I added this to my post today; it's the NY Post Page Six version of the events, which of course takes the cops' side:

DRUNK, STONED AND CUFFED FUN-loving art gallerist Gavin Brown managed to get buzzed while building a buzz for his new show, "Drunk vs. Stoned 2." The British bad boy was arrested Thursday night for possession of a small bag of pot at the raucous opening of the exhibition at his Greenwich Street gallery, which was transformed into a "Deadwood"-style saloon complete with swinging doors and a jug band performance. All that old-time revelry resulted in empty beer bottles littering the street in front of the space, which spurred cops to investigate. After they crashed the party and spotted Brown holding a bag of pot, officers brought him outside. "They were being very cool until someone threw a hot dog out the window at them," Brown told us. "It basically broke the good will. That's when they put me in handcuffs." Empty beer bottles, marijuana and flying hot dogs would seem perfectly natural at a show featuring work by legendary counterculture cartoonist R. Crumb. According to a press release hyping the show, the "two most familiar forms of intoxicated transcendence are examined through a clouded lens, blurred by pot smoke and beer goggles."

I also added this editorial comment: "Oh, yeah, someone threw a hot dog, poor babies, and 'held a bag of pot,' I guess that's a good reason to threaten a hundred or so well behaved partygoers with arrest. As for the beer bottles--what New York street doesn't have bottles lying around? Check out the photo--see all the bottles? I don't either. The mess was nothing noticeable, and this was not a wild party, sorry to be boring and put a damper on a bad boy's legend-building."

- tom moody 8-07-2005 5:21 am [add a comment]