Protesters clash with police today during the one year anniversary of OWS.

God how time flies. Just 365 days ago, we hadn't even heard of Occupy Wall Street, horizontal democracy, or a Statement of Autonomy. It was a heady time, when we remained blissfully ignorant of what the 99% referred to, and never thought to question who owned Zucotti Park.

This weekend, preparations began in earnest for OWS's one year anniversary. It's almost like the party didn't take a six month sabbatical where it dropped off the face of front page news. Luckily, it doesn't take much to make the media wax nostalgic for the days before the tents went up, and even though today's planned activities sound a lot like a peaceful version of that scene in The Dark Knight Rises, there is definitely excitement in the air. Below, we follow the OWS news of the day, as it happens. If you have any tips, photos or footage that you want seen, send them our way.

3:25 p.m.: Protesters and police clash in Zuccotti Park: OWS had their barricades taken away, and several seemingly handicapped Occupiers are arrested and loaded--along with their wheelchairs--into police vans. Behind the World Financial Center, a Debt March began but didn't draw a huge crowd.
1:12 p.m.: An arrested protester LiveStreams from his holding cell (audio only):

Live video for mobile from Ustream

12:58 p.m.: The Wall Street Journal is claiming over 124 protestershave been arrested since this morning. Meanwhile, photos emerge as NYPD move to Zuccotti:

Via Jay Densen

Via Nick Pinto

Via Federal Flashes

Via Alexa O'Brien

10:48 a.m.:

According to New York Magazine, at least 10 "leaders" of the leaderless movement were arrested yesterday during a tame reoccupation of Zuccotti Park. (This is interesting only so far as the fact that there are leaders, this time around.) While the music lasted well past bedtime on Sunday, several members worried that the NYPD was targeting key members to prevent today's "roving carnival" from happening, especially since the 18 arrested over the course of the night were picked "seemingly at random. Meanwhile...discussions! Planning committees, how we've missed you! Jimmy McMillian...what the hell were you doing there?
http://youtu.be/1qXiY8s4gCg
Not to mention a concert that included Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, as well as a Rosh Hashanah service.
http://youtu.be/Sa_wLovfn28
Currently: The People's Wall protest at the Stock Exchange has been hindered by police presence, herding activists onto the sidewalk and making sure the several small factions planning to join up at the Stock Exchange never met up.
http://youtu.be/GgJ5f9ZqOFc
Guards were checking I.D.s at the entrance of the NYSE and employees were alerted to the beefed up security. Meaning that you aren't paranoid...the NYPD just got a copy of your schedule. It should look something like this:

MON. SEPT 17: RESISTANCE Financial District
On the one year anniversary, people from all walks of life are going to assemble in the streets of the Financial District in an outcry for economic justice. For on-the-ground updates please contact the OWS PR Team directly.

7am – The People’s Wall, a non-violent civil disobedience at the Stock Exchange.* + 99 Revolutions: a swirl of mobile intersection occupations throughout the Financial District which will spring from the People's Wall Action. (Final tipsheet will be out Sunday regarding Monday’s protest and meeting locations)
10am – Storm Wall Street, an ecologically themed convergence for a sustainable future (Bowling Green)
12-2pm – The 99% Return to Wall Street, this assembly will bring together Union workers and leadership, economics experts, faith, community members, students and occupiers to let our voices be heard once more at (Liberty Square/Zuccotti Park)
6-8pm – Popular Assembly (Foley Square)

As expected, Twitter has been the go-to point for breaking news: according to several eye-witness accounts, the police have been arresting protesters at random. (Of course, now that we know that tweeting about OWS might be used against you in a court of law, people may be exercising some restraint when reporting on the police. Hopefully not.) The livestream is also back, so you can follow along at home.

Live video for mobile from Ustream

A page of Our Show.

"I guess that's kind of my shtick in general is like punk rock gentleman. You can sound-bite that." The Observer was chatting with talk show host, entrepreneur, and editor Elliot Aronow, who had just released the second issue of his zine, Our Show with Elliot Aronow, and was celebrating with a party in the Yard at the Soho Grand. DJs Cosmo Baker and Prince Language were spinning classic funk and hip hop. The Observer spotted MTV's Sway, Princeton "punkademic" Samuel Goldman and about half of Das Racist's Greedhead labelmates.

