It was 300 hipsters from Bushwick coming down the driveway

July 2, 2016 3:22 PM

Pyrotechnic Party of Legend, Killed Off by Social Media “We were strictly illegal, until the end,” Mr. Schjeldahl told me recently. “The cops and firemen brought their families. This is libertarian country.” Last year, the pyrotechnics hewed more closely to legitimacy — a technical supervisor was even on the premises — but that party turned out to be the last, after approximately 2,000 people showed up, word of it having reached a vast universe of Brooklyn millennials via social media, a means of communication Mr. Schjeldahl and his wife have never employed.
posted by dersins (38 comments total)

I read this earlier and got really frustrated. This isn't about hipsters or Brooklyn or millennials or anything else; this is about an old way things happened coming up against a new way things happen. You can't throw an open party and be mad when people come by (if I really wanted to get fighty I'd say you can't throw an open party and be mad when the wrong kind of people come by, but that's a stone I'll leave unturned for now). Either you throw a huge open party and be ok with people showing up, or you throw a huge invite-only party and kick out people you didn't invite. The only difference is that for a while you could throw an "open party" and word-of-mouth meant that it would be kept to a reasonable level. The Internet means that word is gonna get out and you can't assume that the mechanisms that kept the party the way you wanted will keep working like that. The Brooklyn hipster angle is a red herring.
posted by Itaxpica at 3:50 PM on July 2, 2016 [52 favorites]

UGH MILLENIALS
posted by indubitable at 3:50 PM on July 2, 2016 [6 favorites]

It was 300 hipsters from Bushwick coming down the driveway...

Someone please turn this into an animation. It so deserves to be one. I'm still laughing at this. Great post.
posted by Fizz at 3:50 PM on July 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

(Though man, the image of having to shut down your fun party because it got overrun by Snake People is too good to pass up)
posted by Itaxpica at 3:51 PM on July 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

This, more or less, is what happened with Steve Bard's annual party in Seattle.

Alas.

Though the problem wasn't so much "millennials" as it was "drunken assholes."
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 3:56 PM on July 2, 2016

For more than a quarter-century, the property served as the site of a Fourth of July celebration that has maintained a singular place in New York’s social history, drawing friends, and friends of friends, from the city — artists, writers, musicians, academics, gallery owners, movie stars

OH NOES WHERE WILL THE CULTURAL ELITES HAVE THEIR PARTY NOW
posted by naju at 4:00 PM on July 2, 2016 [44 favorites]

OH NOES WHERE WILL THE CULTURAL ELITES HAVE THEIR PARTY NOW

Jackson Heights.

At least according to the articles I've read which point to the massive amounts of gentrification that has been happening in Queens the past few years.
posted by Fizz at 4:17 PM on July 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's just such a shame to see this celebration of the founding of our great nation dividing generations of privileged New York narcissists rather than uniting them.
posted by dersins at 4:19 PM on July 2, 2016 [41 favorites]

Nah, these aren't people who are going to parties in Queens. These are the kind of people who snagged rent-controlled apartments in the UWS forty years ago and stick around despite the fact that they could easily afford to pay market rent, grumbling about how all these kids are ruining their beloved New York.

As the child of two people of that generation of New Yorkers, who would have been those people if they had happened to have a smidge less self-awareness, fuck 'em and fuck their party.
posted by Itaxpica at 4:20 PM on July 2, 2016 [6 favorites]

Boomers : Woodstock :: Millennials : some guy's 4th of July barbecue
posted by GameDesignerBen at 4:22 PM on July 2, 2016 [9 favorites]

The halloween party I go to in southern NM every year got a bit out of hand back in 1996. We'd assembled a roster of local bands to play and we had this amazing property out of town on the banks of the Rio Grande, and we expected maybe 400 people to show up across 3 days. But the OTHER big halloween party in the area went tits-up that year and we ended up with something close to 900 showing up that year. It went well, in general, but that was the last year we did anything that big. These days, it's a comfy party of 150-200 across 4 days. Manageable, and entirely much easier than that one year. Sheesh!

