So I had decided to try to attend this free Trash Talk show announced on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, and there was already a lot of confusion about it. It was announced at 7 pm, then the band posted on their facebook that they would not played before 9:30 pm or even 10 pm:
‘we fucked up.. No one is gettin in till 9:30 unless youre on a list but we dont play till 10! Basically all of you fucks get in when we play! There needs to be room for people to skate first.. Sorry for the mix up’… ‘Show up at 9!!!!! 1337 e 6th St’
There was effectively some skateboard session by Omar Salazar before, and I decided to show up around 8 pm just to be sure to get in…. How wrong I was! There were already tons of people on line and I could not understand if I needed a wristband to get in and especially how to get one. After a long wait (it was around 9:20) some woman came to tell us that people without wristbands could leave as there was absolutely no chance we could get in, and that even having a wristband would not guarantee the entry! I left not long after this, already pissed off to have been wasting my time, why didn’t they say that earlier? Who got these wristbands? only some V.I.P.??
I was hearing people getting mad at the situation, saying they would do something if they couldn’t get in, and soon after a riot erupted in the street, the cops came, they used pepper spray on fans who wanted to climb the fence,…it got ugly and out-of-control,… here are a few tweets sent by fans:
‘@Thiss_Fooo: Got fucken pepper sprayed for jumping over the fence to attempt to see @trash_talk. fuck that security guard.’
‘@curtiswallen: Kids getting tazed and maced outside the @trash_talk show. Wilding. Very punk 2 me’
‘People couldn't get in. So people started to riot. @trash_talk @ Nike Skateboarding 6th And Mill http://instagr.am/p/N0GnRbJSKK/’
‘@TRASH_TALK was fucking insane. Riot control and shit. If you weren't there you fucked up.’
Most of these tweets were retweeted by Trash Talk by the way! Although frontman Lee Spielman twitted later: ‘We'd really appreciate it if you kept photos/videos from last night off of the web. We don't need any issues… Thanks for your support. #TTC’, Weird!
Interestingly, several videos posted on Youtube showing the chaos have now been removed except one, but it doesn’t show a lot!
I am not sure anybody had an idea of what they were doing, watching a video filmed inside, the venue looked rather small, and it was not even packed, people seemed to mosh without even touching each other!
Trash Talk has more than 37,000 followers on Facebook and more than 23,000 on Twitter, and they were advertising the show a lot, but what was the point if only less than one hundred people could get in? They should have guessed than a lot of kids would show up.
The show was launching a new Nike skateboarding collection, as Trash Talk is a cool image for Nike, they represents the furious youth, but it looks like they couldn’t handle the situation, they played it safe and let only a few people to get in, probably some special guests. And they waited hours before telling us it was a waste of time to be there….
I have sent emails to media relations Nike and to Solid PR, Trash Talk public relation, and so far, I am still waiting for answers.