March 31st, 2011 – On that night I had a room booked at Sohotel in New York and 1 ticket to see LCD Soundsystem at Terminal 5. I took the train into New York from New Jersey, made my way to the hotel, relaxed for a brief interlude, showered, got dressed and headed out for the show. It was a few hours before the show so I recall I got dinner and walked around for a while, finally making my way toward Terminal 5. When I was a block or so from the show, I decided to take a quick hit on my one-hitter bowl. Within a few seconds of diving into an alley to take the hit, two pigs had me in cuffs and were asking me if I had any drugs. I had some weed.
The pigs put me into a van and there were already a couple of guys in the van who, like me, were planning to attend the concert but were instead harassed by an overzealous group of scumbag nypd swine cashing in on Manichaean drug laws for some overtime.
Because that’s all that really happened – some pigs padded their paychecks. As they rode us around for a few minutes picking up the rest of those who were busted, filling up the police van with about 8 guys, it was clearly apparent that this was a bunch of steaming bullshit and nothing more.
They brought us back to the precinct and we all spent about 4 hours in the holding cell while they ‘processed’ us. The pigs who busted us had to stick around in the precinct, chatting, watching tv, drinking coffee, snacking on donuts, collecting that easy money. If it were the end of any of their shifts, they’d have to stick around. I overheard one of the pigs say he was supposed to be done at 8. It was already 10. This was calculated.
So, basically, I missed an LCD Soundsystem show because some pigs cashed in on pointless drug laws to get overtime checks. I had to go to ‘community court’ and they wound up dropping the charges in exchange for me going to an anti-marijuana class which was a joke in itself. The whole thing is a joke.
I could have gone to the final LCD show, but I was busy and by that point didn’t care. Though I missed seeing great band live, the story is probably more interesting than if I had gone to the concert, so I have no regrets. I’m sure some reading this will say I deserved it for breaking the law, that robbing me of my freedom on that spring evening 4 and a half years ago was justified because of some arbitrary drug laws. Well, to that I say, go fuck yourself. You are what I refer to as the problem.
Apparently, LCD are reuniting in 2016. I’m not a fan of music festivals, so I suspect I will miss them again, this time by choice. I’m not a fan of music festivals. Give me club dates, please.
