Just witnessed an incredibly boneheaded, impossibly naïve performance from @NYCMayor Bill de Blasio tonight at the We Love NYC Homecoming concert. Just got home, soaking wet from the show cancelled due to rain and lightning. 1/?
Seconds before Don Lemon introduced Barry Manilow, there was a flash of lightning in the sky. Lemon doesn’t mention it and Manilow plays Copacabana while raindrops start to fall. Then Manilow’s sound gets cut + an official voice announces that people gotta leave. Severe weather.
People star moving, quickly and calmly. Heard only a few understandable grumbles of disappointment. I was impressed! They put warnings on the screens, and make the announcement a couple more times. 
THEN, eight minutes after the first announcements as tens of thousands people head towards the exit, de Blasio himself steps on stage on the mic and tries to say the show will go on?!
Here, almost in full. “We want to bring the concert back,” de Blasio says. “Move to somewhere indoors briefly nearby. We’re going to get you an update shortly.”
This is, to be clear, a ridiculous plan that will never work. This is tens of thousands of people at a ticketed event in the middle of Central Park! As soon as de Blasio says this, people who were leaving turn around and start streaming back towards the stage.
The event producers, presumably, disagreed. So after eight minutes of confusion following de Blasio’s announcement while some concert goers try to leave and others mill about in the light rain, the official voice makes a clear announcement: “This event has been cancelled.”
And thank goodness. The rain really picks up and there are other flashes of lightning. Great Lawn clears out and I walk home.
Is there still talk of starting this up concert again? Some people waited in line for TWO AND A HALF HOURS to get in. I don’t see how they could possibly restart it logistically.
Ayyyy we made @ABC7NY.
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