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Trey Anastasio, the longtime frontman of the jam band Phish, performed at the Kennedy Center on Wednesday night in concert with the National Symphony Orchestra. It’s hardly the first time the NSO has blended its classical inclinations with a contemporary musician, but, considering the collaborator, the Kennedy Center might have attracted a different group of attendees than it’s used to.
A video circulating on YouTube shows concertgoers passing through a Kennedy Center corridor stopping to take hits off inflated balloons. While the camera that shot the video is too far from the tank, those balloons are most likely filled with nitrous oxide, a popular stimulant at shows featuring Phish and other jam bands.
People approaching the tank can also be seeing exchanging money for the high-inducing balloons, suggesting that on Wednesday evening, the Kennedy Center became the latest concert venue to be a distribution point for the so-called “Nitrous Mafia,” a nickname for a ring businesspeople who sell hits of nitrous oxide to music fans looking for an easy buzz.
Of course, selling nitrous oxide for the purpose of getting people high is an illegal enterprise. But that hasn’t deterred people from doing it anyway, and, as evidenced by a 2010 cover story in the Village Voice, the “Nitrous Mafia” is quite the robust operation, especially at big music festivals.
Throughout the year, the Nitrous Mafia travels from state to state, selling balloons at concert sites. The scene in Williamsburg is only a small preview of what happens in summer, when the outdoor festival season kicks into gear. During these campground events, which last two to four days, the Mafia, which is divided into two rings, based in Boston and Philadelphia, can burn through hundreds of nitrous tanks. With the ability to fill up to 350 balloons per tank, which they sell for $5 and $10, they can bank more than $300,000 per festival, minus expenses. Year after year, security guards at these events attempt to crack down on the illicit business, but, in most cases, they’re outmatched by a phalanx of menacing gas dealers who have little regard for unarmed concert personnel.
But nitrous oxide isn’t necessarily a pacifist’s drug. The Voice retold scenes of nitrous dealers assaulting police officers, parking attendants being beaten, and people high on the stuff running around wielding knives.
For the most part, though, nitrous oxide is not a sensory enhancer. This is the stuff dentists used to use to numb their patients. But it’s highly addictive, and there are many stories of Birkenstock-clad users running out of cash and begging their dealers for a free balloon, leading to the drug’s nickname, “hippie crack.”
As for Anastasio’s performances with full orchestras, the Kennedy Center is hardly the first symphony hall where Phish fans have huffed their druggy balloons. The Voice reported that a show Anastasio did with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra featured plenty of well-dressed folks looking for hits. “I’ll always remember a hundred people in ties and dress shirts passing out on the grass,” Noah Wilderman, a filmmaker who follows Phish, told the Voice.
“The Kennedy Center does not condone illegal behavior and our security staff addresses such matters accordingly,” says Amanda Hunter, a spokeswoman for the performing arts center.
