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      Just How Rich Were the McCallisters in ‘Home Alone’?

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      Fans have been debating the McCallister family’s wealth for years. We asked the Federal Reserve for answers.The battle in “Home Alone” between 8-year-old Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) and two burglars known as the Wet Bandits has unfolded on screens around the world every Christmas since the film premiered in 1990.And each year, for some viewers, the McCallisters’ grand home and lifestyle inspires its own tradition: wondering just how rich this family was.The New York Times turned to economists and people involved with the film to find the answer.The McCallisters are the 1 Percent.The McCallister family home is a real house in Winnetka, Ill., a wealthy suburb of Chicago.Erin Hooley/Chicago Tribune va Getty ImagesEarly in the film, one of the burglars, Harry (Joe Pesci), tells his fellow Wet Bandit, Marv (Daniel Stern), that the McCallister home is their top target in a wealthy neighborhood.“That’s the one, Marv, that’s the silver tuna,” Harry says, before speculating that the house contains a lot of “top-flight goods,” including VCRs, stereos, very fine jewelry and “odd marketable securities.”The home is the best clue as to how much money the McCallisters have.The silver tuna, or its exterior anyway, is a real-world house at 671 Lincoln Avenue in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the United States, according to Realtor.com. It appears to have enough space for Kevin and his four siblings to each have their own rooms, but also can accommodate an army of visitors.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      ‘The War on Disco’ Explores the Racial Backlash Against the Music

