—Mexico, England, Taiwan, Japan—they’re making figures in resin or vinyl, sometimes in factories, sometimes by hand. Some are mass-produced, some are one-of-ones. But at its core, it’s a community. A lot of the artists came out of graffiti or illustration. They just started sculpting.”
And Five Points is their playground. Expect vendors like Mutant Vinyl Hardcore (the top American artist working in Japanese-style kaiju toys), Rampage Toys, Deadbeat City, CZ-13, and Ron English himself. “You’ll see things you’ve never seen before,” Kimberg promises. “Stuff that isn’t at your average convention. It’s important for people—especially kids and young artists—to be inspired.”
This year’s festival will also feature special programming from its partner organizations Toy Pizza (creators and collectors of Glyos-compatible action figures) and Moon, Serpent & Bone, who will curate the oddities market at the fest. “We love toys, but we also love bones,” Kimberg says, matter-of-factly.
Also on the docket: 20 bands, a Saturday night burlesque show, and a retro kaiju film series at the Beacon Movie Theater—including the 1954 black-and-white Godzilla, Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964), and David Lynch’s gloriously weird Dune from 1982.
For the discerning drinker, Industrial Arts Brewing is crafting exclusive collectible beer cans just for the festival. (Yes, even the beer is art.)
The move to Beacon, Kimberg says, was necessary. “We hit a wall in Brooklyn. There just aren’t venues anymore that make sense for our size and scene. The Yard gives us room to grow—it’s the entire green space, from the Yard itself all the way to Route 52. We couldn’t do bonfires or food trucks before. Now we can.”
Asked what success looks like, Kimberg doesn’t cite ticket sales. “If people walk away and say, ‘That was amazing—I had the best time—I can’t wait to come back,’ then we’ve done our job. I want this to be a place where you can fly your freak flag, whatever that looks like. You don’t have to dress like a weirdo to be inspired.”
Five Points Festival runs June 7–8 at the Yard in Beacon. Tickets here. VIPs get early access, exclusive toys, and a goodie bag that may or may not contain bones. Kids under 12 are free. Whether you’re kaiju-curious, toy-obsessed, or just looking for a better kind of weekend, Five Points is the answer to a question you didn’t know you were asking.
This article appears in May 2025.