More recently, about a decade ago, I went to a halloween party in San Jose thrown by an old friend I met at a Rainbow Gathering a decade before. It was supposed to be a quiet little house party, single keg plus bring-a-bottle-to-share bar, potluck food, etc. Maybe 40 or 50 were expected. But someone posted information about the party to Facebook, and we ended up being mobbed. There were people showing up who didn't even know people who knew people who were throwing the party. Truly out of hand. We ended up having to get the tougher looking biker sorts to stand outside and demand some kind of connection to those in the house from people wanting to get in, and there was a police helicopter hovering over the party shining a spotlight into the backyard for what seemed like hours while the roads into the neighborhood were blocked off by cop cars. It turned what should have been a relaxing evening visiting with friends old and new into an exercise in property protection and law enforcement interactions that nobody wanted.

In both of these cases, it was about the details of the party getting out into a wider crowd through one or two individuals who spread the word. In the first case, it was all word of mouth through a tight-knit community (the defunct party had been going on for 20 years, and that crowd was really close). In the second case, it was social media that was a relatively new development, and the idea that maybe posting information about a party that someone else is throwing would be available to basically the entire planet didn't occur to those using social media.

I feel bad that the party in the article has had to cease being thrown. Long standing parties like that are a magic all their own. I hope maybe the core of that group will be able to find some new setting to continue the tradition of seeing each other every year.
posted by hippybear at 4:25 PM on July 2, 2016 [17 favorites]

You can't throw an open party and be mad when people come by

Did anyone seem mad though? I liked that the party hosts treated it as an end of an era; with the money they saved from not doing the party, they took a trip to Rome. Must be nice.
posted by cell divide at 5:06 PM on July 2, 2016 [11 favorites]

Last year, guests, most of them not known to their hosts, could be overheard arguing about whether the property was a state park or a municipal park. One generation’s utopia had encroached upon another’s.

That lemon tree was clearly in Springfield.
posted by Room 641-A at 5:12 PM on July 2, 2016

"Are these all friends of yours?"

"Friends and well-wishers, yes."

"Hi, Bart."

"Hey, Bart."

"Hello, Mrs. Cumberdale."
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 5:28 PM on July 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

• We were strictly illegal, until the end
• The cops and firemen brought their families.
• This is libertarian country.

Yeah, this definition of "libertarian" jibes with my experiences.
posted by traveler_ at 5:59 PM on July 2, 2016 [19 favorites]

You can feel more positive if you read this as an article about people who have tried desperately to make it onto the Darwin Awards list by blowing themselves and possibly others up and repeatedly failed who have now been saved from further attempts by social media hearing their cry for help.
posted by srboisvert at 6:06 PM on July 2, 2016 [11 favorites]

I wonder if Jack Handey was ever in attendance?
posted by Flashman at 6:09 PM on July 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Hippies put out the torch rather than pass it on to hipsters.
posted by wobumingbai at 7:54 PM on July 2, 2016 [9 favorites]

What happened to the days when you only went to an open party if you knew someone throwing it or knew her cousin or went to the same high school or the neighboring high school but went to the same deli at midnight? Kids nowadays.

The first two Halloween's after we purchased our house, lots and lots of people would come by and ring the bell. These were people from 22 to 52 mostly in costume. Turned out that the previous owner used to have a big open house Halloween party that had been going on for about 10 years. The third year, because we had small children that actually needed to sleep, we went to stay with friends, left the lights out at our house with some Police Line tape across the front door.
posted by AugustWest at 7:56 PM on July 2, 2016 [13 favorites]

@augustwest the days where YOU only went to an open party if you knew someone...?

I bet they're still alive and well. You seem nice and polite and there are a lot more people like you out there.