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      “The War on Disco,” a new PBS documentary, explores the backlash against the genre and the issues of race, gender and sexuality that informed it.The plan was simple enough: Gather a bunch of disco records, put them in a crate and blow them to smithereens in between games of a doubleheader between the Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers at Comiskey Park. What could possibly go wrong?This was the thinking, such as it was, behind Disco Demolition Night, a July 1979 radio promotion that went predictably and horribly awry. The televised spectacle of rioters, mostly young white men, storming the field in Chicago, sent shock waves through the music industry and accelerated the demise of disco as a massive commercial force. But the fiasco didn’t unfold in a vacuum, a fact the new “American Experience” documentary “The War on Disco” makes clearer than a twirling mirror ball.Premiering Monday on PBS, “The War on Disco” traces the rise, commodification, demise and rebirth of a dance music genre that burned hot through the ’70s, and the backlash against a culture that provided a safe and festive place for Black, Latino, gay and feminist expression. Originating in gay dance clubs in the early ’70s and converted into a mainstream sensation largely through the 1977 movie “Saturday Night Fever,” disco engendered simmering resentment from white, blue-collar kids who weren’t cool enough to make it past the rope at Studio 54 and other clubs. The film details disco’s role as a flashpoint for issues of race, class, gender and sexuality that still resonate in the culture wars of today.“Saturday Night Fever” helped turn disco from a club phenomenon into a mainstream sensation.Alamy, via PBS“These liberation movements that started in the ’60s and early ’70s are really gaining momentum in the late ’70s,” Lisa Q. Wolfinger, who produced the film with Rushmore DeNooyer, said in a video call from her home in Maine. “So the backlash against disco feels like a backlash against the gay liberation movement and feminism, because that’s all wrapped up in disco.”When the Gay Activist Alliance began hosting feverish disco dances at an abandoned SoHo firehouse in 1971, routinely packing 1,500 people onto the dance floor, the atmosphere was sweaty and cathartic. As Alice Echols writes in her disco history book “Hot Stuff,” gay bars, most of them run by the mob, traditionally hadn’t allowed dancing of any kind. But change was in the air largely because of the ripple effect of the Stonewall uprising in 1969, when regulars at a Greenwich Village gay bar fought back against the latest in a series of police raids. Soon discos were popping up throughout American cities, drawing throngs of revelers integrated across lines of race, gender and sexual orientation.Some of disco’s hottest artists were Black women, including Gloria Gaynor and Linda Clifford (who is a commentator in the film). Many of the in-demand DJs, including Barry Lederer and Richie Rivera, were gay. In its heyday disco was the ultimate pop melting pot, open to anyone who wanted to move through the night to a pulsating, seemingly endless groove, and a source of liberation.“The club became this source of public intimacy, of sexual freedom, and disco was a genre that was deeply tied to the next set of freedom struggles that were concatenate with civil rights,” said Daphne Brooks, a professor of African American studies at Yale University who is featured in the film, in a video interview. “It was both a sound and a sight that enabled those who were not recognized in the dominant culture to be able to see themselves and to derive pleasure, which is a huge trope in disco.”Studio 54 in 1978, as seen in “The War on Disco.” The club was famous for its glamorous clientele and restrictive door policy.Alamy, via PBSAll subcultures have their tipping points, and disco’s began in earnest in 1977. The year brought “Saturday Night Fever,” the smash hit movie about a blue-collar Brooklynite (a star-making performance from John Travolta) who escapes his rough reality by cutting loose on the dance floor. Inspired by the movie, middle-aged thrill seekers began dressing up in white polyester and hitting the scene. The same year saw the opening of Studio 54 in Manhattan, which became famous for its beautiful-people clientele and forbidding door policy.“There was this image of the crowd outside the door on the news, with people being divided into winners and losers,” said DeNooyer, the “War on Disco” producer. “And the majority were losers because they didn’t get by the rope. It was an image that spoke powerfully, and it certainly encouraged a view of exclusivity.”At least one man had reason to take it all personally. Steve Dahl was a radio personality for Chicago’s WDAI, spinning album rock and speaking to and for the white macho culture synonymous with that music. On Christmas Eve in 1978 Dahl lost his job when the station switched to a disco format, a popular move in those days. He didn’t take the news well. Jumping to WLUP, Dahl launched a “Disco Sucks” campaign and, together with the White Sox promotions director Mike Veeck, spearheaded Disco Demolition Night.Organizers expected around 20,000 fans on July 12, 1979. Instead, they got around 50,000, some of whom sneaked in for free. Admission was 98 cents (WLUP’s frequency was 97.9), leaving attendees plenty of leftover cash for beer. Located in the mostly white, working-class neighborhood of Bridgeport, Comiskey Park had a built-in anti-disco clientele.During the first game of the doubleheader, fans threw records, firecrackers and liquor bottles onto the field. By the time the crate of records was blown up, the place was going nuts, with patrons storming the field and rendering it unplayable. The White Sox had to forfeit the second game.The Disco Demolition Night promotion at Chicago’s Comiskey Park quickly spun out of control, with thousands of people storming the field.Chicago History Museum, via PBSThere were other anti-disco protests around the country in the late ’70s, but none so visible or of greater consequence. As the film recounts, reaction was swift; radio consultants soon began steering toward nondisco formats. “Disco Demolition Night was a real factor, and it did happen very quickly,” DeNooyer said. “And we hear from artists in the film who experienced that.” Gigs started drying up almost immediately.Commercial oversaturation didn’t help. Disco parodies were becoming rampant, including a memorable one in the 1980 comedy “Airplane!,” and novelty songs had been around since Rick Dees’ “Disco Duck” in 1976 (followed up by the lesser-known “Dis-Gorilla” in 1977). But the film makes clear that the Disco Demolition fiasco and resultant coverage was a major factor in the death of disco’s mainstream appeal.“The War on Disco” also features a 2016 interview with Dahl, who insists racism and homophobia had nothing to do with that particular display of anti-disco fervor. Demolition Night attendees who were interviewed for the film echo this sentiment.“I would not dispute that is their truth,” Brooks said. “But I think one of the insidious ways that white supremacy has done a number on this country is that it permeates every aspect of our cultural lives. People don’t want to be told that they’re entangled in something that’s not entirely of their control.”It’s also important to note that disco didn’t die so much as its more mainstream forms ceased to be relevant. The music and the culture morphed into other dance-ready genres including house music, which ironically emerged in Chicago. When you go out and cut loose to electronic dance music, or EDM, you are paying homage to disco, whether you know it or not. The beat is still pulsating. The sexual and racial identities remain eclectic. The Who may have bid “Sister Disco” goodbye in their 1978 song, but the original spirit lives on. As Brooks put it, “Its vibrancy and its innovations just continued to gain momentum once the spotlight moved away from it.”The culture, and its devotees, outlived the clichés. Disco is dead. Long live disco. More

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      ‘Plan C’ Review: Abortion by Mail

