This makes us want to move to Montreal. [From The Scourge]

Right, so there are a colony of nerdy D&D-playing medeivalists who gather in Mount Royal Park every Sunday to run around screaming and slapping each with swords made of duct-taped iron bars and shields made out of the lids of recycling bins. Shit, there are even dudes with nerf arrows, flails, battle axes and big fuckin’ hammers. One guy had on an entire suit of chain mail armor.
Anyway, a cabal of local hipsters decided that this Sunday was going to be different. This Sunday, the hipsters were going to dress up like zombies and come marching out of the woods to engage the nerds in glorious battle. We were there to witness and record the hilarity that ensued:

The post on Scourge has prompted some great comments. Here’s our favorite:

the circle will be complete when the nerds dress as travelers from the future (twilight zone style) and warn the hipsters that their own collective fantasy is just as irrelevant to history as D&D combat club. the hipsters will react with indifference,and continue bolstering their egos, getting soon to go out of style tattoos and working on post-ironic record collections. the nerds, feeling vindicated, will return to the park to happily vent their own feelings of self loathing by beating up friends with nerf swords.

See the rest of the photos here.

Animal Collective at Todd P’s club Llano Estacado
A lot of people have been asking us about Todd P’s new space The Llano Estacado by the river in Williamsburg (NE Corner of Metropolitan & River St). We finally had a chance to investigate last night at the sold out Animal Collective show (check them out tonight at The Bowery Ballroom). It’s a huge windowless 2-level warehouse space with its main stage in the basement. Piss before you arrive, there’s a scary makeshift toilet behind a black plastic curtain. The upstairs has a smaller stage and there was some local art hanging. The club is impressively huge and refreshingly lo-fi. Definitely a DIY experiment. There were extension cords hanging from the ceiling. The sound was great even though we felt like we were in some weird post apocalyptic dungeon. Click here to go to promoter and owner Todd P’s website.
Here’s Todd’s explanation of the name:
“The Llano Estacado is pronounced law-no ez-tuh-caw-doh, it’s named after a region of West Texas, where the desert meets the Great Plains, and also a place where they willfully mispronounce Spanish words – hence the “L” sound at the beginning rather than a “Y” sound. The name was given by the conquistador Coronado, it translates as “the staked plain,” referring (by legend) to the fact that the Spanish drove stakes into the ground to mark where they were, for lack of any natural landmarks.”
Click here for upcoming shows and ticket info
more photos and a review of the show after the jump….

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In case you missed the sold out Westminster Dog Show live party at Tonic last night, we were there to provide you with highlights. The crowd was a strange mix of Upper East Side wankers and art school hipsters. The show commentators were appropriately crass and drunk. Nelly McKay (who performed briefly) was cute and very sweet. There was even a suspenseful 30 minutes where a broken projector interrupted the live broadcast. Luckily, the problem was fixed just in time to watch the show finale.
As per the results, we had all of our money on the Bloodhound, but were disappointed to see the 5-year-old German shorthaired pointer judged best in show.

the bitch who won

the food was disappointing

the lovely Nellie McKay

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Le Tigre played a sold out Halloween show last night at Irving Plaza. Even though they signed to a major label, it was great to see that they are still really fucking cool. Kathleen took the stage dressed as Orphan Annie. She looked hot as hell in a huge red afro. Adrock was there sans costume. So was Joan Jett. The crowd couldn’t get enough and it was great to see that, despite mixed reviews for the new record, the band can still actually get hipsters to dance. They closed with a cover from Footloose wearing matching anti-Bush dresses. Great show and no one is cooler than Kathleen Hanna.