Independents Day

8/3/2019 Independents Day

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THE

INDEPENDENCE

DAY PARTY ON

ROOFTOP #2TEXT + PHOTOS BY

CARIB GUERRA

The issue being that we’d been promised a runaway rager for the Fourth of July.

Everybody I spoke with who had been to this certain building’s historic Fourth parties had called them wild, indecent, a with liberty. A week before the date we went up to survey the intended rooftop. Obviously it was a beautiful view.e skyline wasus like that waterfront wind o the East River—where the reworks would not be held this year…again. It’s the sort of rooftop thain the surrounding Williamsburg neighborhood. en there was the problem. Having left only a thin remnant of once free space, fences had been erected all around us: padlocked party kennels intended for individual rental that shook our hopes for the mythic

we’d come to feel was our entitlement.

But this isn’t about a giant bummer. It just starts with one. is is about being woken up at all hours of the night of thepatient patriots and errant pyros getting a head start on thereworks. is is about grills and smokers being dragged through the eing that would spill out delicious meat and veggies like Black and Decker cornucopias. Coolers whose icy bottoms won’t be seen beyes the morning of National Hangover Day.is is about freedom and independence in Brooklyn, New York. It’s about us:e A

“Honestly,” said Chad, a guy on a roof, “is is actually the rst time I’ve thought about freedom and the Fourth of July

“Together,” I added for him, but he couldn’t have heard. By that hour the small group of humans still attending the par#2 were in no position to be answering these questions.

“It looks like they’re still over there,” said Molly, a girl drinking whisky from binoculars beside us, “Like, begging us to cover. Inviting us secretly.”

“Yeah,” said Katherine, her empty bottle of Jack hovering sadly above her lap, “Probably.”

I followed their gaze over to Rooftop #1. An American ag was being waved in and out of its own silhouette by a man dr wise against a sunset which couldn’t have been nicer if we’d ordered it.

As any true patriot knows, the American ag is the international sign for freedom. Regardless of the telepathic invitatio was channeling, the time was nine pm, and there was no doubt in my mind that we should feel at perfect liberty to return to Roof

At four PM, when we had migrated from the far side of Williamsburg to the other, the sun had just dipped o on its slotowards the parties to come. Our small clade kept to the shady side of the street. We made our way through hesher sidewalk BBQdrunk hipsters in full regalia; the asymmetrical freedom mullets, the half-racks and forties of PBR tucked under tattooed biceps, th

interpretations of what an American

ag would look like if it were a really well dressed twenty-something instead of just a sheet on Waldo could have stood shouting his whereabouts from a grandstand on Bedford Ave. and we’d all have just thought that he was in joke.



Despite the three PM start time listed on the Facebook party yer, the rstband was barely nished getting their pedals inorder when we stepped out onto the hot silverroof. As expected, the food table was stacked.ere was a facepaint photo station courtesy of Randyll Wendl and set. e crowds at partieslike this one—predictably large, live music, andcheap beer parties that some might even label asevents —are composed of a broad swath of younghumans that would be the dream demographicsampling of any market analyst. e core groupof maybe ve to ten people invite their friends,

who invite theirs, etc, etc, and of course thebands serve as a powerful friend vector in and of themselves.

In a cursory glance with only my Ray-Bans to protect me from the vicious glare of thatmetallic roof paint, the mass of human shadowsslowly resolved itself into the recognizable setsthat our generation has made its mission to cre-ate, dene, and defend.

What is that? e freedom of self-expression. We enjoy this particular freedom so

much that expressive individuality has become astyle set all its own. e blanket term is hipster ,

which would’ve applied to almost anybody there,but nobody knows what that means. is is theresult of decades worth of strict fashions thatarose from an anticonformity but became iconic;uniforms presumed to skip, or at least to serveas, an introduction. You see what I’m wearing.

You know my music. You know my lifestyle, my heroes. You know what I’m about. But what can

we say we’re about these days? Like the strati-ed styles, the list is as long and diverse as aremyriad the denitions of the word hipster . It’smeaningless, intangible. e truth is, we’re about

whatever. Get over it.

e rst band, Mainland, surprised

me with how good they were. It’s not often thata low-key roof party is graced with excellent mu-sic. ese guys had good feeling and deployed itskillfully across their whole set list. Rhythm andmelodic pop of the Indie misnomer which onegirl compared to Modest Mouse—you know,back when they were what’s up. To be a great liveact a band must have the salt of showmanship.Mainland had it. ey got into it. e frontman,

Jordan Topf, was making eyes andown into the grooves, as it werebeen wowed once, I don’t think aquite ready for the atomic rock babout to blow us all—away.

I’d seen them in the pe we’d arrived. Skintight patriots incapes who were ghting for freedsheer sex appeal. Maybe I’d spoktwo of them briey. A joke, a clinBut when all of the members of Tcoalesced into the bandzone it wa Stars and Stripes blackhole hadthere in South Williamsburg. HeEyes were locked frozen like neglin a ashfreeze of anticipation. W

what was coming but we were prthat it was about to kick our but

Fair. I’m not a fan of tdingleberry that America, Fuck Yesince Parker and Stone birthed TWorld Police . It engenders the samdespair that Budweiser’s ‘Wassssssonce did. But these kids dropped



“If nothing else,we are here.