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      In this documentary by Tracy Droz Tragos, each of the film’s subjects considers how far past the line of legal comfort they can afford to cross.The director Tracy Droz Tragos anchors her abortion documentary “Plan C” on a grass-roots organization by the same name. At the center of the organization is Francine Coeytaux, a public health activist in the United States, previously known for her campaign to get contraceptive pills sold over the counter at pharmacies.Under the leadership of Coeytaux and Elisa Wells, the group, which was founded in 2015, focuses on providing information to patients about medical suppliers and providers who can prescribe at-home abortion pills — medication which can safely end a pregnancy up to 12 weeks.The footage of Plan C’s activities covers four years, beginning in 2019 and extending after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Some scenes of abortion providers at work are shot vérité style, while in others Coeytaux and her associates speak directly to the camera about their efforts to assist people seeking abortions.Plan C’s methods are mobile, often including telehealth or prescriptions delivered by mail, and the group’s actions come with both legal and physical risks.There are over a dozen doctors, abortion rights advocates and patients interviewed in this film, and most don’t reveal their full names for safety reasons, fearing violence from anti-abortion activists or prosecution in states such as Texas, where residents can receive rewards for reporting abortion providers. Some don’t reveal their faces, and Tragos blurs their images or conceals identifying features.At times, all of the secrecy and legal caution can make it hard to understand the complex logistics of getting a legal abortion in the United States. But the risks involved are bracingly apparent, and the documentary benefits from its attempts to capture Plan C’s high-stakes operation in progress.As people navigate this new reality, each of the film’s subjects considers how far past the line of legal comfort they can afford to cross.Plan CNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Pulitzer Prizes Expand Eligibility to Noncitizens

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      The jury for the memoir category had raised concerns that the citizenship requirement was excluding a large part of American culture.The board that administers the Pulitzer Prizes announced on Tuesday that it would expand eligibility for the awards to authors, playwrights and composers who are not U.S. citizens.Most of the awards for books, drama and music had been open only to American citizens, but beginning with the 2025 prizes, the board will consider works by permanent and longtime residents of the United States.Expanding the eligibility is a significant evolution for the Pulitzers, which were established in 1917 by the newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian immigrant who emphasized that the prizes were intended to celebrate distinctly American works.The journalism awards have long been open to people of all nationalities whose work is published by American media outlets. But with the exception of the history prize, the literary categories, as well as the music and drama awards, have been limited to American citizens.The board began discussing the possibility of expanding the eligibility in December, after the jury for the memoir category raised concerns that the citizenship requirement was excluding a large part of American culture, said Marjorie Miller, the administrator for the prizes. When the jury members brought that issue before the board, she said, a consensus quickly formed that the criterion should be changed.“This emphasizes the American nature of the work rather than the individual,” Miller said. “You can be American and write a book or play or a piece of music that is American without being a U.S. citizen.”The board is not setting firm boundaries of long-term and permanent residency, leaving the determination up to authors and publishers.“I think it’s defined by the identity of the writer: Do you consider the United States your permanent home, and is this a work that in some regard would be considered American?” Miller said.The decision was celebrated by artists and writers who have lobbied for the prize to be expanded.“We’re just beginning to recognize that migrant literature is American literature,” said Ingrid Rojas Contreras, a Pulitzer finalist this year for her memoir, “The Man Who Could Move Clouds.” “The role that these prizes have in curating the literature we will read in the future is immense.”In August, a group of authors posted an open letter to the Pulitzer board and asked for the prize to be opened to immigrants and undocumented writers.“Whether undocumented writers are writing about the border or not, their voices are quintessentially part of what it means to belong and struggle to belong in this and to this nation,” they wrote in the letter, which drew signatures from hundreds of writers, including Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Angie Cruz and Fatimah Asghar.Javier Zamora, who signed the open letter, helped drive activism around the issue with an opinion essay he published in July in The Los Angeles Times, in which he lamented that his acclaimed memoir, “Solito,” was not eligible for a Pulitzer Prize because of the citizenship requirement.In an interview, Zamora said he hoped the change would help expand definitions of the American literary canon to include more work by undocumented writers and immigrants.“This tells them, ‘Your story also matters — that your story could be part of a canon,’” he said.The Pulitzers are the latest literary awards to redefine or expand their citizenship requirements. The Academy of American Poets and the Poetry Foundation have both opened up their prizes to immigrants with temporary legal status. The National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award also opened their prizes to noncitizens.When the first music Pulitzers were given, in the 1940s, the United States had become a haven for European artists — such as Arnold Schoenberg, Kurt Weill and Erich Wolfgang Korngold — who had emigrated in the shadow of fascism and World War II. Despite their successes abroad, though, Pulitzers went largely to stalwarts of the American academy.The citizenship change will expand the group of eligible composers to those who were born abroad and have settled in the United States; Thomas Adès, one of his generation’s most celebrated composers, was born in London but lives in Los Angeles. Some winners of the similarly prestigious, globally reaching Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition could also now be considered.Joshua Barone More

