Results tagged “riot”

After the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Orlando Magic for the NBA Championship last night, Los Angelenos apparently decided that celebrating equaled setting garbage on fire, jumping on cars, tearing down street signs, breaking into and looting stores, and tagging buildings. We hear that police basically let people throw things at them, only intervening to put fires out; LAPD police chief William Bratton, who is a former NYC police commissioner, said, "Officers tonight used minimal levels of force..behaving very professionally," also calling the revelers "knuckleheads" and "cowards." (Was nothing learned after the 2000 win?) Newsday's Neil Best blogged, "Thank you, Los Angeles for the timely reminder - 15 years to the day since the Rangers won the Stanley Cup - that New York consistently is better behaved in celebrating sports championships than are other, less civilized burgs." Damages are estimated to be at least $1 million.

[UPDATE BELOW] Yesterday Oprah Winfrey thought she'd be nice and arrange for free KFC grilled chicken for everybody. Big mistake. The demand for free fowl has been so overwhelming that many people are having a dickens of a time getting their chickens because the website can't handle all the coupon downloads. This morning Grub Street compiled some of the more "heart wrenching" comments from thwarted KFC consumers on Oprah's site, such as "I'M MELTING CAN'T GET THE COUPONS PLEASE IS THERE ANOTHER WAY OF GETTING THEM ???? HUNGRY FOR THE CHIICKEN" and "Nice gesture since I am unemployed and a free dinner would have been nice. I could not download the coupon."

As spontaneous parties broke out on every corner last night (just check out St. Mark's Place), things got a little bit crazy in Williamsburg once Barack Obama was declared leader of the free world--and there's nothing like a peaceful celebration to bring out the cops in riot gear! One tipster writes in about a reveler's run-in with the long arm of the law on North 7th and Bedford.

We were trying to get onto the sidewalk, as requested but hard to do when it is packed. The police pushed my boyfriend because he wasn't moving fast enough and when he spoke back to them the incident escalated.

Continue reading "Celebration Leads to Arrests in Williamsburg"

You'll recall that neighbors living near the revoltingly trendy Delicatessen in Soho are getting really fed up with all the obnoxious tools blathering through the night, with one man going so far as to urinate down onto the roof, which is part glass. Could this be the same scold who led a near-riot last night, according to this priceless email sent to Eater by one witness? "Some young super-angry dude storms up to the bar and starts laying into the bartending staff screaming shit like, 'Fuck you!!! Fuck your restaurant!!! Fuck your hipstery little patrons who think they are so fucking cool!!! People fucking live on this block!!! I can hear these people screaming outside my fucking apartment all fucking night!!!'" The situation escalated "when a bunch of people in the apartments above the sidewalk tables simultaneously dumped buckets of water down on the people dining below." Worse, it wasn't even sparkling water!

          

On the humid night of August 6th, 1988, long-simmering resentments over East Village gentrification boiled over into the now-infamous Tompkins Square Park riot. Hundreds of people had gathered at the park to protest the imposition of a 1 a.m. curfew. At some point, the protest turned violent; bottles were thrown at the police, who retaliated with beatings and arrests throughout the night. According to the Times, forty-four people were injured, including 13 cops.

The 20th Anniversary of the Tompkins Square Park riots was celebrated over the weekend with two days of punk rock, pot smoking, rabble rousing and slam dancing. (Potty-mouth video.) According to Neither More Nor Less, they “slammed with a physical intensity that TSP has not seen in many years. Someone threw $1000 in dollar bills to the crowd and this crowd of celebrants burned the dollar bills. The celebrants also burned a flag; being polyester it mostly melted in flaming gobs.” A reader (“Shadow”) sent us this photo, and noted that the commanding officer of the 9th precinct, Dennis DeQuatro, “looked the other way” as it was burned. (Two years ago a constitutional amendment to make flag burning illegal failed by one vote in the Senate.)

Today at 2pm in Tompkins Square Park, there will be a punk concert to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the police riots that took place there. The NY Times has an account of the battle between cops and protesters that took place back on August 6th and 7th, 1988 over a city-imposed curfew of 1 a.m. that had been enacted in an attempt to clean up the rampant homeless population and drug usage that dominated the park's nights. The Times paints the anniversary celebration (which began last weekend) organized by Jerry Wade, aka "Jerry the Peddler", as a bit of an anachronism within a heavily gentrified East Village, pointing out, "these days the park’s curfew is one hour earlier, but it is rarely a source of controversy."

If there is no such thing as bad publicity, then we suppose yesterday's Cash Tomato promotion was a resounding success - if a melee as people tried to grab money works for you. The event, which involved giving away $29 to individuals in honor of Leap Year - wait, make that $29 attached to tomatoes, resulted in a Union Square riot with one person hospitalized and police and paramedics on the scene.