Our Show takes its name from the variety show Mr. Aronow used to host at Santos Party House with guests like James Murphy and Andrew W.K., what he calls "my weird pothead version of Glenn O'Brien's TV Party meets Charlie Rose." For the zine, "My idea for it was to make it a punk GQ, take all the stuff that was supposed to be kind of bourgeois and bring it down from the mountain and say, 'Ayo, you can do this.'" Both issues contain fashion advice from Brooklyn Tailors, whose Danny Lewis was at the party and told The Observer, "It's like Elliot's whole world. He spreads the word. You'll probably see some of our stuff floating around." Indeed, Mr. Aronow was sporting bespoke pants from the Williamsburg haberdasher, plus a green-on-white paisley Thom Browne for Brooks Brothers jacket and a white t-shirt from Uniqlo, "'cause I don't care," he said.

Mr. Aronow got his punk cred on tour with grind-glam quartet the Locust, "experimenting with drugs and selling merch when I got around to it." He later developed Gnarls Barkley's marketing plan with Downtown Records (whose chairman Josh Deutsch interrupted our interview to say goodbye: "I gotta go deliver this bag of booze to my college freshman son. How do you like that? It's like, that's parenting right there"). Mr. Aronow started the music downloading site RCRD LBL, taking with him Downtown intern Julian Kahlon, who designs Our Show along with Vogue's Kori Dyer.

The current issue features fiction from Twin Shadow's George Lewis, Jr., a discussion of the greatest mosh parts and an interview about French literature with Chromeo's David Macklovitch, who told The Observer about his in-progress Columbia dissertation on "the pleasure of reading in 18th-century French literature." There's also a nude centerfold and a page called "AYO! Google This" (sample search terms: "dub housing," "escoffier," "edward st. aubyn"). In the next issue, Mr. Aronow plans to do "a shirt story, 'cause a lot of guys hit me up with questions like, 'Spread collar, button-down collar, oxford, gingham? What does it all mean?'" Maybe also some good literature: Mr. Aronow just finished reading a book of Gore Vidal essays.

But he's most excited about what he calls "Jacques," the "men's lifestyle movement that I've started with a few friends of mine." Indeed, in his Twitter feed, he has hashtagged almost every missive with the neologism.

The movement is "kinda small right now, maybe like forty-five people in New York and in L.A. that know about it, but it's gonna become a book soon," Mr. Aranow said. "It's a punk rock gentleman's guide to life and how to live it. The book is gonna be kind of like a reverse-engineered self-help book, so we start with clothes and then work inwards. 'Jacques' is definitely a movement—you can put that in your article."

On the way out, BaoHaus chef (and columnist for The Observer)  Eddie Huang confirmed that Mr. Aronow is "all about this new 'Jacques' movement. He got the 'Jacques' boys going on, it's funny. I follow everything Elz does. I rep it, you know, he's a cool cat."

Can you guess how she scored?

If you guessed "not well," then you're quite adept at guessing the answers to easy questions. Yes, in Lindsay Zoladz's review for quintessentially hip music site Pitchfork of Lana Del Ray's full-length album Born to Die, Lana scores a mere 5.5. Not worthy of brickbat-style derision, nor serious praise.

Mind you, it hasn't been but four months since Pitchfork's Ian Cohen scored Ms. Del Rey's track "Video Games" with the coveted "Best New Track" designation that set off an indomitable firestorm of hype.

In the time between the two reviews, public sentiment for Ms. Del Rey has, well, dwindled.

Ms. Del Rey's career was found to be one of corporate construct and deliberate artifice, flying in the face of the "indie" image of her that was carefully cultivated (the starter pistol if which, for all intents and purposes, was started by Pitchfork).

Whether consciously or not, Pitchfork's reputation for building an emerging act's hype in one hand only to swat it down in the other continues to be cemented herein.

Another recent example: Mr. Cohen reviewed Queens rap act Das Racist's mixtape with an 8.7, one of the highest scores a mixtape has ever received on Pitchfork. Mr. Cohen was subject to a second-hand derision by the group after a blogger noted that he had mis-identified some of the rappers in his review and highlighted the jokes, thereby missing the ideas core to the album concerning race and identity. When Das Racist's full-length album came out, like Ms. Del Rey, their single was given a "Best New Track," though not by Mr. Cohen, who gave the album a 6.3/10.0.

