Ben Kinsinger—musician, organizer, and self-declared “River King”—first discovered the underpass beneath the Belmont Avenue Bridge not as a venue, but as a neglected patch of concrete and trash. Over time, his perspective shifted.

“I kept coming to this spot, just poking around,” Kinsinger explained, standing near his raft in a gauzy blouse and wide-brimmed hat. “It was usually full of garbage. But one day it was clean. Something clicked.”

That moment sparked an idea—to reclaim the space with the energy of live performance.

“If we do something here, it could stay clean,” he said. “We need human energy to activate the space. And that’s kind of what we’ve got now.”

As his music series grew, so did its reputation. Locals stumbled upon the hidden shows. Artists and musicians followed. And on Saturday, the parade—complete with city approval—brought it all into full public view.

Though scheduled to begin earlier, heavy rainfall pushed back the event by two hours. The first performance stop at Richard Clark Park was dropped. Instead, the fleet of pontoons sailed directly to Belmont Avenue, where it all began.

By mid-afternoon, the clouds had cleared, and the Chicago River sparkled under the sun. Kayakers and spectators paddled close to the water’s edge. The audience gathered under the bridge, surrounded by graffiti-covered walls and the thump of music drifting over the water.

The atmosphere blurred the line between urban decay and artistic invention. A disco ball hung from the underpass ceiling. A small grill filled the air with the scent of hot dogs. The concrete pylon—once just a structural column—had become a stage, glimmering with sunlight and spray paint.

The floating parade brought with it a spectrum of sights and sounds. The lead pontoon arrived draped in orange fabric, fronted by a seven-foot arch shaped like a monster’s mouth that opened into a rainbow-colored tent. On another barge, artist Risa Rubin played a deep purple harp as wind tossed a long sculpture made of plastic bags into the air.

Nearby, Sherry Wang, dressed in a flowing blue robe and golden headdress, performed interpretive movements aboard the floating platform.

“I come here to see how he [Kinsinger] uses his imagination to make this community,” Wang said.

She continued,

“It’s a free music kingdom. I feel the floating canvas of the whole environment, and it’s interactive with art and nature.”

Each float had its own visual identity. One, built by artist Drew Reynolds, featured a towering cyclonic separator—a replica of old industrial air filtration devices seen on Chicago rooftops—wrapped in multicolored tissue paper.

“It’s an old filtration system,” Reynolds explained. “They’re all over Chicago, kind of like artifacts of the industrial past.”

He added,

“They feel very sculptural. We tried to model it after old homecoming or Fourth of July floats—where people work together and glue tissue on chicken wire. It’s a community effort.”

The band Cielito Lindo, a mariachi group made up of a father and his three sons, floated in wearing subtle clown makeup. Their boat followed a whimsical posse of sunbathing clowns in red and white costumes. As temperatures rose, they launched into a mariachi-infused cover of Weezer’s “Island in the Sun,” complete with Spanish lyrics and horns.

Diego Lucero, one of the three Lucero brothers, reflected on his history with the site.

“I used to come here to spray graffiti during the pandemic,” he said. “It always had this underground energy.”

And as he looked at the crowd gathered under the bridge, he joked:

“I don’t know if the fandom has a name yet. Maybe the trolls, because you’re all under a bridge.”

The final act to play under the bridge was Lawrence Tone, Kinsinger’s own band. Members lounged on the riverbank before their set, eating tavern-style pizza and sipping PBR.

What started years ago as an unplugged performance has grown into a fully powered operation, with amps, lights, and a sizeable audience. The growth has brought new faces but also changed the intimacy of the event.

Eric Novack, the band’s flutist, noted the shift.

“It’s nice to just have the intimate, you just kind of wander in, like ‘What is this?’” he said.

He added,

“Now it doesn’t have that mystique in the same way, but at the same time it’s cool to have a s— ton of people. Loss of mystique is a natural part of progress.”

As the sun dipped and the music played on, the parade wrapped where it all began—under a bridge, in a corner of the river once overlooked, now alive with rhythm, color, and community.