Burning Down the House
Event aims to ignite New Yorker’s political idealism with ruckus, reefer, and red vinyl

What: One Night of Fire
Location: Brooklyn Bridge, F Train, Coney Island
Date July 29, 2006
Cost: FREE
Bohemian Factor: Off the charts
Geek Factor: Look no further than the guys sporting hand-shaped baubles that produce the sound of "one hand clapping." Need I say more?

“Hey, look at that,” my friend K announced coyly. “You caught a boy.”

And indeed I had. I apologized to the stranger that I’d inadvertently lassoed with orange streamers, given the wind whipping across the Brooklyn Bridge. They weren’t even my streamers, in fact – I’d been temporarily charged with holding some kind of decorated orange wand, a small favor for the marching woman on stilts (you’ve seen her, perhaps at the Halloween Parade, with the black flapper bob and an aura of athletic invincibility).

Had we been at a more sedate gathering, my accidental captive might have even noticed he was ensnared by brightly colored ribbons, but given the noise, the density of people on the Brooklyn Bridge, and the fact that there were a lot of objects more messy, tactile, and viscous once could rub against than streamers, his attention span, like everyone else's, was under siege.

Aerialists were getting ready to perform, and the bridge was crammed full of people sporting wings, hula-hoops, loudspeakers, antenna and printed exhortations that were either naughty or political. There weren’t yet any harbingers of fire at One Night of Fire, but there were fistfuls of policemen and women lining up the streets of Dumbo, waiting, not impolitely, for the crowds of hundred of neo-hippies to give way to some kind of conflagration, a la RNC-circa-2004 style civic disruption.

Complacent Nation, the organizer of the event, is a group whose actions are intended to be “an exploration of how to live with integrity and creativity in a world gone awry,” marrying an outer borough aesthetic with general rambunctiousness under the banner of political protest.

“This is so civilized,” I said to K. A humid Manhattan 90-something day was dissolving into a perfectly dry breeze, combined with a sunset view of the City skyline. The extroverted friendliness, coming from people whose hairstyles would have frightened me if they were next to me in line, say, at the Shake Shack, gave me a temporary surge of generosity towards my fellow New Yorkers.

It wasn't permanent. In portraying the event to the public, the Complacent Nation web site promises, a moment of awe, a glimpse of the impossible and the intoxication of your nightlife set free.

The moment of awe and glimpse of the impossible were over with pretty quickly, as the dissipation of the crowd gave way to glimpses of shirtless men with neon light sticks enmeshed in their hair, tiara-style, and women in red vinyl shorts over fishnet stockings (“When did that become a good idea?” demanded K, my reliable source of fashionista wisdom). After stopping at a Brooklyn public park, where participants were treated to a cultural bazaar featuring coepoeira, impressive hula-hooping with glow in the dark accessories, and the clean, floral odor of cannabis.

Civilization, meet Stunted Adolescence.

“Is it over?” I asked stupidly, as the ratio of pot smoking to martial arts became more lopsided, right before the masses began militantly marching towards the subway stop (“F Train! F Train!” the crowd was soon roaring. Don’t we all wish public transportation received such enthusiasm in other parts of the country.)

The intoxication component was right around the corner. Within an hour’s time, I’d be crammed into a Coney Island-bound train, with blaring speakers hoisted in gravity-defying positions and people pouring vodka into dixie cups. Sweat condensation was festering on the ceiling and dripping onto happily oblivious passengers, who were busy taping anime-inspired drawings onto the windows. At any stop along the way, a relatively tranquil subway car would be overwhelmed by a stampede of people dashing in from the preceding car. “Ladies and Gentleman!” yelled a tie-dyed woman gleefully into a loudspeaker. “If you see a suspicious package, don't keep it to yourself!" echoing the oft-heard anti-terror refrain usually dispensed by the subway loudspeaker. She received roars of drunken approval for this nugget of good advice. One man began to pound against the windows as if he was trying to escape asphyxiation. Never I have I felt such a pure empathy for MTA employees.

Somewhere near Avenue U, after a ride that could have been an hour-long Dial commercial, I considered just getting off the train, but was seized by an urge to stick it out. When would I have the chance to experience such aesthetic overdrive again? I felt like K and I hadn’t yet capitalized on what Complacent Nation promised us:

A tight cabal of artists, performers and miracle makers has come together to create simple moments of beauty within a massive carnival of fire. Or something like that.

The beach on Coney Island is pleasant at night, and the open asphalt invited a great deal of dancing, courtesy of the Hungry Marching Band, and contraband sparklers, harkening memories of wholesome Midwestern July 4th barbecues. (Mom and Dad, if you could see me now!) Female fire-dancers wore mysterious combinations of clothing to keep from getting burned, such as underwear and no pants, but socks.

The show, though impressive, was truncated when the police arrived, not to stop the party, or the noise, but in fact to discourage the performance, which now involved burning hula-hoops. As the crowd spread out farther and farther, a new restlessness set in, and K and I dug our toes into the sand and silently watched the intricate choreography of marching band, sparklers, and increasingly free-spirited party-goers beginning to wade in the water, described by K as “naked people I really didn’t need to see that naked.”

Good point. At that juncture, without conscious of what I was doing, I began to break out into a sprint back towards the F-train, without so much as informing K of my destination. Some clairvoyant part of my brain had registered, a half a second before my field of vision, a participant so imbued with élan that he was setting a tent on fire, inspiring hundreds of others to run towards the beach in enthusiasm, making my lone, involuntary sprint in the other direction a bit comical.

It was then nearly one in the morning, and there would be a good two hour train ride home on the local. In a world gone awry, it was time to set my nightlife free.