Furthermore, while Ms. Zoladz acknowledges the early critical success of "Video Games" (as it, to her, "felt frank, pointed, and true, and it had a chord progression and melody to match") it would appear a final paragraph vaguely acknowledging some of Pitchfork's responsibility in Ms. Del Rey's hyperinflated rise in popularity (one that could be on the precipice of crashing down to earth) was scrubbed from the review shortly after it was posted last night.

Music writer and journalist David Greenwald caught the scrub, and posted it on his blog. The paragraph read:

Given the lengthy build-up and all the YouTube leaks, think-pieces, and controversy that followed, you can only spend so much time in Born To Die’s nihilistic Never Land before Peggy Lee’s famous question starts to nag: Is that all there is?

Ms. Zoladz has not returned The Observer's immediate request for comment, though to be fair, last-minute edits happen all the time. Sometimes, something goes up on a website and just doesn't read well. It happens. Yet, it's been noted: "That seems like a pretty hefty edit to make after pushing the post live."

One wonders if Pitchfork couldn't rescind their entire history with Ms. Del Rey's rise, or if they will. One musn't forget the classic Best New Music review Pitchfork bestowed upon 90s ska-act Save Ferris in the site's salad days. For the record, you won't find it on Pitchfork, because they scrubbed it out of existence.

Either way, you can expect Pitchfork to say very little on the matter. Why would they? The conclusion to this saga demonstrates— inadvertently or not—Pitchfork in the role of tastemaker. Just like Google with their top secret algorithms, whether the site has an awareness of this role while writing reviews or not, they stand to gain nothing by giving up their secrets.

One of the great secrets of rock and roll, after all, involves the preservation of mystique, even if you're playing nothing but up-and-coming music acts and the people who buy into them.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

"Heems" Suri of Das Racist.

When one thinks of Queens rappers, one does not think of political redistricting, but all of that is about to change.

Himanshu “Heems” Suri, a member of the idiosyncratic rap group Das Racist, is releasing his hotly anticipated solo mixtape Nehru Jackets in conjunction with SEVA NY, a community organization that’s currently focused on raising awareness about the consequences the citywide redistricting scheduled for later this year will have in the Queens neighborhoods where he grew up. Mr. Suri’s mixtape will be accompanied on several songs by young SEVA members who rap and sing in Punjabi.

The Observer made our way out to Queens to watch Mr. Suri record at SEVA co-founder and executive director Gurpal Singh’s bedroom studio. Mr. Suri was accompanied by a pair of young SEVA rappers—Lovedeep Singh, 21, and Jaspreet Singh, 17 (none of the Singhs are related, it turns out). Lovedeep’s parents don’t know about his rap hobby—he simply told them he was at a SEVA event without mentioning the recording studio. Mr. Suri and Mr. Singh told him they would break the news to his parents before the mixtape’s release party.

“He’s got strict parents, but we’re going to have to tell them,” Mr. Singh said. “He’s going to be on stage in front of the whole community.”

Lovedeep stepped up to the microphone first as Mr. Suri wrote lyrics to the beat on a nearby couch. He wore his headphones over a Sikh turban. A pair of blue boxing gloves hung from the ceiling over his head as he bobbed from leg to leg like a fighter entering the ring and fired off a stream of rapid-fire lyrics in Punjabi.

“I don’t think he needs to record again,” Mr. Suri said after Lovedeep finished his verse.

“He’s good, I’m done with it,” Mr. Singh agreed.

Lovedeep grinned from ear to ear.

Mr. Suri first encountered SEVA through a childhood friend, Ali Najmi, an attorney and former legislative director to Councilman Mark Weprin, who serves as a community organizer with SEVA. About a month ago, Mr. Suri asked Mr. Najmi about getting involved.

“I kind of got jealous of him in a sense of not being on the ground and doing work that helps people in a real-time sense on the ground,” Mr. Suri said. “In reality, there’s a lot more that can be done outside of art, and I saw that my friends were doing it and I wanted to be involved in any way that I can.”

Mr. Najmi introduced Mr. Suri to Mr. Singh, a political veteran who worked as director of constituent affairs and held a variety of positions with the Senate Democrats. At home, Mr. Singh produces music with many of the SEVA youth under the moniker “Mr. Singhularity.”

