Dartmouth Mall Kicks Out Traffic Cone Saxophone Player

A famous TikToker's SouthCoast visit ended with mall security and local police involved.

Viral saxophone player Wenzl McGowen was spotted at Dartmouth Mall Jan. 6 with his infamous traffic cone saxophone. The tenor/baritone saxman travels everywhere, with his 821,000 TikTok followers watching every step and wondering where he'll pop up next.

Dartmouth was this week's destination.

McGowen is a 24-year-old New York-based musician whose three-man subway band Moon Hooch plays a variety of instruments such as tenor and baritone sax, contrabass clarinet and synthesizers. One of their songs, “Traffic Cone Jam,” went viral, so McGowen travels around with a traffic cone stuffed inside his sax for a deep, resonating sound.

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While his near-million followers approve of his unannounced performances in subways, Chipotle restaurants and malls, it seems he was not welcome at Dartmouth Mall Friday where security called in Dartmouth Police Department to have him escorted off of the private property.

@trafficconesaxman Got kicked out of a mall #cannt #play #that ♬ original sound - Wenzl McGowen

In the video, a Dartmouth police officer makes the point to McGowen that the mall is private property and warns him he'd likely be charged with trespassing if he refused to leave.

If McGowen looks familiar to you, it's most likely from his appearance on America’s Got Talent, on which he played sax in May 2022. He didn't make it very far although judges Heidi Klum and Sofia Vergara gave him the OK in round one.

McGowen left the mall as requested, but without having accomplished his mission to make the people of the SouthCoast dance.

Saturday morning, McGowen had moved on, posting a video to his TikTok about his next stop: a Chipotle on Thayer Street in Providence.

Dartmouth Mall Frozen in Time Thanks to Google Maps

Thanks to artificial intelligence and advances in 3D mapping, Google Maps is slowly rolling out a new feature called immersive view, allowing users to go inside buildings. It looks like Dartmouth Mall is one of the first places in the area to use the new technology, thanks to images from 2017.