Published
Tue, Feb 8, 2022, 15:25
- Last Thursday night, a party with an all-Black lineup ended in waves of clubbers exiting the club, uncontrollably coughing and sneezing.
A recent party at New York club Nowadays has raised hate crime concerns after scores of guests left the venue due to mace-like fumes.
The incident took place last Thursday, February 3rd, at an afterparty hosted by Black-led interdisciplinary platform black beyond. The event featured an all-Black lineup of local DJs and performers: SCRAAATCH, cry$cross, La Duni, SaliYah and Lamb.
At around 1 AM, not long into SCRAAATCH's set, numerous guests—many of whom were Black—reported feeling a burning sensation in their throats, which ultimately caused excessive sneezing and coughing.
"At first, people were trickling out to the back patio," Lamb told Resident Advisor. "I thought they were just getting some air or were part of a really big group who came together and were planning to leave."
They added: "Then you could see a bit of commotion stirring—people asking each other if they'd begun coughing and sneezing too. When the consensus was 'yeah,' almost everybody moved outside."
As the fumes intensified, a Nowadays employee opened up the patio doors, purportedly in an attempt to air out the space. By this point, the air was difficult to merely breathe in, even for those with a face covering.
Around this time, several witnesses reported seeing multiple clumps of powder near the patio entrance, leading many to speculate that a pepper bomb or similar irritant had been intentionally released.
"I will say, it felt like a hate crime," MHYSA, one-half of SCRAAATCH, told RA. "It felt like they intentionally set that mace bomb off at peak time when the floor was the fullest I had seen it in the two hours I had been there."
She continued: "It fucking hurt like a hate crime. And even if it wasn't, I think it's important to ask how will Nowadays prevent this from happening again? I feel bad for all the people who were impacted, especially in a time when respiratory things are extra sensitive."
Yesterday, February 7th, black beyond posted a statement via Instagram addressing the incident. Read it in full. (RA reached out to Nowadays but the venue declined to comment.)