Police pulled the plug on a free concert by up-and-coming rapper Drake and former teen sensations Hanson yesterday after the overflow crowd got rowdy. The 25,000-strong crowd at the South Street Seaport was more than double what organizers expected. Fights had already broken out amid the crowd when fans were told Drake would be arriving late. They then sprayed mace, threw bottles and chairs, and broke Hanson's mixing board, Gawker reports.
"Fans standing on the balcony in front of shops and restaurants began raining bottles down on the crowd below, who promptly returned fire," concert attendee Zach Baron writes int the Village Voice. As things escalated, the bottles turned from plastic to glass. Then, at the peak of the fight, kids on the upper level began tossing steel chairs off the balcony. "That was when people really started to run." (More Hanson stories.)