Our humor columnist got FOMO from last weekend’s crawl

By Aine Hunt humor columnist

For some strange reason, Syracuse was recently named Barstool Sports’ “Best Bar Town.”

As a frequent Syracuse bar attendee, I was a bit bewildered by this news. I want to be clear, it’s not like I didn’t want us to win. I just didn’t think we would win, not in a world where Penn State exists. It was sort of like finding out you’re on the Dean’s List. You’re happy you got it, but you know you didn’t exactly earn it.

The title “Best Bar Town” came with a prize — a visit from internet personalities Dave Portnoy, Brianna Chickenfry, Josh Richards and Grace O’Malley. To be honest, I was a bit nervous about their arrival. It felt like we had just invited the hottest girls in high school to our lame basement party and promised them we would supply all the booze.

But I gotta admit, ‘Cuse showed out for our guests (we always do, don’t we?) with a successful two-stop bar crawl. Although, I do have questions for whoever decided to exclude Faegan’s Pub from the experience. Faegan’s has everything Mr. Portnoy likes — alcohol, darts and a chair for when his old brittle bones collapse from standing for over twenty minutes.

Although I didn’t go to the bar crawl, I lived from page 5

Festival

Unlike previous years, this year’s band lineup consists of both SU and ESF artists. The group has advertised with tabling, flyers and ticket selling on both campus grounds. They also put flyers up and down Wescott and downtown, planning to bring in vendors that do not attend SU or ESF. Valle said that they want to make the space one that welcomes not just college students, but people of all ages who want to enjoy good music.

Along with the goal of creating a lasting memory for students as the semester concludes, an annual Redfest mission is to fundraise for the chosen charity of the year. The organizers selected UNICEF due to the war in Ukraine last year, donating $5,000. This year, Valle and Boccuzzi went local, choosing the Food Bank of Central New York.

Siddharth Motwani graduated from ESF in 2018 and attended five consecutive Redfests. During his third and fourth years, he was inspired to play with a band and became one of the lead organizers for the event in 2018. During that year, there were 12 people who were a part of the organizing group.

from page 5 DJ group for Romano, helps them to work together and give feedback to their peers.

Romano has highlighted some Syracuse artists, such as Sarah Gross, NONEWFRIENDS. and Lauren Juzang. Besides local artists, he has worked with high-profile stars such as Ellie Goulding, Ed Sheeran and major music labels like Universal, Warner and Sony. He aims to use his large following to bring attention to new artists.

“I like to bring all those eyes to Syracuse because we got a pretty banging music scene here,” Romano said.

Sydney Panzer, a peer of Romano’s in Bandier, said she goes to him for recommendations and ideas about new music to listen to.

“He’s incredibly knowledgeable of the space that he’s working in. There’s no one who knows more about pop culture and music than Tommy,” Panzer said. “It’s a really cool community that he’s built on TikTok.”

After he established his TikTok, Romano said he started feeling burnt out spending all of his time both in school and professionally working on music. He wanted to find a way to remind himself why he loves music and from page 6

Movie

four minutes, but Lee flexes his filmmaking chops throughout it. He perfectly summarizes the magnitude of hype around the nation’s best high school basketball player. He used his connections at the time to pack in as many basketball personas as possible, including Jim Boeheim and Michael Jordan. Still, being the best means dealing with constant pressure, a tension which Lee properly displays by increasing the pace of the film as it goes on. In the first meeting between father and son, Jake is shown behind the fence of the basketball vicariously through the hours of Snapchat videos I saw that day. I saw Dave Portnoy standing and drinking a watermelon High Noon from about every possible angle and even got to see videos of Josh Richards flirting with several girls who weren’t me. Isn’t technology incredible?

From what I saw it seemed like everyone had a grand ol’ time. Well, apart from the Orange Crate bartenders who must have developed carpal tunnel from the thousands of Coronas they had to open that night. Add security to the list of people who probably didn’t have a blast. I’m not sure the team of beefy men who had to protect Dave Portnoy from swarms of former lacrosse players had the best of times.