Mr. Singh was born into a musical family. His father was a Ragi, one of the musicians who sing the scriptures at Sikh prayer services. He discovered many of the SEVA youths had musical talent during the group’s early meetings, which quickly evolved into what he describes as “organic jam sessions.”

“None of them had seen a recording studio before or heard their voice recorded even,” Mr. Singh said of his young protégés.

According to Mr. Singh, Mr. Najmi “insisted” he play some of his material for Mr. Suri. Once Mr. Suri heard the young SEVA rappers he knew he wanted to make music with them.

“We recorded a song that night,” Mr. Singh said.

Mr. Suri started working on Nehru Jackets before he became involved with SEVA, but he said “it just made sense to put it all together.”

“I think it works because maybe he sees himself in a lot of the youth I’m producing,” Mr. Singh added. “He’s touched by their energy and their pushing themselves and being artists, because it’s not like the coolest thing to be in South Asian communities. It’s normally, go to school, be a doctor, shut up. You’re rapping, you don’t get props.”

As the session wore on, Mr. Suri continued to write his lines on a loose-leaf pad in his tall, tight handwriting, Mr. Singh standing in front of his computer making minor adjustments to the track. Once Mr. Suri finished writing, he got behind the microphone. As he prepared to record his verse, the Wesleyan-educated Mr. Suri asked Lovedeep and Jaspreet how they were doing in school. One of the young rappers confessed to sometimes skipping school.

“You’ve got to stop cutting class. Rap shouldn’t be everything you do. I go all over the world, but I don’t make money. My cousin’s a pharmacist, they make money. If it gets popular, then you should give it more thought, but that shouldn’t be all you do, because once it gets big, that’s work.”

After the career advice, Mr. Suri got down to business. He had to leave immediately after recording to get to another studio in Dumbo, where he’s working on more solo material. Mr. Suri’s lines were inflected with Punjabi and Caribbean patois, but somehow still evoked old-school, East Coast hip-hop. He said the mix of global influences and classic rap is a sound reminiscent of his youth in Queens.

“This is a record where, doing it myself and not in Das Racist, I talk more about myself and my experiences being an Indian kid from Queens, and even before I met SEVA that’s in large part what the record was about,” Mr. Suri said. “I also had the record incorporate—in large part the sound is ’90s rap and Indian samples, so even before I met SEVA, you know, it was an album that was in large part about being brown and from Queens.”

The collaboration makes sense musically, but it also makes sense for SEVA’s political goals.

“Redistricting in New York is such an uphill battle for communities that are basically on the outside of the political establishment, so we needed something to raise awareness about the issue and that something is his celebrity status,” Mr. Najmi said of Mr. Suri. “The idea that we could release a mixtape that was attached to a redistricting campaign was just perfect to me.”

Currently, the neighborhoods of Richmond Hill, Bellerose and Floral Park are all subdivided into multiple legislative districts. SEVA wants to see each neighborhood get its own unified district when the new lines are drawn.

“Growing up I didn’t know much about local politics,” Mr. Suri said. “I understood about gerrymandering, but I always understood it in the national context. I always thought about it as related to the Electoral College, in terms of larger elections. But I didn’t fully understand how it worked in my community, and that it affected my people to such an extent.”

Though SEVA is heavily invested in the battle over redistricting in Queens, the group also has plans to develop a community center in the area that will have a recording studio for local youth. That cause is also close to Mr. Suri’s heart.

“There wasn’t something like that in my neighborhood growing up and if there was what SEVA plans to do—a community center that has a recording studio in it—I wouldn’t be the only Indian kid rapping from Queens. There would be many more,” Mr. Suri said.

To that end, Mr. Suri, who recently became a SEVA board member, will debut his mixtape and give his first solo concert at an event hosted by SEVA on Jan. 16 at Villa Russo on 101st Avenue in Richmond Hill. He’s also working with the young SEVA artists to release a mixtape of their own later this year.

In Das Racist, Mr. Suri and his bandmates earned a reputation for peppering their lyrics with cultural references and wry political commentary. While Mr. Suri said Nehru Jackets won’t feature lyrics that directly address the redistricting issue, the subsequent SEVA mixtape will be more overtly political.

