Posted on 06/26/2003 7:14:34 AM PDT by rattrap
A group of hip-hop fans invited to hang out at MTV's beach house in the Hamptons was jolted back to the real world - busted for a wild melee at a nearby club. Four young men were arraigned yesterday in Southampton Town Court on charges ranging from assault to robbery for the Tuesday afternoon brawl at Summers Beach Club.
One person was badly hurt in the fracas, and it took cops from three different departments to restore order at the popular party spot in East Quogue.
"There were 100 to 120 people involved in various fights," said Detective Sgt. Randolph Hintze of the Southampton Town Police.
He described the atmosphere as "very tense" and said that had cops not arrived so quickly, things could have exploded.
"It really got out of control," said Kareem Sharpe, 19, one of the men arrested. "It started with a lot of drinking, then play-fighting and it went from there."
The clash happened after MTV bused dozens of its viewers from the Smithhaven Mall in Lake Grove to its beach house on Dune Road in East Quogue.
They were recruited to be audience members for the "Direct Effect" show, a daily countdown of hip-hop video requests.
Fists fly
Some recruits apparently didn't want their MTV, and headed down the road to Summers Beach Club, a waterfront watering hole crowded with regulars.
The MTV crowd became "aggressive and confrontational" with Summers staff and customers and the "combative atmosphere" sparked a series of fistfights, police said.
Southampton cops rushed to the scene and called in backup from the Quogue Village police and state police.
In the chaos, one bloodied victim just wandered away, and cops were only able to identify four suspects, Hintze said.
Sharpe, a stock clerk from Brentwood, said he wasn't even at Summers. He was heading back to the bus at the end of the taping when trouble started.
"I saw everyone running and then I saw a black kid get hit on the head with a bottle and he fell and everyone was kicking him," he said.
Out on bail
Sharpe said he stepped in and got into a confrontation with a man who turned out to be an off-duty cop trying to break up the free-for-all.
"I hit him. I didn't even know he was a police officer," said Sharpe, who was charged with assault and released on $250 bail.
David Callender, 24, of Farmingville, also was accused of assaulting the off-duty cop and stealing from a tip jar.
Pandelis Theodosiou, 21, of Port Jefferson allegedly swiped a bottle of rum and threatened the club owner. Police said he fled and hid on one of the buses when cops tried to arrest him.
The fourth person arrested was Greg Romine, 22, of South Setauket, for interfering with another arrest. After he was busted, police found he had a warrant for an unpaid fine.
A 24-year-old man, whose name was not released, was treated at Central Suffolk Hospital for cuts and bruises on the head, officials said.
In a statement, MTV said only that it was cooperating with the investigation. The club did not return phone calls.
Depends on the era. When Led Zepplin was just starting out, the long hair didn't play in some parts of this world (even in England).
I recall a modern interview with some band, I think it was the Pretty Things but maybe it was Hawkwind or Motorhead (Lemmy was in both). This band opened at some show in England and the crowd hated their long hair and threw things at the stage and made a mess of things.
The guys in Led Zeppelin laughed at the response they got and eventually took the stage. They didn't fare any better. I think that they all had to flee to avoid a riot.
Yo' been oppresin' us fer fo' hunnid' years!
Bump.
That's too bad. Those scenes had some of the best lines of the series.
Actually, Much just disappeared from DirecTV, after being there for as long as I can remember, and was replaced by "Fuse", which is described as "the next generation music television network with interactive programming that gives viewers the opportunity to program the channel and make their opinions matter." Or so the DTV blurb says - the Fuse website is a bit too heavy on the Flash presentations to make me want to spend any time there figuring it all out...
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