Illicit pandemic parties have been popping up all across the city in recent weeks in all the places where summer partying would normally be taking place, whether they’re at rooftop hotels, under bridges, in restaurants, or on boats. But this weekend, a different kind of party happened in a much less likely spot: an MTA bus.
Dozens of party people without face coverings took over an MTA bus in Queens early Sunday morning for an impromptu hookah dance party. The MTA says the incident happened around 3:35 a.m. on Sunday near the Grand Avenue Bus Depot (at 49th Place and Grand Avenue).
The MTA says the bus driver was departing the Grand Avenue Depot with no passengers when it was blocked by double parked cars. When the bus operator attempted to get the vehicles to move, revelers crowded into the bus, as you can see in the videos below.
Within 30 minutes, the crowd had dispersed; the MTA noted that the bus was later disinfected. The NYPD confirmed it is reviewing the videos as part of an investigation into the incident.
The MTA said that partiers violated multiple COVID-19 health and safety laws. “This group not only put themselves at risk, based on the fact that no one was wearing a mask, but more important to me, they put my bus operator at risk,” said MTA Bus President Craig Cipriano. “Bus operators are out there moving the city—they’ve been doing so since March. In this egregious situation, they’re crowded in there, no one was wearing masks and it’s important to keep that in mind as we take the next step in working with law enforcement.”
MTA employee Tramell Thompson, who reposted the video of the party up above, told ABC, “This is not the time to be clout chasing in the middle of a pandemic, when you could put your family members at risk, MTA workers at risk, and whoever else at risk. Help us help you guys, let us do our job safely.”
Also on Sunday, over a thousand people reportedly gathered in Prospect Park for a party billed as Litnic 20; the event left the park covered in trash on Monday.
After Gothamist wrote last week about the reemergence of Provocateur, which was hosting illicit parties out of the back of Café Tucano in the East Village for the last month, the Sheriff’s Office shut it down. They also busted up a party boat after it returned to dock in the Lower East Side, carrying over 170 people.
And the week before, a “secret” rave drew over a thousand people to a small park under the Kosciuszko Bridge on the border of Brooklyn and Queens. One of the organizers defended the event to Gothamist: “If you think people aren’t going to gather, you’re a fool—there’s no stopping that.”