Long Island Hardcore Show Required Concertgoers to Purchase a Chili Cheese Dog for Admission, Did Not Require Social Distancing

Every time you’re like “2020 could not get weirder,” 2020 is like, “Hold my beer.” If I woke up tomorrow and there were gargoyles flying overhead and Joe Biden named Otep as his running mate, it’d be like, “Yeah, that tracks.”

So, in what may or may not end up being the strangest story we hear this week, Metal Injection reports that the Long Island venue Shaker’s Pub recently held a hardcore show, which required concertgoers to purchase a chili cheese dog for admittance… but did not require social distancing measures to be enacted.

A Twitter user, @niketotebag, shared video from the event. The small, indoor room doesn’t seem to have been overly crowded, and most (but not all) of the attendees appear to have worn face masks. But there’s no distancing going on between concertgoers, and there’s plenty of physical contact occurring as a result of moshing.

Another Twitter user, @diabliitax, revealed that fans “had to buy a chili cheese dog to be able to stay inside the venue and three out of the 5 bands on the bill were playing their very first show.” One of those bands may or may not have been NYC Shootout.

Metal Injection notes that the mandatory chili cheese purchase was likely a workaround “to skirt the rules, treating the venue like a restaurant, to allow a certain amount of people in a space.” According to Patch.com, Suffolk County, where the venue is located, currently allows indoor dining so long as “capacity remains limited to 50 percent” and “all employees and customers must wear face coverings, except when seated.” Tables are meant to be at least six feet apart; that the show didn’t even have tables may have been another exploitation of a loophole in current anti-coronavirus precautions.

A different, unidentified Twitter user apparently attempted to bring the concert to the attention of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. That tweet has since been deleted.

The New York Times reports that there’s been a negligible uptick in COVID-19 cases in Suffolk Count recently. New York State, on the whole, currently has things at least kinda-sorta under control, with only 545 new cases in the state being reported yesterday, August 3, according to Gothamist. Still, events like this aren’t likely to help keep the virus at bay. Put another way: I hope these people had fun, because in addition to risking their own lives, they’ve helped to ensure the wait for live music to return en masse will be that much longer.

Shaker’s Pub has several more concerts scheduled for later this month.