The Ken Carson xperiment pop-up in LES was total pandemonium
The OPIUM rapper made a surprise appearance at the ESSX store and turned a simple merch drop into complete chaos.
Ken Carson signs fans' merch outside of the ESSX store.
Tommy Maidment / The FADER
The ESSX store on the Lower East Side was complete mayhem when I pulled up. Ken Carson merch will do that. Fans were lining up at 8 a.m., even though the store wouldn’t open until noon, hoping Ken would sign their Project X vinyls or their forearms so they could get it tattooed. When Ken Carson himself arrived around 4:35 p.m. in a blacked-out SUV, the mob quickly turned frenzied, pushing over and around each other to get closer.
Inside, Ken strolled around the ESSX store before perusing his own merch, trailed by a swarm of photographers (including me). He watched some highlights of the FIFA World Cup semifinals between France and Spain; when I asked if he was rooting for a specific team, he didn’t reply, but cosigned my wish for an English victory.
Outside, his fans were practically pressed against the storeglass for a glimpse. In fact, when the OPIUM rapper attempted to sign merch, fans quickly overwhelmed the combination of store security, personal bodyguards, and NYPD on site to keep things calm. After just 10 minutes of chatting to his fans, Ken was forced to retreat into the store.
This posed a new problem: how to get the young star out of the store and back into the SUV he’d arrived in? Ultimately, Ken Carson and his team simply made a run for it, as his fans knocked over barriers and ran into the street. Within five minutes, the mob outside of ESSX had totally dispersed, like an experiment that had run its course.
