New York City’s “Homecoming” concert in Central Park came to an abrupt halt in the midst of Barry Manilow’s performance on Saturday evening, as lightning storms related to the approach of Hurricane Henri descended on the Big Apple.
At 7:37 p.m., concert attendees were told to “proceed to your vehicles and protected areas outside the event center” while Manilow sang his 1978 hit “I Can’t Smile Without You.”
A speaker could be heard saying that the long-awaited concert had been “canceled”.
Moments earlier, Mayor Bill de Blasio expressed optimism that the program would continue. “We need everyone for a short period of time to move somewhere safe because of thunder and lightning, and then we’ll go back to the concert,” he said into the microphone.
Hurricane Henri, a Category 1 storm, is expected to hit east of New York City on Sunday.
Manilow arrived via “Copacabana” and “Mandy” before they cut him.
Disappointed music fans said the show could have continued.
“She is OK. I didn’t even get to see the Killers; that is the main reason why I came ”. said Shinice Hemmings. “The concert was going so well and it was so good.”
Others were furious that the program had not been called off before.
“We just came in so we unleashed ourselves. We just came in and they’re like ‘Evacuate,'” Brandee McDermott, 26, said of Bay Ridge. “Are you deploying the National Guard but you have a concert? and they don’t do anything about it. They pretend it’s not happening. “
“We literally waited three hours and came in now,” said Alex Maxwell, 22, of Midtown.
“That could be a metaphor … because we think the pandemic is over and then we get here and it’s literally a storm and it’s like this came to us with the pandemic,” he said, referring to the variant Delta.
Additional reports by Kerry J. Byrne