Soon after 90s post-hardcore band Quicksand took the stage Friday night for its first hometown show in about 15 years, a half-dozen beers had flown into the air. Bowery Ballroom had never felt so full: virtually the entire audience consisted of men in their 30s and 40s, weighing over 200 pounds.
The mix of metalheads and current and former hardcore guys might have looked like a recipe for the sort of beef that erupted between current and former members of the Cro-Mags at the CBGB Festival last month. But the opening bass notes of “Omission” brought on 90 minutes of rapture. From the balcony to the mosh pit, the entire ballroom pulsed and popped as fans yelled and sang along, arms in the air. They were celebrating the return of a band that broke up in its prime in the late 90s, after touring with acts like Helmet and Rage Against the Machine but never achieving similar breakout success.
After a surprise reunion last month in California, Quicksand had announced two shows: one at Bowery Ballroom and another the next night at Music Hall of Williamsburg. Both sold out in minutes. Rumors of a full reunion came after an appearance on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” this week. Read more…
Photos of the march across the Williamsburg Bridge, Sara D. Roosevelt Park, and the Wildcat March by Jared Malsin.
As documented on The Local’s liveblog, demonstrations and arrests took place across the city today as anarchists, union members, Occupy Wall Street supporters, employees of The Strand, residents of public housing in Alphabet City, and even banjo players used May Day as an occasion to protest the status quo.
The proceedings were for the most part orderly, but scuffles broke out when approximately 200 demonstrators, many dressed in black and some covering their faces, assembled in Sara D. Roosevelt Park, at Second Avenue and Houston Street, at 1 p.m. for a pre-planned, unpermitted “Wildcat March.” Read more…
Suzanne RozdebaMay Day is almost upon us, and with it will come a citywide carnival of Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.
But what will May Day actually look like in New York City and in the East Village? Will we see orderly marchers proceeding peacefully between police barricades? Or will Wall Street burn, as the graffiti on Avenue A warns? Or should we expect, as Jerry Rubin predicted for the 1972 Democratic National Convention, “ten thousand naked hippies” marching on Wall Street?
Asked to predict the size of the demonstrations, Occupy organizer Marisa Holmes, 25, told The Local that May 1 will be on par with the movement’s fall protests or larger. “It won’t be a general strike but it will be substantial,” said the freelance film editor and graduate student at Hunter College. Read more…
