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For a litany of reasons, this organized schtick pisses off private proprietors. Hence, the Rattlesnake isn’t the only place 123 Party! gets kicked out of tonight. In the span of two hours, they’re thrown out of the Prudential Mall (for the fourth time); Copley Place (where a female security guard watches them perform for about 15 minutes before politely telling them to leave); the CVS on Boylston (where the guard crossly points his walkie-talkie at them and mutters, “These dudes are retarded”); the Four Seasons (whose doorman bars them from the vestibule and then runs after them waving his cell phone and threatening to call the cops); Rustic Kitchen (where the hulking chef comes out of the kitchen to force them out); a plush charter bus that was parked in the Theatre District and left unlocked (when the driver materializes, Fury apologizes for mistaking this vehicle for their private “party bus”); and the Park Plaza Hotel (where an employee chases them around the lobby’s flower centerpiece, tells them to “get the fuck out,” and then viciously calls them “faggots” outside on the sidewalk).
Never mind that 123 Party! almost finds itself in a fistfight with three random men, one of whom grabs Fury by the neck like a rubber chicken, while about 30 bystanders watch.
What makes strangers like this, along with the hired authorities, especially angry is that nearly every time they ask 123 Party! to leave or to stop, Fury will (rather brilliantly) hold up the boombox to his ear and yell, “I can’t hear you! The music’s too loud!” Sometimes Blaze will mumble, No habla.
“Our mission is, unclench the butt cheeks of America,” says Fury, who graduated last spring from Emerson. “It’s bringing something to the night that you never expected.”
For that, people adore them. Girls, especially: every size, every shape, every age — even one who looks like a young Helena Christensen follows them from a hotel bar to the Alley. Throughout the night, onlookers encircle them, snap pictures, and wonder out loud, “What is this?” On Newbury Street, a video-camera wielding documentarian named Israel spots them and continues to shadow them for the rest of the night. After an hour, there’s a spectator parade of about 20 people in tow.
And one of them is Mike Croci. After trailing with some buddies for about 30 minutes, one of his friends whines about finding somewhere with alcohol. “You want to leave them?” asks Croci. “No way. This is my Heaven. Complete disregard for everyone else.”
On the Web
123 Party: http://www.myspace.com/123_party
