Once every year, the kids at Columbia manage to ditch the books for the day and leave the library to throw down right outside of it. This year, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis and Flosstradamus helped us celebrate Bacchanal and the festivities couldn’t have been better. By 11:30 the steps outside of the old library were jam-packed with people awaiting the opening band and the debauchery was in full swing. DJs were filling empty time out of the back of a red bull truck, girls were splashing around like kids in the fountains, and the crowd was about as violent as at an Odd Future show.
Macklemore hopped on stage at noon donning a Knicks jersey to a crowd 5000-strong. Since I don’t listen to him, I wasn’t expecting much; he delivered the goods and then some. Dancing around through the hits and chatting with the crowd, his on stage presence was a force to behold. Before hopping into the massive sing along that was “Thrift Shop,” he nabbed a fur coat out of the crowd to don before “making it crowd surf” back to its owner. Towards the end of his hour-long set, he delivered the line of the day to the sweaty-riddled masses, “I’m in front of a big ass library! Thanks for letting me come to your school on a Saturday and dry hump your women.”
With that, the transition between the EDM haters and the trapped out maniacs made things even messier. The Silver Triangle was inflated behind the DJ booth as the Hoodie Boyz came out all, well, hoodied up. This being my first time seeing a full Floss set (I caught about 20 minutes at Ultra), I had no real frame of reference. Regardless, they blew the stage up as they tore through an hour and a half of their unmistakable style. Dillon Francis’s “Suit & Tie” Remix flew right into Jah No Partial and there was no time to catch your breath as the pulled out their “Same Damn Time” & “Total Recall” mash to bring it home. Then they had just about the everyone belting it out for “Backseat Freestyle” right into Carnage’s trapped out “Spaceman” remix. The crowd stumbled back and forth en masse, girls got peed on (yes, I’ve heard a couple of stories already), and everyone raged on until they closed it out with their classic “Original Don” remix.
At 2:30, the kids with some degree of energy remaining moved to the Red Bull truck, the less tolerant crowd returned to their dorms to nap, and everyone else fled out onto Broadway as the festivities carried on into the wee hours of the night where thousands of kids took over the bars and frat houses of Morningside Heights.
And then everybody got back to the library. Below are a couple of sounds from the day as well as a humorous video of a girl in the Columbia library fountain after the jump!
Major Lazer & Flux Pavilion – Jah No Partial
Hardwell – Spaceman (Carnage Festival Trap Remix)
Fountain Girl from Bwog on Vimeo.