Party animals cut loose in Washington Square Park into early Sunday morning, with the crowd drinking, dancing and setting off fireworks well beyond the park’s curfew yet again — as locals blasted the spectacle as a “free-for-all underworld” with zero consequences.
Dozens of cops looked on while three separate dance parties broke out at the Greenwich Village green space late Saturday night and continuing into Sunday.
The park partiers sipped on Michelob, White Claw, Heineken, as well as nutcrackers and margaritas — which were being sold for $20 — near the park’s famed fountain.
“It’s a vibe and a half,” said Masa Kanazawa, 22.
“If you look around, people are doing their own thing. That’s all that matters to me,” he added. “Here, everyone is living it up.”
Ten minutes before the midnight closing time, fireworks were set off in the park — prompting wild cheers from the crowd.
At around 12:30 a.m., about 100 revelers danced around the fountain to Armin Van Buuren’s “This is What it Feels Like,” while a half-hour later, a smaller group busted moves to “Cotton-Eyed Joe.”
Cops on Sunday morning said no arrests were made overnight.
Locals were left fuming over the latest round of partying, with one, Samantha Hurwitz, saying she no longer feels safe walking through the iconic park.
“When the sun goes down, it’s a free-for-all underworld where there are no penalties for stealing, hitting, doing drugs,” Hurwitz, 60, said Sunday. “The police don’t do anything because if they step in, they get accused of brutality, so all they do is watch from a distance to be sure things don’t get completely out of hand.”
Another area resident, Charles Ortel, complained about the noise coming from the park after 10 p.m.
“How can you expect quiet in your building when out here you’ve got this mass spectacle, fireworks going off, all kinds of things late into the night?” said Ortel, 65. “In a city like this, where there’s a lot of business activity, a lot of wealth, you can’t have a lawless portion of it, which is the direction we’re going in.”
Alex Yoshizuka, a Baruch College student, said he had sympathy for neighborhood residents — but relished the sights on Saturday night.
“It’s great because there’s a lot of pent-up energy and emotions since the pandemic,” said Yoshizuka, 21, with a mango-flavored White Claw in his hand. “And it’s nice that everyone is going off.”
He added about the locals, “I feel so bad for them. It wasn’t like this one [or] two years ago.”
Residents’ nonstop complaints have done nothing to stop revelers from dominating the famous 10-acre park weekend after weekend — with some nights devolving into violence — as the weather has heated up.
Just before 2 a.m. Sunday, a young man spray painted “chose love not hate your city” inside a blue heart on the ground, as hundreds of people remained inside the park.
Asked if the police officers planned to enforce the midnight closing time, one cop told The Post, “Not that I’m aware of.”
The carefree night came after unsanctioned boxers again threw jabs in the park on Friday, in a scene reminiscent of the 1999 movie “Fight Club.”
Boxers began slugging it out with the park as its backdrop in early June.
“The knuckleheads in the park are just gonna keep pushing the envelope until something bad happens,” fumed Andrew Levas, 62, on Saturday.
Earlier this month, fed-up Greenwich Village residents met at a public meeting to express their frustration about the recent rowdy park behavior, which included two people stabbed during a June 12 brawl.
The following Saturday, a Taser- and knife-wielding maniac caused a stampede that left a woman injured, as the weekend pandemonium continued at the park.
The city in early June implemented a 10 p.m. curfew in the park but it was lifted soon after on June 12. Chaos erupted on June 6 as NYPD officers in riot gear enforced the then-newly installed curfew.
Mayoral frontrunner and retired NYPD captain Eric Adams said in response that the city needed to put an end to the “open disorder” in parks — but that the riot gear-clad cops’ curfew enforcement was “heavy-handed.”
Additional reporting by Tina Moore