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      Echoing Federal Theater Project, 18 Towns Plan Simultaneous Events

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      The theme “No Place Like Home” will drive shows and festivals in both large cities and rural locales of this country on July 27, 2024.One night in the fall of 1936, with Fascism rising in Europe, theaters in 18 cities and towns across the United States staged productions of the dystopian play, “It Can’t Happen Here,” under the auspices of the Federal Theater Project, which was created to provide Depression-era artists with work.Now, inspired by that moment, organizations in 18 American cities and towns are planning a contemporary version of that endeavor: On a single day next summer, they will each present a participatory arts project responding to a more hopeful prompt, “No Place Like Home,” from the “Wizard of Oz.”Given the atomization of American culture, the communities will not present a single show — in fact, many of them are not staging shows at all — but they will each come up with ways to express something that connects notions of home with culture and with health on July 27, 2024. In Chicago, the city will establish artist apprenticeships at mental health clinics; in Tucson, Ariz., Borderlands Theater will create a “theatrical showcase” including a play about mental health and healing.The initiative is the brainchild of Lear deBessonet, a New York-based director who created Public Works, a program of the nonprofit Public Theater that develops musical adaptations of classic works and stages them with a combination of professional and amateur actors. The Public Works model has been adopted by theaters in other American cities, and in London.“Art, by necessity, must look different in every place, to reflect its own community,” deBessonet said. “Our projects are not exclusively theater, or even predominantly theater, but really are reflecting the unique voice and character of the people in each of these places — they are making things that only they could make because they’re making them in direct relation with the people of their place.”DeBessonet, who is now the artistic director of the Encores! program at City Center, is working with Nataki Garrett, who just wrapped up a fraught run as artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Clyde Valentin, who previously led Ignite/Arts Dallas at Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University. They are the artistic directors for a program called One Nation/One Project, and are calling the initiative “Arts for EveryBody.”“How do we solve these problems that are happening within these large-scale organizational structures that are not moving in the direction that we need them to move in?” Garrett asked. “One way that you do that is, you go meet the people at their source — you go where they are and you engage with them in the way that they have been engaging outside of our museums and theaters and other spaces.”The endeavor, which is inspired by a “Wizard of Oz”-based prompt, has been designed with a belief that participating in the arts can improve health outcomes.Silver Screen Collection/Getty ImagesThe program has set a goal of a $14 million budget. Unlike the Federal Theater Project, which was government-sponsored, as part of the Works Progress Administration, the current initiative is being supported primarily by contributions from foundations and individuals and is sponsored by the Tides Center, a nonprofit philanthropic organization that supports social change. Many of the projects are collaborations between arts groups, local governments and community health centers.The endeavor, working with the Center for Arts in Medicine at the University of Florida, has been designed in the belief that participation in the arts can improve health outcomes, and the organizers have commissioned studies to research that connection.The 18 communities chosen to take part are a mix of urban and rural, large and small, from Honolulu to the South Bronx; the National League of Cities helped with site selection and project design. Valentin said one priority was to “not have it be something that’s just in the coastal elite cities — geographically we think there’s profound diversity.”Three cities — Chicago, New York and Seattle — that were in the 1936 project are taking part. Some of the communities are planning work that will call attention to local challenges: Phillips County, Ark., will highlight issues with the local water supply; Oakland, Calif., will focus on housing costs; and Utica, Miss. is seeking to generate conversation about food insecurity associated with the lack of a local grocery store.“I think this is a much needed departure from the divisiveness we see,” said Carlton Turner, a co-founder of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production, which will be organizing a food and wellness festival, with lots of music, in the rural community of Utica. He added, “This opportunity to bring these 18 communities together is a way to heighten our commonalities, versus homing in on the things we disagree about.” More

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      Anna Netrebko Sues Met Opera After Losing Work Over Support of Putin

