The Daily Swarm

NY1 (video here):

Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri is holding an elevator safety presentation today at P.S. 19 in Brooklyn for first, second and third grade students, on the heels of an incident over the weekend, where a musician fell to his death in a Brooklyn elevator shaft.

Police say Gerard Fuchs, 34, was trying to jump out of a stalled freight elevator inside a building on Berry Street early yesterday, when his jacket got snagged and he slipped through a gap.

“The Village Voice”:

Jerry Fuchs was that totally fucking amazing monster drummer you saw play in at least one show in the last 10 years—it could have been with Maserati, Turing Machine, !!!, or the Juan MacLean, as he completely decimated his hapless kit and mesmerized everyone no matter what band he was in. He died early Sunday morning after falling down an elevator shaft at a Williamsburg loft party. He was 34. Jerry was a friend, an inspiration, and one hell of a drummer. I say this with no exaggeration: New York will never sound the same.

Jerry was a relentlessly amicable dude who could never hide the smile behind that mustache; he had the enviable ability to instantly shrug it off if he found out your website gave him a bad review (sorry about that, man). He was completely humble about the fact that he seemed to have life totally figured out. To anyone playing drums in New York, Jerry was more than a behemoth, he was a mythical figure: that completely unattainable combination of a total badass player who’s constantly in demand, constantly recording an amazing project, and practically living on the road.