This is America.Whatever.”



rendition that made it all okay. People sang alongto the part they knew—the part we all know.e rest of their doomed set was a kamikazetearjerker, a fascist rock manifesto boldly order-ing us all to fall in line or fall behind.ere wereno stragglers. Even the famous NYPD showed upto join the fun.

Nobody was happy that the cops hadended the music. My clade regrouped. Won-dering what to do we rested our drinks on theroofwall only to see salvation across the street.e golden door. ere was a whole new party picking up the pieces. Give us your tired, they said with waving arms. Give us your poor. Yourbummed masses yearning to drink free. e

wretched refuse of your teeming rooftop shore.

e party on Rooftop #2 was hostedby Anna, a girl from a di erent country who, by the time you read this, will have been deported.

With Attiss Ngoval, the lead singer of TripleCobra, standing just beside us waving that

American Flag, it got me thinking about freedomall over again.

“What do I think about freedom?”said Molly with a laugh, “It’s a funny question

when I’ve just been kicked o of a rooftop, I’mstanding next to Captain America, and I myself am dressed as a ag—

“is is a day to celebrate. I feel likethe poor policemen are just upset ‘cause they don’t get to hang out on a rooftop, dress up,paint their faces, and come together. Lettingloose and having fun for a reason that’s mostly arbitrary.

If anybody asked us, ‘How do you feelabout living in America?’ on any given day, ouranswer would be very di erent. But today it’s,

like, Fuck Yeah! If nothing else, we’re here.

is is America. Whatever.”

e sentiment I found surroundingthe concept of freedom in relation to celebratingthe Fourth of July was that these two things donot go hand in hand.

“Just buy into it,” said Julia, “It’s akitschy thing. We should all be patriotic every

day, but it’s an excuse to just get together anddo it. It’s a nice reason to be with people. Don’tover-think it.”

As for Anna, there was a personaldisparity that arose from celebrating the freedomof a country that was about to boot her.

“I’ve had to ght my entire life forfreedom that nobody else here can actually understand. I can’t say this for a lot of people,but the way I think of freedom is to be able to do

whatever it is that you want to do for yourself.It’s as simple as walking out of your own front

door.

“I come from a place where womencan’t drive. You couldn’t even walk out of yourown house without a man—what they werealways telling us was—a superior escorting us.

“at you could never make some-thing of yourself. I consistently had to try andbreak out of that most of my life.

“When I rst moved away it was scary as hell because I was able to do whatever it is I

wanted.at kind of freedom? It blew my mind.I was the happiest I’d ever been in my entire life.”

ere are freedoms that matter to us. A lot of people at the party felt that the uprisingsin the Middle East were a greatly positive thing.Plus there’s the fact that Ian can get married innow in New York state.

“I don’t normally do Pride parades,but I went because I felt like something momen-tous had just happened.”

I asked, “What did you do the night

of Pride?”

“What every gay man does in New York City. I went out and got wasted. Which is what we do a lot anyways so it wasn’t very di er-ent. But it felt kind of historic. I got a lot of likeson my Facebook.”

“I felt the pride,” said Julia, who wasstanding beside Ian, “I’m proud that New York isso far beyond so many other states. It makes meproud to be a New Yorker.”

ere are so many di erent kinds of

people in the United States. We all have di er-ent freedoms that we value, or take for granted,and we all have di erent freedoms which we’restill ghting for. But it’s the freedom to cometogether and express those values openly thatreally does it. It’s the freedom to be ourselves,expressive individualists.

“I’ve always spent the Fourth of July with my family,” this is my awesomely smar tfriend Jane speaking, “So it’s interesting to seethis side of it.”

“e party side,” I said.

“e younger side. It’s good. ough

I think it’s an excuse to get fucked up. Which isfun and great, but it is what it is. I mean, I am sofar away from an idea of not having freedom—“

“What is not having freedom?”

“I’m so used to freedom as a generalsense of being able to say whatever I want, and tobe able to call someone out on whatever they’redoing. To be able to choose what I want to do.”

“Not having freedom is being con-ned. It’s not being able to speak your mind inany way. ere’s denitely places in this world

where people are not aloud to sa would like. Where it’s not appro woman to want a career, or anyt just simple life and children. Ulit’s great that we have the idea oit’s obviously not this thing: freedisenfranchised.ere’s a hierardoesn’t t. But the idea? at’s n

We did eventually go Rooftop #1. Molly’s psychic inviup in pr actice. We went back anthe faro Hudson River rewor(which was still spectacular, despplacement). We partied, we dana real great time.

For the rest of the yeaand do our respective things frotive stations in American societyFourth of July, 2012, all of us wa common frame of mind: We a

We’ve come together by whatevand we’re doing something here. freedom to not like each other ato disagree, but Molly’s right. If are here. is is America. Whate

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