“One of the things I think that will be different in the SEVA mixtape than in my mixtape is how straightforward the commentary is,” Mr. Suri said. “So, like, obviously in the music I’ve put out in Das Racist, it won’t be something as direct as me talking about redistricting in a straightforward fashion. I am talking about race, I’m talking in a large part about growing up in Queens and, more than in other Das Racist stuff, I’m talking about being an Indian kid in Queens,” said Mr. Suri.

Mr. Singh, hewing more closely to the issue at hand, turned around and pointed out his window. “You see that house across the street? That’s a different state senate district, the line goes right across the street,” Mr. Singh said. “I’m in the fucking street that’s gerrymandered, I’m on it. This is Richmond Hill and it’s gerrymandered.”

hwalker@observer.com

Das Racist.

Last night at PH-D, the rooftop hotspot atop the Dream Downtown, BlackBook magazine hosted a party to celebrate its 15th year of publication. Cover boy/True Blood vampire Alexander Skarsgård was there, as were flocks of girls stretching their iPhones toward his booth to get a picture of him.

Yet, the other guests of honor—critical darling rap group Das Racist—were not as impressed with the fashion party. Before, during, and after their short performance (part straight-faced performance art, part tag-team rap mayhem; one onlooker noted that they appeared to be texting while on stage), they took to Twitter to air some grievances.

But, hey, you know what? It seemed to The Transom that the guys were having a decent time. When we arrived they were drinking from the bottle service, provided by BlackBook, and eating some more-than-edible looking French Fries.

So maybe the guys were just joking.

Just joking, they're not joking.

nfreeman@observer.com | @nfreeman1234

“We work at Mother, it’s an advertising agency,” the leggy aspiring models said in near-unison, punctuated by fits of giggling. “They wanted twins for the front desk. It’s just a fun concept. So when clients walk in: Double!” said Eboni. Or maybe that was Erica, it was hard to tell.

The night was still young, but the crowd, including MediaBistro’s Laurel Touby, was already trickling in, willing to brave the drizzle outside and shlep out to 11th Avenue in Midtown to see the show slated for Mother’s new basement sound stage. Das Racist, a Brooklyn-based rap trio made up of alumni from Stuyvestant High School and Wesleyan, was first on the line-up. But the main act was Big Freedia, a bounce artist from New Orleans best known for the rump-shaker, “Azz Everywhere.” What did the concert have to do with Internet Week? And why was Mother, a creative shop with a reputation for the unconventional (like a nine-sided billboard in Times Square), hosting it?  No one seemed to know—or care.
But Internet Week, New York tech’s annual booster club, was topic of the night.

“Oh, I love it. Of course I love it, it’s my game,” said Bucky Turco, editor-in-chief of ANIMALNewYork, an online magazine about underground culture. So had Mr. Turco actually attended any Internet Week events? “Hell no,” he shot back. “Most of the time when I meet the people that I know on the Internet, I don’t like them—with exceptions. Some people it’s just like: Wow, you were better when you were on email.”

On the other side of the bar, comedian Alex Blagg had similarly conflicted feelings. But first he needed to know whether the Observer wanted him to talk in character, as the founder of his fake start-up Bajillion Hits, or not. We let him decide, and he opted to be himself. “A person can only wander around being a ridiculous buffoon for so long before the self-loathing starts to overtake any enjoyment out of the process,” admitted Mr. Blagg, whose routine consists of parodying industry jargon like pivot, disrupt, and paradigm.

Mr. Blagg said he’d enjoyed the people at Internet Week, but still found the cocktail of celebrity-and-cash surrounding tech companies ripe for satire. “If Bret Easton Ellis was going to write American Psycho today, he would probably be a digital ad planner at somewhere like this,” he added.

But the time had run out to ponder whether inflated valuations and easy investments have made the tech sphere New York’s new Wall Street. The concert was about to start.

While Das Racist’s front men Himanshu Suri and Victor Vasquez, who are Indian and Afro-Cuban/Italian, respectively, led the crowd in a subversive chant of “Everybody say, ‘White people,’” the Transom thought we recognized a familiar face in the crowd.

We walked up to an inky-haired, ivory-skinned tattoed girl with a nasal septum ring.

