Fire Scare Cools Down Live Earth After-PartyA small fire on the third floor of the Maritime Hotel drew a phalanx of fire trucks to meatpacking destination Saturday night, and the equipment and firefighters did a nice job of extinguishing Absolut and Flavorpill’s after-party for Al Gore’s Live Earth concert, going on at the hotel. A source confirmed late yesterday that it was an electrical fire, quickly put out, that brought four trucks, all with ladders extended to the third floor and filled with men in uniform, to Ninth Avenue. It was enough to make the concert’s performers — already exhausted from sun exposure and a twelve-hour day — decide it wasn’t worth the effort to get into the party. (We spotted only Broadway types there: Xanadu’s Cheyenne Jackson and Legally Blonde’s Laura Bell Bundy.) Looking back, we remember that the lack of stars did perplex us for a moment, before we decided not to care. We also remember that we spotted some firemen near the bathroom line, and we asked hotel management what they were doing there. “Oh, those are the strippers,” we were told. —Jada Yuan
Earlier: How Green Was Your Live Earth?
How Green Was Your Live Earth?
Al Gore’s multi-continent, multi-hour Live Earth concert on Saturday was an impressive event for an impressive cause. But two days later, we’re still trying to figure out just how impressively green it was, at least at its New York outpost at Giants Stadium. Gore, to his credit, rode Amtrak up from Washington, but, well, let’s just say we’re not sure everyone else made such an effort. At least some box seats at the stadium, we were told, had no glass enclosure — which meant that to keep VIPs cool, A/C was blasted on high throughout the concert, into the open air. The press was relegated to an aptly named media bubble, a giant off-white tent in the parking lot, which also offered A/C. (Not that we’re complaining!) Volunteers stood by the trash cans, helpfully directing the garbage into one of three piles: compost, recycling, and “waste,” 90 percent of which, a sign promised, would be diverted away from the landfills. A man wandered through the tent, dispensing yogurt smoothies from a backpack connected to a squirt gun. There was no vegetarian option on the snack table — just ham and American cheese.
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Akon Performs, Fans Survive!At last night’s show at the Nokia Theatre in Times Square, irascible rapper Akon (he of heckler-assaulting and fan-molesting fame) seemed inspired to do some good — still high off his “Live Earth” performance the day before, perhaps?
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Jack Osbourne: Live Earth Frenemy?“I read somewhere it isn’t beneficial.” —Jack Osbourne, onstage at Live Earth, on why his family doesn’t recycle