On the other hand, the days where JERKS only went to a party where they knew someone? That's time never existed. Much like Donald Trump's great America. Jerks are jerks and jerks loooove parties.
posted by elr at 8:09 PM on July 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

I consider any Annual Fireworks Party that gets shut down BEFORE the incineration of any of its participants/observers to be dodging a bullet. A big, flaming, exploding bullet.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:21 PM on July 2, 2016

So went Halloween in the Castro. Good things don't last.
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:18 PM on July 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

I do feel like the Internet has had a hand in the shift of parties in a way that is sometimes not great even when it's not just rich snobs.
posted by corb at 10:19 PM on July 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

On a smaller scale, my father used to show free weekly movies to the neighborhood.

We lived against a small cemetery (really!) and surrounded about 20 acres of woods, so there weren't any immediate neighbors to annoy; Dad would hang a sheet for a screen against the house, and show movies (lots of Disney and cartoons) to anybody who wanted to attend. Everyone was welcome to sit on the grass or bring their own lawn chair and snacks. All he asked was that folks generally behave decently, and not park on his lawn. Not too hard, right? After all, he'd start those movies at dusk, they were all family/kid oriented films, and they'd all be finished by around 9:30pm at the latest, so it's not like it was attracting a bunch of rowdy bikers or even a teenaged crowd --- parents and smaller kids, that was it.

Dad stopped because of one particular family: that father would always bring a bottle of vodka, which he'd sit guzzling from all night. The mom would scream at her kids --- or anyone else's --- and bitch about how she didn't like whatever movie was being shown. The kids were little terrorists who actually managed to pull down our toolshed one night.... the very last movie night, as a matter of fact: that was the final straw for my dad, he'd had enough right there.

I guess my point is, it doesn't take '300 hipsters' to wreck things; it just takes a couple jerks to ruin things for everyone else.
posted by easily confused at 5:06 AM on July 3, 2016 [25 favorites]

My takeaway is that the phrase "300 hipsters" means that the "undesirables" didn't actually do anything bad except being there and looking too millenial-y.
posted by ymgve at 6:23 AM on July 3, 2016 [5 favorites]

I think it was being 300 of them that was the major issue
posted by thelonius at 6:54 AM on July 3, 2016 [8 favorites]

they were like spartans but with ironic facial hair!
posted by indubitable at 7:15 AM on July 3, 2016 [11 favorites]

MADNESS???

THIS! IS! BUSHWICK!
posted by indubitable at 8:22 AM on July 3, 2016 [5 favorites]

I think that hosting open parties only works when you are an inexperienced social creature. But jerks ruin everything.

I am nostalgic for those days of innocence, when I still didn't realize what the jerks did. I assumed my parties would be fun and they were! But as I got to know more people better, I couldn't blithely enjoy myself without worrying about what the known jerks would do this time.
posted by elizilla at 9:18 AM on July 3, 2016

I guess my point is, it doesn't take '300 hipsters' to wreck things; it just takes a couple jerks to ruin things for everyone else.

I blame 'traditions.' I'm always super-nervous about doing something regularly enough that people start thinking of it as a tradition. Once that happens, people just sort of forget that there's someone doing all the work to make it happen, and consider it an entitlement. And I guess in that case, it got far enough that the people showing up didn't even realize it wasn't some sort of tax-supported public service.

I do a lot of social cooking, like regular dinners, and it is a tricky thing to manage expectations, or people start treating me like a short order cook, making special requests, lying about having allergies, picking through things like an unruly buffet crowd, and things like that. And this is just with people who know me, and in numbers that can fit in my living room.

I didn't see anything about them issuing cease and desists against anyone who wants to continue the tradition, but the fact that people have come to expect it doesn't obligate them to do it in perpetuity.
posted by ernielundquist at 9:31 AM on July 3, 2016 [17 favorites]

Well, damn.
posted by Bob Regular at 11:05 AM on July 3, 2016

I blame 'traditions.' I'm always super-nervous about doing something regularly enough that people start thinking of it as a tradition. Once that happens, people just sort of forget that there's someone doing all the work to make it happen, and consider it an entitlement.

