'Bring your beer, your children, and your strollers," the president of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy, Marianna Koval, said to the crowd gathered at the Tobacco Warehouse on Wednesday night.

The crowd contained beer drinkers, parents, and everything in between: Law student Kathryn Tyler read "An Introduction to the American Legal System," waiting for the band French Kicks to go on. Butcher Reid Dodson admired the park's "picturesque" weeping willow. The Asmundsson family came to watch the Secret Science Club. The Wortis family came to watch their 14-year-old baby sitter, Ivan, perform in the band the Tiny Masters of Today; the Carroll Gardens-based tween punk band played Lollapalooza.

The Brooklyn music venue Union Hall selected the bands in the last night of the conservancy's "Music Under the Bridge" program. The music has joined the conservancy's distinctively Brooklyn calendar that includes film screenings, pilates classes, and crochet circles.

But music was not the only lure to the waterfront on that warm and clear Wednesday night: European tourists lined up at Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory, while others snapped photos on Pier 1, a Waterfalls viewing and dining spot that also boasts the borough's largest sandbox. At the entrance to the pier, amateur astronomers offered passersby views of the crescent moon through telescopes donated by the Sci-Fi Channel.

It was a night to savor the moment, as well as to anticipate even more vibrant nights: In September, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation begins construction to convert piers into parks offering playgrounds, sporting fields, boating, and floating walkways.

agordon@nysun.com