VIP 500 New York 2013: The Exclusive All-Inclusive at City View Park
V.I.P. 500 — The Exclusive All-Inclusive, presented by Back To Basics Entertainment and Sesame Flyers Inc. at City View Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Some New York Caribbean parties in 2013 were built around paint, powder and J’Ouvert.
V.I.P. 500 went in the opposite direction.
On Sunday, September 8, 2013, Back To Basics Entertainment and Sesame Flyers Inc. presented V.I.P. 500 — The Exclusive All-Inclusive at City View Park, 5 North 11th Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
The event ran from 3 PM to 10 PM, and everything about the promotion leaned into exclusivity.
The flyer asked one question:
“Are you the chosen few?”
This was not being sold as a casual Sunday fete. V.I.P. 500 was promoted as a polished, all-inclusive Caribbean experience with food, premium admission, a strict dress code and a carefully selected DJ lineup.
An All-Inclusive Sunday in Williamsburg
The V.I.P. 500 concept was straightforward: buy your ticket, dress for the occasion and spend the afternoon and evening inside an all-inclusive event.
Admission was advertised at $125, with a $100 online price available through August 25, 2013.
The flyer made the dress code equally clear:
“Very classy and sexy.”
Baseball hats were specifically prohibited.
The champagne glass and gold-themed artwork reinforced the tone before patrons even reached the venue. V.I.P. 500 was positioning itself as something more refined than the typical fete — an event where presentation was part of the experience.
Food Was Part of the Experience
“All-inclusive” was not just part of the title.
The flyer advertised food from several Caribbean restaurants and businesses, including:
Sugarcane Restaurant
Island Burger Restaurant
Royal Castle Chicken R&T
Footprints Restaurant
Along with additional food providers.
That mattered to the event’s identity. Rather than building the afternoon solely around music and drinks, the organizers were selling a complete Sunday experience where food was part of the admission.
The DJs Behind V.I.P. 500
Music for the afternoon came from a lineup familiar to New York’s Caribbean party scene:
DJ Kelz
Dr. Wax
Sounds 4 Life
Natural Freaks
Back To Basics
With the event running from afternoon into the evening, the DJs carried the party across a seven-hour window at City View Park.
V.I.P. 500 New York 2013 in Photos
The surviving photo gallery adds another view of the event beyond the promotional artwork and video.
The photographs preserve the patrons, fashion and atmosphere of an event where the dress code and upscale presentation were central to the concept.
Back To Basics and Sesame Flyers
V.I.P. 500 also brought together two names with established connections to New York’s Caribbean community.
Back To Basics Entertainment was already active across New York’s Soca and Carnival event circuit and would go on to become a long-time partner of Julianspromos across numerous events.
Sesame Flyers International, meanwhile, had much deeper community roots.
Founded in 1983, Sesame Flyers was celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2013. A New York State Senate resolution that year recognized the organization for its youth development, cultural and social services in Brooklyn, while also highlighting its Caribbean heritage and longstanding participation in New York’s West Indian American Day Carnival festivities.
That history gave V.I.P. 500 an interesting mix: an established Caribbean event promoter partnering with one of Brooklyn’s longstanding Caribbean cultural organizations for an upscale Sunday experience.
Watch V.I.P. 500 New York 2013
Julianspromos covered the event with Sheniele “Vivaa” Dodson hosting on camera.
Julian C. Hackett shot and edited the footage.
The surviving Julianspromos video was uploaded on September 10, 2013, two days after V.I.P. 500.
The footage, together with the surviving gallery and original flyer, preserves a different side of New York’s Caribbean event scene in 2013.
While many Carnival-season events emphasized road energy and bacchanal, V.I.P. 500 was built around something else:
dress up, eat well, enjoy the music and be one of the chosen few.
From the Julianspromos Archives
V.I.P. 500 sits within a busy period of Julianspromos New York coverage in 2013, when the platform was documenting increasingly different sides of Caribbean nightlife.
Some events were concerts.
Some were J’Ouvert and paint fetes.
Others centered on Carnival bands and cultural events.
V.I.P. 500 captured the more polished end of that spectrum.
With Vivaa hosting and Julian Hackett behind the camera, the surviving video and photo gallery preserve an all-inclusive event that placed fashion, food and Caribbean music together in one Williamsburg setting.
It also represents another chapter in Julianspromos’ relationship with Back To Basics Entertainment, a partnership that would continue across numerous events in the years that followed.
