It was such an amazing day, all the bands kicked ass and the weather was fucking perfect!!!
If I die today, I will leave behind an old, ugly, but very happy looking corpse!!!
My band has been playing the Tompkins Square Park Riot reunion, every summer for over 30 years . It's a free show, with 5-6 bands and depending on the weather, it can really suck or, it can be a lot of fun. This year, we played May 10th but, here's the background story...
HISTORY OF THE 1988 TOMPKINS SQUARE PARK RIOT AND REUNION FESTIVALS
As told by Chris Flash - the antry guy in the bottom photo who is against a wall, surrounded by police. He was simply walking home from work.
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At about 8pm on August 6, 1988, then Mayor, Ed Koch sent the NYPD Riot Squad into Tompkins Square Park to clear out the poor and homeless people. Not only did the police brutally assault the people in the park and confiscate their belongings, they also attacked anyone who happened to be in the area. At that time, the NYPD did not have Police Psychologists or Social Workers to help deescalate potentially dangerous situations, they simply sent in the goon squad. As a result of the NYPD’s ham-fisted tactics, hundreds of people were unnecessarily beaten and arrested.
Among those injured by the police was Chris Flash, the host of the Annual Riot Reunion Festival. On the evening of August 6th, Chris was walking past the park, as he did every Monday through Friday evening, on his way home from work. By that time, the Police were operating with a mob mentality, beating and harassing anyone who happened to be in the area.
Determined to prevent history from repeating itself and to keep the memory of this horrific event alive, Chris has been presenting the Tompkins Square Park Riot Reunion for over three decades. This year, on Saturday, August 3rd, 2024, Chris will host the 36th occurrence of this beautiful and very musical event.
There have always been concerts in Tompkins Square Park on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Thanks to cheap rents and low cost of living, a counter-cultural scene consisting of artists, writers, performers and musicians flourished here from the 1950s-1980s.
In 1967, in a declared effort to alleviate conflicts between Puerto Ricans and hippies who had flocked to the Lower East Side, following the beatnicks of the 1950s, the city built a bandshell in Tompkins Square Park for public performances.
In addition to local musicians, more famous bands that played at the nearby Anderson Theater and the Fillmore East (both on Second Avenue) in the late 1960s - early 1970s would make their way to Tompkins Square Park to play free concerts in the bandshell. These included the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, the Doors and the FUGS, who lived just a few blocks from the park and did shows there every year.
By the early 1980s, punk culture emerged, complete with new bands and new independently created music. No longer did musicians have to kiss the asses of record company executives, hoping for a record contract in order to "make it". They could now create their own music and their own scene, building their own followings playing at various clubs and venues, selling their music on self-produced 45rpm records and cassettes directly to their fans that was played on college radio stations. In Tompkins Square Park, Ralphie Boy's now legendary Squat or Rot punk shows, from the mid-1980s through the early 1990s, featured punk bands that addressed the issues of the day.
As the 1980s wore on, with encroaching gentrification becoming a bigger problem, Tompkins Square Park and the bandshell were used by community activists as a rallying point for political organizing, with rallies and music. As tensions between the forces of gentrification vs activists, punks and squatters increased, the NYPD [New York Police Department] was used to enforce a non-existent midnight curfew in Tompkins Square Park. This resulted in the infamous Tompkins Square Police Riot of August 6, 1988, in which hundreds of cops from all over the city, on foot and on horseback, descended on the park and surrounding avenues and streets, randomly beating protestors and bystanders. The resulting negative public backlash caused the city to eliminate any curfew in Tompkins Square Park.
A week after the riot, on August 13, 1988, in defiance of what the city unleashed upon us on a week earlier, Ralphy Boy hosted another punk show at the bandshell, a video clip of which can still be seen on YouTube at: Nausea Tompkins Square Park 8/13/1988 (youtube.com). The 1988 TSP Police Riot only succeeded in galvanizing our community further against gentrification and police abuse of power.
Today, the NYPD works closely with the NYC Dept of Health and Human Services who are now the first wave response when dealing with the lives of the poor and homeless. Never again will the Mayor send in the NYPD to brutally evict the homeless from OUR parks!!!
Author: Chris Flash
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Wikipedia history of the riot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Tomp ... _Park_riot
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BTW, the moment the Riot started, I was two blocks away, at Mona's bar, when in came running, an excited friend who shouted, " The cops are beating everyone up in the park!!!" Well, there was no way I was going to leave a freshy poured pint of Guinness so, I missed the whole thing!
