Is a confrontation brewing between Matthew Silver, aka the Bedford Avenue Dancer, and employees of Earwax, a CD shop on the corner of Bedford and N. 5 Street? Could be. Yesterday, Mr. Silver sent out an email to just about every blogger in Brooklyn that included the photo above and a video of an employee of the store holding some sort of small canister while threatening to “mace” Mr. Silver (who it must also be noted, goes into the store). The “mace” comment is made on a public sidewalk, however. (Also, there have allegedly been innocent victims of the water tossing, including a baby in a stroller that ended up in tears.) Per Mr. Silver’s email:
Workers from Earwax have now made it a habit to throw water on us every Sunday, whenever we perform on the storefronts sidewalk. They have threatened us with mace! They have gotten our electronic equipment wet. The bcfools ain’t gonna take it anymore. Read it and watch it happen and evolve! Performance, movement, Perform and move and perform and move! HAPPENING THIS SUNDAY! BCFOOLS VS. THE EARWAX WATERMEN
There’s a full rundown on Mr. Silver’s BCFools blog. Should be some great street theater, assuming mace and pepper spray aren’t used by store employees. For the record, we’ve been in Earwax hundreds of times over many years and can say with confidence that they’ve never threatened to mace us. Maybe the guy actually said, “Dude, we’re trying to listen to the new Mace CD. Get out of here.”
6 responses so far ↓
1 M // May 18, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Sounds like the earwax guys are pretty big douchebags if this is all true!
2 p // May 19, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Sounds to me like the clown is an annoying attention wanting moron.
Clearly it is cooler to be a music store dude then a clown.
then again, why is every one writing about this…
who cares.
3 William // May 20, 2008 at 11:48 am
Mr. Sliver hasn’t mentioned that he’s been asked to leave the premises many times, and refuses. That he harasses customers, who have asked him to stop. That he was only threatened by mace when he entered the shop and refused to leave. That no child was ever hit with water, and that he had friends threaten to “beat up” the Earwax employeees last Sunday, leading to the cops having to be called.
With this kind of spin, Mr.Silver should run for congress.
4 Earwax WATERMEN Warning Bell, FRIENDLY FOLK, the end of a SAGA PART 2 // May 22, 2008 at 6:00 pm
[…] Bedford Dancer vs. Earwax Records War Brewing in Burg? […]
5 Marissa // May 23, 2008 at 3:12 pm
I am a BCFool.
I think Earwax loves the puiblicity as much as we do…
Let’s get a couple of things straight. The “mace incident” – when I went in to Earwax on my knees asking “why did you throw water on the radio?” Earwax’s employee immediate action was to grab the mace. There was no discussion, or “please get out”.. Just the mace. Check the documentation out on YouTube if you like.
Silver and I went into Earwax (as visitors) a couple of days after the mace incident to ask, “Do you like us? What’s going on? Should we not perform outside your store anymore?” The employee – dark hair and black-rimmed glasses replied, with a smirk, “Oh, no. It’s fine. You can keep performing.” When I asked him about the mace, he said, “I wasn’t going to spray you, it’s just that my co-worker gets a little nervous.”
Mixed signals? Lies?
SO, we thought everything was peaches..
You play with Clowns, you ask for play-back!
Please..We do not harass customers. We do not block entrances to businesses. They are free to shop.
There is a child that gets splashed with Earwax’s water on film. It’s on YouTube and the BCFools.com website archive. The child cries. It’s sad.
So we’ve hired security guards. And they never, ever threatened to beat Earwax up. They are under contract to stop “any threatening actions leading to the disruption or injury of performers.” After being apprehended, Security asked Earwax to go back into the store, where the waterbucketer was safe, And he did. And then he called the cops. On some clowns. And some security. And some glitter in his pants.
Earwax can dish it out, but they sure can’t take it.
EARWAX = SNITCHES
6 Serena // May 25, 2008 at 12:21 am
I’m on Bedford just about every weekend and I’ve watched BC Fools perform many times. NEVER have I seen them be in any way confrontational with anyone. Their performance is always in good fun with no harm intended to anyone. They don’t harrass anyone who clearly isn’t interested in playing along. As for the Earwax water-throwing thing, what isn’t mentioned here is that it doesn’t just happen when BC Fools are on their corner. You can watch for yourself on Youtube as the Earwax employees go so far as to cross the street to toss buckets of water on Matthew on several occasions (once by Fabians and another time by Cyn Lounge). It seems to me that there’s definitely more to it than concern about interference with customer access to their store. Personally, I so much enjoy watching them perform and look forward to seeing them there every weekend.