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      Seeking at least $360,000, the singer accused the storied opera house of discrimination, defamation and breach of contract. The company disputed her claims.The star Russian soprano Anna Netrebko filed a lawsuit on Friday against the Metropolitan Opera, seeking at least $360,000 in compensation for work she lost when the company parted ways with her after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Netrebko was fired by the Met last year after refusing to denounce Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, whom she had publicly supported in the years before the invasion. In the complaint, she accuses the Met of discriminating against her because she is Russian; of issuing “defamatory” statements about her in the press; and of breaching contracts by not paying her for some lost work.The Met disputed her claims. “Ms. Netrebko’s lawsuit has no merit,” the company said in a statement.Netrebko has in recent months taken aim at the Met, filing a complaint last year through the American Guild of Musical Artists, the union representing opera performers.In February, an arbitrator in that dispute ordered the Met to pay her more than $200,000 for 13 canceled performances because of a contractual agreement known as “pay or play,” which requires institutions to pay performers even if they later decide not to engage them. The Met had argued that Ms. Netrebko was not entitled to payment because of her refusal to comply with the company’s demand that she denounce Mr. Putin, which the company said had violated its conduct clause.Still, the arbitrator refused Ms. Netrebko’s request for an additional $400,000 in fees for engagements in coming seasons that had been discussed but not formally agreed to, including leading roles in Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut” and “Tosca,” as well as Verdi’s “Macbeth” and Tchaikovsky’s “The Queen of Spades.” Ms. Netrebko was earning the Met’s current fee for top artists of about $15,000 a performance.The complaint filed by Ms. Netrebko on Friday said that the Met still owed her most of those additional fees, as well as compensation for emotional distress and damage to her reputation. The complaint accuses the Met and its general manager, Peter Gelb, who has been critical of Ms. Netrebko in the news media, of leading a “defamatory crusade” against her.The suit notes that even after she publicly stated that she opposed the war, Mr. Gelb spoke with her on the phone and asked her to specifically denounce Mr. Putin. “Gelb indicated that if Netrebko issued such a statement, the Met would continue its relationship with her,” the suit said. “Netrebko responded that, as a Russian citizen, she could not make such a statement.”The complaint is the latest effort by Netrebko, a major star and box-office draw, to rehabilitate her image. Netrebko still has a busy international performing schedule, largely in Europe. But since the invasion, she has faced cancellations and protests elsewhere, including in the United States and parts of Asia.She has struggled to get beyond questions about her past support for Putin. She endorsed him for president in 2012, and has spoken glowingly about him over the years. And in 2014, when she donated to an opera house in Donetsk, a war-torn city in Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian separatists, she was photographed holding a separatist flag.Since the invasion, Ms. Netrebko has sought to distance herself from Putin, saying they have only met a few times.Mr. Gelb has defended the Met’s decision to cut ties with Ms. Netrebko and other artists who have voiced support for Mr. Putin. “It’s more important than ever that our position does not change,” he said earlier this year, “until the war is won by Ukraine.”Kirsten Noyes contributed research. More

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      Elton John Warns of ‘Growing Swell of Anger and Homophobia’ in U.S.

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      “We seem to be going backwards,” the pop superstar warned as he lamented the curtailing of L.G.B.T.Q. rights in the United States, particularly in Florida.The British pop superstar Elton John lamented the “growing swell of anger and homophobia” in the United States and described several laws recently passed in Florida that curtail L.G.B.T.Q. rights as “disgraceful.”“It’s all going pear-shaped in America,” John, a longtime leader for gay rights and visibility, said in an interview published Tuesday in Radio Times, in which he pointed to a rise in violent incidents and recent legislation curtailing rights. “We seem to be going backwards. And that spreads. It’s like a virus that the L.G.B.T.Q.+ movement is suffering.”More than 520 pieces of such legislation have been introduced in over 40 states this year, a record, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group.“I don’t like it at all,” John said, referring to the increasingly hostile climate. “It’s a growing swell of anger and homophobia that’s around America.”John, 76, will headline Glastonbury, Britain’s biggest music festival, on Sunday, as his lengthy final tour, Farewell Yellow Brick Road, heads toward its finale in Stockholm on July 8. The tour, which will have had over 330 dates, began in 2018 but was interrupted by the pandemic as well as John’s hip surgery.As he prepared to perform at Glastonbury, the last British date on the tour, John said that he did not know if the rising anti-L.G.B.T.Q. sentiment is as prevalent in Britain. “I don’t know if it’s around Britain, because I haven’t been here that much,” he said.But he called the scandal around the prominent British news anchor Phillip Schofield — who recently resigned after admitting he had a relationship with a younger man — “totally homophobic.”“If it was a straight guy in a fling with a young woman, it wouldn’t even make the papers,” John said.In the interview with Radio Times, John said he might eventually be open to doing a residency after his farewell tour ends, “but not in America.” That, his representatives said, is for the same reason that he had decided to stop touring: He wants to spend more time with his husband and children, who live in Britain.Last year, John — who objected to his songs being played at rallies for former President Donald J. Trump — performed at the Biden White House. “I just wish America could be more bipartisan,” John said as he sat at his piano. After his set, President Biden awarded John the National Humanities Medal. More

