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When I was a teenager in the suburbs of Western NY, it wasn’t a party until the cops showed up.

Even during winter, despite the freezing cold, these high school parties would often spill outside where our music, laughter — and sometimes fights — would echo across our artificial Garden of Eden. It was never long before a loud pounding on the door resulted in a pack of cops wielding flashlights barging in with frosted mustaches. They would confiscate our liquor and order everyone to leave…  and we would… at least for a half hour or so. After circling the block a few times, or congregating in some undeveloped cul-de-sac to smoke cigarettes, we would often return to the scene of the crime and start it up all over again.

Thirteen years, 2,500 miles and one revolution later, not much has changed.

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