"How cool is it that Vice got Rick Ross to play their bar mitzvah?" That was one of those trademark Tanlines one-liners (hereby: Tanliners) that Jesse Cohen delivered between songs a couple of hours before the shiniest rapper in the game (hereby: The Gloss Rick Ross) quadrupled the room's charisma quotient for something like ten tracks before unceremoniously disappearing and concluding a weird but essentially wonderful evening in Brooklyn. To unpack things a little: Last night's party was, in fact, a celebration of maturation for the Vice squad -- no more viceland.com, no more VBS.tv. Instead those properties live under the single roof of the apparently hard-earned (and costly) web address Vice.com. And for that feat, Vice called out Unknown Mortal Orchestra, The Men, Hanni El Khatib, a bunch of DJs anchored by A-Trak, Tanlines, the reconstituted Death From Above 1979, and Ross for an open bar and free concert in One Hanson Place, a beautiful byzantine-roman styled building formerly known as Williamsburgh Savings Bank because that is what it once was. It's a gorgeous structure that hosts the Brooklyn Flea on cold Saturdays and has absolutely shit acoustics for a concert, but most people were there more to perhaps gawk at Johnny Knoxville and Spike Jonze and Ezra Koenig or find a winter cuddle-buddy than try to pick out the finer points in UMO's fuzzed-over deep-beat kiwi psych jammers. The pseudo-story of the night is that Vice now has a new website, sure. But the real lede is that, after the glam and well-executed Creator's Project party last year and last night's event that went off seemingly without major catastrophe, it seems Vice has finally learned how to throw a party without angering its talent and exorbitant structural damage. And to that point: Mazel Tov, guys.
Photographer Chris Person was on hand to take photos of some of this, which you can check out above.
