Scott Percival, a Boston police officer who serves as a security guard for the Gathering of the Vibes, says he was once offered $10,000 by a dealer to look the other way, and recalls stumbling onto one beaten-up and unconscious seller lying in the parking lot, pockets empty. He almost took out my daughter, who was a little baby.” During a recent Bonnaroo festival, he says, “One guy with a $5 balloon of nitrous came crashing through my booth, being chased by a guy with a knife. “These people are evil,” says Don Bryant, a retired Army captain and emergency medical technician, who also vends T-shirts at shows. Now it’s become some dirty-ass shit that’s too easy to abuse.” It used to be, in the old Dead days, that some hippies got their hands on a tank, and it was a mellow and loose kind of thing. “It’s been taken over by dirtbags and Mafia punks. “It’s a sore on the scene,” says Kevin Calabro, a Brooklyn-based publicist for jam bands. “You don’t think about your money-you’re just like, ‘I want that again, I want that again, I want that again.’ ”īut some jam-band fans complain that the nitrous racket is harshing their idyllic pursuit, recalling a time, they say, when laughing gas was a part of the hippie ethos. He no longer does balloons, but remembers the days of buying 15 in a row. “It’s an instant rush of pure euphoria, but it only lasts for 30 seconds or a minute, and then you want it back,” says Justin Heller, a fan who owns his own biodiesel company. After that, it’s often back to the end of the tank line for another round. Unlike traditional drugs, which have long-lasting effects and can carry a fan through a concert, the high from N20 is cheap and quick. Every morning, the festival campgrounds are riddled with balloons, “like bullet shells on a battlefield,” says a fan. Nitrous is called “hippie crack” because of its addictive qualities. “When I’m near it, I’m always afraid I’ll wind up in some blurb for a music magazine.” “You hear the hiss of that tank, and you know you’re approaching a shady corner,” says Clark, of Tea Leaf Green. At popular campsite events like All Good, in Masontown, West Virginia Bonnaroo, in Manchester, Tennessee and Gathering of the Vibes, in Bridgeport, Connecticut. At any East Coast summer music festival, from Maine to Miami Beach, the opening chords eventually give way to the whistling of tanks. When asked, he denies his crew is an organized crime ring. But he hopes things will pick up during the summer. Business has been slow, he says, and each worker will probably clear only $300 for this show. You can keep walking.” He lives in Rhode Island, but he and his associates will crash at his New York apartment tonight. “You don’t want it, don’t buy it,” he says, taking a break from his balloon hustle. “It’s something that should be left to the dentist’s office,” says Josh Clark, the lead vocalist for the San Francisco–based jam band Tea Leaf Green.īut Dmitri, who has been in and out of jail on multiple occasions, defends the operation. “It’s a very controlling group, to the point where I’ve seen people get beat up.” 4 jam band in a recent Rolling Stone poll. “It has a negative impact on the entire scene,” says Don Richards, the tour manager for Umphrey’s McGee, ranked the No. Year after year, security guards at these events attempt to crack down on the illicit business, but, in most cases, they’re outmatched by a phalanx of menacing gas dealers who have little regard for unarmed concert personnel.Īnd for some musicians and their fans, the illicit trade is a bummer. With the ability to fill up to 350 balloons per tank, which they sell for $5 and $10, they can bank more than $300,000 per festival, minus expenses.
During these campground events, which last two to four days, the Mafia, which is divided into two rings, based in Boston and Philadelphia, can burn through hundreds of nitrous tanks.
The scene in Williamsburg is only a small preview of what happens in summer, when the outdoor festival season kicks into gear. Throughout the year, the Nitrous Mafia travels from state to state, selling balloons at concert sites. “The security here is cool,” says a dealer named Chrystal, a single mother who is dating the Boston capo, whom we’ll call Dmitri. Selling nitrous oxide for the purpose of getting high is illegal, but the club’s bouncers don’t seem to mind the huffing. When a police car is seen from a distance, a trio of spotters yells, “Six-Up”-a warning to keep cool. Some of the dealers are locals, contracted out for the night, while the rest hail from Massachusetts and Rhode Island. “Fatty whippets!” yell the balloon man’s eight or nine dealers, holding balloon clusters high in the air.
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