stevesbets

For the post midnight portion of New Year’s eve I went to a club called Gustavinos between at 59th and 1st. The night was bitterly cold, I cannot imagine standing in Times Square for 8 hours as so many people did, being outside for longer than a couple minutes was pretty intolerable, with windchill it felt like 2 degrees. Tickets for this 2.5 hour event from 1230-3 were $75.

There was a fairly large tent set up outside that was heated, the whole thing was probably about 40 by 40 split down the middle. On one side, all of the people entered, gave their tickets and then proceeded to the coat check. The tarp separating the two sides of the tent was undone in one corner where people were asked to check their coats. Not only were they asked, in fact they were required to check them and pay a $5 fee per item which is pretty ridiculous to begin with. I had a bad experience with a coat check a few weeks prior, so I implored my friends to go someplace else and just try to get our money back for our tickets since I thought an utter disaster was coming. I was denounced as a pessimist, we all paid and handed over our coats and headed in.

The club itself was pretty nice, not overly loud or crowded and I have to say they did a good job. The only thing worthy of note is that the bouncers seemed a bit crazy. They weren’t your stereotypical 400 lb behemoths, they were normal sized people with above average egos and tempers. I would not know this of course based on my own experience since I am fairly averse to confrontation and would never be foolish enough to get into random fights in a club. However when I witnessed bouncers dealing with others, it seemed like they did things fairly harshly, screamed unnecessarily and had major trouble keeping their cool. At 230 I convinced my group to get going to try to get to a surely crowded coat check a bit early.

Upon entering the coat tent, I realized it was going to be way way worse than I had even imagined when I wanted to not go into the club beforehand. The side of the tent that the patrons were allowed on was shoulder to shoulder with people already, many drunk and belligerent. The scene resembled a stock trading floor from many movies. Everyone was frantically trying to get closer and closer to the little open slit where they could hand their tickets to the one or two people retrieving coats. If it were up to me I would have stood as far back as possible for as long as it took (probably 4 or 5 hours though I couldn’t have guessed at the time) until everyone cleared out and I could get my coat without getting involved in world war 3, but 2 of my group took all of our tickets and jumped in. I have some videos that will make the scene a little clearer, I will try to get them uploaded over the next couple days.

Anyway, we wait for approximately a half hour as the scene gets crazier and crazier. Bouncers have entered the tent and are trying to create some sort of actual line rather than just a mass of people but they are totally unsuccessful. The result is them screaming at people to “Back up” or “Move” when there was actually nowhere for people to move. The tent got even more crowded as people piled into it from the closing club and no one left it because coats were unavailable and it was bitterly cold out. One of my friends returns almost in tears because she was elbowed in the face by a bouncer who was flailing around. The other returns disheartened by an utter inability to even get close to the coat check opening. Eventually they go off once again to try to get close to the coats.

As time passes in the tent, conditions become more and more intolerable. It is dangerously packed in a way that must have been a violation of several laws. People were jumping on top of each other fighting and in simply trying to wiggle around the tent, people were bumping into others. The bouncers’ vicious behavior was noticeable and unacceptable, they were throwing punches randomly and screaming incoherently. One human behavior that I really struggle with is putting the blame for something on the wrong people. Clearly all of the club patrons were screwed by an absurd and intolerable coat check system, but they blamed each other through pushing, shoving and fights. As I stated, it was impossible to be in the tent and not bump into people, but some people would get bumped and whirl around ready to punch someone. At one point there were actual fistfights going on immediately to my left and immediately to my right simultaneously. I felt as if civilization was devolving around me minute by minute. It offered me anecdotal evidence that when rules are stripped away and people feel they will not be held responsible for their actions, they just have no concern or respect for anyone around them.

About an hour in, word got back to me that one of my friends had handed in our tickets but the coats were lost so she was in the back looking for them. I wasn’t sure she knew what all 6 of our coats looked like and I feared just how bad the situation must be getting back there if they were letting random people back there to find coats because their ticket system had broken down. I have since heard that it is actually against the law to allow people access to everyone’s property as Gustavino’s did on this night. I found out from my friends that the coat side of the tent was pretty much a huge pile of coats and random people sifting through them some heard saying, “just take the nicest one”. A couple of my other friends attempt to get back there to help find the coats.

An hour and a half in, the scene has totally devolved. People are screaming, fight and even smoking in this unventilated, small tent. Others are throwing up, sprawled on the ground getting trampled on, and generally creating a prison like environment. Most offensive of all however is that now people were holding up their coat check tickets along with 20 dollar bills to try to get one of the powers that be to take note and find their coat for them. People were made to give bribes just to get their own property back!!

Finally all of our coats were found and we all left. The tent was still packed with people, it was now 4:30 AM, it had taken a full 2 hours. Since that time, neither the venue or the event planners have taken any responsibility for this debacle. I am totally amazed at how little responsibility businesses take for dangerous incompetence. I will have the videos up soon.