Sunday, August 3, 2008

Hometown News: Drunken morons riot at Jones Beach

In this new feature, I'll discuss important news from my hometown of Long Island (pronounced: Lawn Guyland). I should probably discuss the hideous "Montauk Monster" that's the talk of the town, but I honestly think it's the least ugly thing about the Hamptons.

Instead, today's hometown story is about the parking lot of Jones Beach - a wonderful place for mullet spotting. You can often find me migrating there once every three years to see power rock trio Rush, while overweight LI basement trolls blast the rarest, most obscure Rush tunes from the tape decks of their Chevelles.

Anyway, there was a recent concert by some college meathead band called O.A.R. and the tailgating dorks got rowdy. I mention this because I love this one line in the Newsday report.

Alcohol fuels unrest at Jones Beach concert

Alcohol-fueled pandemonium broke out Saturday night outside an O.A.R. concert at Jones Beach, according to witnesses and police officers at the show.

Concertgoers threw beer bottles, stood on car rooftops and tossed young women in the air, police officers at the show said.

At least a dozen people were hospitalized for alcohol poisoning, several underage, officers at the show said.

Patrons sometime misbehave at concerts, but the crowd before the concert was different, a police supervisor said.


Okay, see that line in bold? That creates so many more questions than it answers. Were the women willing participants of such aerial acrobatics or were they flung skyward against their will? How widespread was this? Did cops just happen to see one zany flying-female antic, or were women being catapulted left and right? Is lady-tossing a new entry in LI's pantheon of sports, such as darts and street hockey? Should I be ashamed of my heritage or move back immediately?

If anyone knows anything more about this phenomenon, please leave a comment.

Update: Newsday removed that article with the women-tossing reference. They replaced it with this one instead, which has more information but is sadly less colorful.

2 comments:

Abby said...

I was at this show, and the security guy letting me in said they needed 10 ambulances the last time O.A.R. played, so they had even more parked by the venue this time.

What didn't add up at first was that this band's acronym stands for Of A Revolution and they sing all about Jah. It's a total jam session on bad weed and the crowd was pure Frat Party USA, but what did I know. I was there to see the awesome opening act (Ozomatli).

I left the gig before things got too rowdy and missed out on the headline-making-shenanigans, but I did fall victim to the ol' "let's leave this empty beer bottle under this tire so that when the driver leaves, they crush the bottle and hopefully get glass stuck in their tire!" trick.

Adam Coozer said...

Whoa, that's awesome that you were there! Did you see any of that women tossing?

That sucks about your tire. Did you get a flat?