We had a bit of a crisis concerning this with the halloween party in NM I mentioned above. We started this party nearly 30 years ago, and it's undergone a lot of transformations across time, but it's finally sort of landed in a permanent place. After it had been there for a couple of years, the people who own the property and host the party said that the situation had to change. Their house was being left as a giant mess at the end of the party; all the decorating and rearrangement of the furniture and general chaos was just being walked away from by people attending (many of whom fly in from all over the country for the weekend).

And so we made some major changes to how we handle the party. People come in expecting to do work. Decorations are put up and taken down by someone other than the hosts. Daily clean-up is handled by party attendees, and recycling runs are done daily so the empty bottles don't stack up. The bar is stocked by party goers, and there's a standing rule that if you go run an errand, you come back with ice. We even have a hat we pass around to pay for a professional housecleaning service to come in after the party so when the entire event is done, the property has been reset to better-than-before state for our hosts.

One thing that has helped with this a lot is that on Sunday, the last day of the party, we get a food truck to come to the house. We used to try to find a restaurant to host a giant Sunday brunch/lunch, but it's really hard to find anywhere that is equipped to handle 50 or 60 people for a restaurant sitting. Having the food truck come to the house means 1) people are actually AT the house to help with cleanup, and 2) the food truck is guaranteed that their time there will be worth their while.

It is indeed work to throw a 4 day long party, and once we realized how unfair we were being to those kind enough to open their property to us, we all stepped up and made it as effortless as having several dozen people in and out of one's house for 4 days can possibly be. It was an eye-opening moment for this group -- that this tradition had turned into an entitlement, and we all needed to step up to create a community event that everyone was working to create, rather than just have fun at and walk away from.
posted by hippybear at 11:37 AM on July 3, 2016 [24 favorites]

Bring back the guidos, all is forgiven.


/sits happily listening to jukebox rock in old mans bar in Kingsbridge,
posted by jonmc at 1:21 PM on July 3, 2016

I would have shut the party down after Ben Stiller showed up one year.
posted by gucci mane at 4:50 PM on July 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

I thought this was going to be something much more severe. It sounds more like some people with wealth to spare did something cool and when it got too big had no choice but to shut it down. It could have been much worse.

I think it was on This American Life I heard a story about high school kids doing this thing where they just invade (as in coming through the window's even) someone's house and have a party, even with the parents there. That would be terrifying because teenagers are all id, just a bunch of hipsters coming to watch fireworks not so much.
posted by Belle O'Cosity at 4:57 PM on July 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Even in the days before the internet, parties just got out of hand sometimes. A band I used to play with threw a party at our old rehearsal space in Bayou George, Florida--not exactly a major population center--when I was fifteen or sixteen. Our practice space was one of the few standing rooms in my family home, which we'd moved out of for a couple of years to complete renovations. We had a couple of other bands playing with us, and I guess, through them and my older bandmates, word about the event got out to people in the wider area, and we ended up with a crowd of over a hundred kids/teens/young adults mobbing the place, in some cases literally climbing on the roof. It was nuts, but a lot of fun. Luckily the house was in an area so remote, we didn't get shut down, and nobody did any lasting damage to the house or property.

I'm sure that kind of word-of-mouth effect is much worse now.
posted by saulgoodman at 5:31 PM on July 3, 2016

Striking fear became a soberly engineered feature of the plan. Dread, when nothing bad happens, tends to flip into ecstasy. It’s the defining trick of roller coasters, which I think trigger farewell endorphin cocktails, imparting bliss as the knowledge dawns that we are still alive. I wasn’t out for oohs and ahs. I sought, and got, screams and the odd sob.

Peter Schjeldahl , The Pyro-American in Me (The New Yorker, July 3, 2016)
posted by standardasparagus at 6:33 PM on July 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

Such a lonely society.
posted by effugas at 12:37 AM on July 5, 2016