Eyewitnesses, including a music promoter who booked the show, described a chaotic scene of destruction and debauchery in the early hours of Oct. 8. David Diaz of Tainted Entertainment claimed that the trouble started after Stango took the stage and exhorted the crowd to “tear down” the bar. Diaz added that Stango ignored pleas by Tainted Entertainment staff to calm the crowd and stop the destruction. Stango maintains that his stage announcement was merely a farewell to his patrons, not a call for vandalism, and that he left the building before the bulk of the damage was done.
Kingston Police began working on the case as soon as the damage was discovered. Kingston Police Chief Egidio Tinti said in October that detectives were seeking witnesses and reviewing photos and cell phone video taken that night.
According to the state Penal Code, a person is guilty of riot in the first degree when he or she “simultaneously with ten or more other persons, engages in tumultuous and violent conduct and thereby intentionally or recklessly causes or creates a grave risk of causing public alarm, and in the course of and as a result of such conduct, a person other than one of the participants suffers physical injury or substantial property damage occurs.
LOL. I think all of Kingston was waiting for the hammer to drop on this moron. What a fool.
You said it John. “MORON” fits the bill. No one should ever rent space to him again unless it’s for the better of two bunks in a cell…
I think you guys are being awfully judgmental and hard on Stango… ok… I wasn’t there… but chances are neither were YOU … so… let’s look at the story… he took over a dive bar, fixed up the space and ran a dive bar with a scuzzy landlord who wanted to take the business for $9 Grand. It was a fun bar, a nice bar, and one of the very few music venues in Kingston. I don’t agree with trashing the place before surrendering it but 85% of the stuff the landlord is complaining about Stango installed… you think the landlord put in all that gear? No, he didn’t. So he’s pissed he didn’t get some free renovations to pass onto the next tenant, sucks, but then again it was a punk rock bar… how did you think it should have ended? There’s no better way for this story to end than a little misplaced anarchic chaos. Everyone who has this sudden disdain for Stango clearly has no compassion for what that kid tried to do and what he offered Kingston. It was a cool dive bar in a scuzzy part of Kingston’s Broadway that actually brought some LIFE to the area. Big deal, in a drunken stupor he trashed the place, he’s been arrested and he’ll ‘pay’ for it by doing time. To call him a “Moron” and to get all bent out of shape is absurd, come on… give the kid a break, he tried to do something cool for the community. I’m grateful that there was a music venue that played so many kinds of music and tried to do something different in this two horse, I mean two bar boring town.
Why is this even a criminal matter? It seems that the destruction of a rental property by the legal tenant is a civil landlord-tenant damages matter, not a criminal one.
As a person who went there a few times to see for myself what it was like and lives in the area, I feel it’s time others should know a little of what went on there before it closed. I spoke to Stango numerous times about people doing drugs outside behind the fence between the Basement and Eddie’s, plus the fact that many times sex acts were performed openly across the street along with various other illegal activities. He never, to my knowledge, tried to correct or even look into those things.