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      Forests, Band from Singapore, Played On After U.S. Robbery

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      Forests, a band from Singapore, ended its tour in New York in high spirits, two weeks after being robbed in California.The band, Forests, did not miss a show.ForestsAn international rock band’s first U.S. tour is a moment to be celebrated, a sign that years of hard work have paid off. But just a few days into their American debut, the members of Forests, an emo rock band from Singapore, endured another rite of passage for some musicians traveling the United States when they stopped for the night at a California hotel.When they returned to their rental van a few hours later, they realized they’d been robbed.“In Singapore I kind of made a joke about it, like, oh, you know, your band is only legit if your stuff got stolen,” said Darell Laser, 36, the bassist. “Then it really happened.”Forests and the Oklahoma band they were touring with, Ben Quad, are hardly the first musicians to be robbed while on tour in America. (In 1999, Sonic Youth famously lost an entire truck’s worth of gear to a thief, also in California.) But the experience was still a shock for a band from a country as safe as Singapore.“It was the worst luck ever,” said Chris Martinez, 29, a Forests fan from San Diego who discovered the band years ago on a business trip to Singapore.The robbery prompted an outpouring of concern from both bands’ fans, and more than $9,000 in donations allowed them to buy replacement instruments. They did not miss a show, and they ended their tour in high spirits with a sold-out concert at a bar in Queens on Tuesday.“They seem to have moved past it,” said Mr. Martinez, who donated $200 to the bands’ crowdfunding campaign after learning of the robbery. “Keeping a positive attitude and trying not to let it bring them down.”Forests and Ben Quad had some instruments, along with other goods, stolen from their parked rental van while they were sleeping in a hotel after a show. ForestsThe May 1 robbery made for a surreal early leg of a cross-country tour — entitled “Get in losers, we’re going to Walmart” — that Forests had spent months planning and years looking forward to. It happened a few days after their tour began in Seattle and a few hours after their gig in Oakland.When the tired musicians from the two bands straggled into a Hampton Inn in Hayward, Calif., at about 1:30 a.m., they left their gear in the 15-passenger rental van they were sharing for the tour. They parked next to a security camera as a precaution, but it didn’t help: When they returned to the parking lot after 11 a.m., they noticed that some of their guitars, a bass, pedals, clothing and a box with cash from merchandise sales had been stolen.The theft was the latest in an area of California where property crimes like shoplifting and car break-ins are on the rise. The hotel management told the bands that its security footage did not show a theft. A location tag on one instrument appeared to show that the stolen gear had been taken to an Oakland apartment building, but the police said there was no easy way to get it back.“The cops told us, ‘Hey, there’s nothing we can do unless it ends up in a pawnshop,’” said Edgar Viveros, 27, Ben Quad’s lead guitarist. The pawnshops they called said that it had not.Instead of canceling the tour, the bands decided to play on with borrowed gear. They also set up a crowdfunding page and were surprised to see how quickly donations rolled in — $6,000 in about four hours.The robbery was “kinda heartbreaking,” Imre Griga, 23, a fan in Columbia, Mo., who attended three of the bands’ tour dates this month, said in an email. “I think the entire community felt Forests deserved much better for their first tour in America.”Within a few days, members of both bands were playing with new instruments. They went a little longer without the pedal board that Ben Quad typically uses to play samples, like the theme from an “Austin Powers” movie, between sets. But a replacement for that, too, was eventually found.Forests first played with borrowed instruments after the theft, then bought replacements after fans donated more than $9,000.ForestsBack home in Singapore, the story of the robbery, and the fan support, made headlines. Some readers commented about their own experiences of getting robbed in the United States. Others wondered how the three members of Forests, who all have day jobs and tour on their vacations, could have been so naïve.For Forests, it was not their first international tour: They have performed across the Asia-Pacific region over the years. But on their first tour of America, they loved watching the landscape — deserts, trees, snowy mountains — whip past the van’s windows.They also kept a list of “crazy things” they had seen, like people fighting in convenience stores, or the woman in Seattle who threw her luggage down three flights of stairs in a subway station. The band’s drummer, Niki Koh, 31, said he particularly enjoyed visiting a store that sold guns, knives and hunting gear — “ everything that we won’t find in Singapore.”“It’s culture shock,” he said, speaking in a video interview from Kansas City. “But at the same time, it’s very interesting.” More