Didn’t we see you on stage at Big Freedia’s Brooklyn Bowl concert last weekend? “Yes!,” she said, offering a helpful reminder. “I was the one with the ass tassels!” Heather Loop—Miss Spoke to her burlesque fans—works at a bike messenger and seamstress in Bushwick. How did she hook up with Big Freedia’s entourage? “I have a big ole booty and I know how to do the dance,” explained Ms. Loop.

About that dance. “Sissy bounce” shows tend to feature an androgynous, sometimes transsexual or transgendered performer chanting call-and-response over sped-up beats as the women work their backside up-and-over, round-and-round at an awe-inspiring pace. But rather than dance for the men in the audience, the women do it for themselves—and the performer. You might say subversiveness was the theme of the evening. Hence the sight of Big Freedia, a tall, broad-shouldered black man with flat-ironed bangs, white pants, and a rainbow-colored Greatful Dead belt (whom everyone addresses with the pronoun “she”), calling out, “Shake it for Freedia. Work it for Freedia.” Female Mother employees obliged. At least as far as the Observer could tell from the chant of “Go intern, go intern,” coming from directly behind us.

Big Freedia’s dancers including Rocket, a young woman who had flown up from New Orleans sporting skin-tight, white booty shorts and a turquoise tank, performed feats best left to the professionals. Like throwing a leg up over another dancer and then restarting the motion, or mounting another dancer in a human stack of gyrating derrieres. After inviting the audience up on stage, Ms. Freedia declared it was time for a dance competition: one of her’s vs. a willing neophyte to the rumpus. “I need seven people that are going to stay up here. The twins are already two. Ya'll aren't going nowhere,” she said, addressing the young ladies Davis, who had jumped up on stage.

From the back of the dance floor, which permeated with a certain skunky smell, Mr. Turco noticed something as he surveyed the crowd. “You know what’s missing? Where are the Blackberrys and iPhones?”

Yesterday, because of some sticklerism on the part of UK Customs regarding paperwork, we were denied entry, detained for 8+ hours in the airport, and deported back to Switzerland.

We were held in a room with books, prayer rug and compass, television and remote, and these horrible sandwiches (cheese and onion, egg and cress, etc.). Also, “digestive biscuits’ along with Walker’s crisps (Salt & Vinegar, Salt).

We were there with two Iranian men, a Brazilian woman who spoke only Arabic and an Indian man with a student visa who couldn’t speak a lick of English. Our people!

Sorry to everybody who was planning on coming to Cargo last night, it was a show and city we were all incredibly excited for and it was a shame yr govvy doesn’t like us! Because of our POLITICAL VIEWS! We’ll be back soon, maybe we’ll leave the airport next time.

It's unclear what exactly made the authorities deny the band access, although the boys did say on Twitter it was their "ecoterrorist past come back to haunt us." 

With Steve Martin still sending out some pretty bitter tweets about the kerfuffle, people may keep talking about it. But at least now we know that Deborah Solomon has completely bounced back. Her interviewing skills are on full display in this interview with ascendant hip-hop group Das Racist, set to run in Sunday's New York Times Magazine. We'll give you a taste below.

If your albums are available free, how do you make money?
Vazquez: Touring. Most people are making their money on touring, merchandise and licensing. I’ve been paying rent off the shows for a while now. My rent is $290, so it’s not a big deal. It’s five people in a four-bedroom in Bushwick. I keep my stuff at my parents’ house. I like to go home, hug my parents, drink chai with my mom, watch Hindi movies and re-Indianize two days a week before I re-emerge into the filth that is progressive liberal white America in trendy Williamsburg.

Why do you speak of your friends in Brooklyn as filth?
Suri: They know what they did.

You met at Wesleyan University, in 2003.
Vazquez: I was his R.A. at a dorm for students of color.

What did you study?
Suri: I was an economics major. From a cost-benefit perspective, college was a waste of time and money.

Do you see your work as a critique of white America?
Suri: I think it is solely a critique of John Boehner. As our bandmate Ashok Kondabolu would say, John Boehner represents the utmost in white demonry.

This is precisely why I make a point of never asking rappers questions about politics.
Suri: Deborah, chill. Vazquez: Fall back.

The disclosure at the end is a bit heartbreaking, though. It reads as follows: "INTERVIEW HAS BEEN CONDENSED AND EDITED." Why can't we have it all? We want a refund!

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234