I did develop a severe, crippling case of FOMO from seeing everything online. Every single tendency in my body was screaming for me to run, jump and skip on my merry way to Orange Crate. And, like everyone else, I wanted to see Brianna Chickenfry’s new nose job. I need to know how it looks that good one week post-op.

Although my body was screaming yes, my wallet was unfortunately screaming, “God, no! Please. Anything but that.” And like mom always says, “Don’t go out, there’s plenty of vodka at home.” ahunt04@syr.edu

“Redfest planning starts as soon as you come back from winter break,” Botwani said. “You identify a team before then and it just happens naturally.”

Since its beginning, Redfest was created to act as a spring semester finale and be a stress reliever before finals, Botwani said. The event became an inherent part of the student culture.

“It was just a big way for us to celebrate the end of the year, get together, say our hellos and goodbyes to people that we may not see again,” Botwani said.

Although five years have passed since Botwani graduated, he still sees many people that he attended Redfest with in New York City and continues to make music with ESF and SU graduates who he either played with at Redfest or knew through another band.

“The people that lived at the house did organize it and then they had some other folks that they worked with, but when the pandemic hit, we lost all of those connections and had to start from scratch,” Boccuzzi said.

Scott Scrobin, an ESF alumnus who has attended six Redfests, has been Boccuzzi, Valle and the other organizers’ bridge between the past and present. They’ve used his advice, as well as sifting through old archives and YouTube vid- started DJing in his room.

He spent time perfecting his DJ skills alone before transitioning to bigger venues. He used mixing experience and inspiration from other DJs to create his personal sound with a variety of genres. With all his experiences, UU asked him to DJ Block Party.

Matsui said it was an easy decision to choose Romano to DJ at Block Party. She said he’ll be playing before and in between artists, keeping the energy up throughout the night.

In Romano and Panzer’s freshman year, their first Bandier class talked about TikTok. The professor asked how many students in the class had been on TikTok in the past week, and he was one of three to raise his hand. Romano had no idea how big a part of his life it would become.

This semester, artist Shygirl invited Romano to New York City to collaborate and see their show at Webster Hall. Traveling to NYC for business while still in college was an incredible experience, he said, and helped with his TikTok and DJ pursuits.

He doesn’t have plans of slowing down anytime soon.

“The big labels and big artists… they see the power that (TikTok) has to create,” Romano said. “I’m super excited to keep it going past graduation.” kellymatlock@dailyorange.com court, repeating what everyone around him has been telling him, that this is “the most important decision of his life.”

Pressure is shown in another way through flashbacks from when Jake trained Jesus. Lee dives into the common relationship between a father trying to make their son be as good as them in their favorite sport. The audience is shown both sides of that narrative, the compliments keeping Jesus’ drive alive and later how the badgering forced a young Jesus to say he wanted to quit basketball.

All of this culminates in a one-on-one game between Jake and Jesus near the end of the film. Jake holds a letter of intent to “Big State” like a eos of previous Redfests, in order to understand how the event is supposed to run, Valle said.

“This year is really well organized back to the basics of what it used to be,” Scrobin said.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Redfest was noticeable based on the number of people on their roofs and porches playing games, Scrobin said. Rather than being an event at one particular house, Redfest was intended to be a block party. The organizers want to bring that back this year.

“That’s what Redfest is supposed to be. You’re at the very bitter end of the semester, and we’re out there to let loose for a day,” Scrobin said.

The Redfield house was a perfect place for this event because it had gained popularity through its prominence in the party and music scene. Those who rented the house knew to pass it down to others who wanted the responsibility year after year, Scrobin said.

While pre-pandemic Redfests consisted primarily of heavy metal, punk and hard rock bands, Valle said the pair brought in more variety, including rappers, folk artists, jam and folk indie bands.

At the same time, they have brought back previous bands to play some new stuff. This year, Boccuzzi said they want to provide an opportu- nity for younger acts to play to a large outdoor audience and bands that have played for a while.

“The community fostered us and grew us as we started out,” Valle said. “We’re the older guys now, it’s time for us to help out some of these younger acts.”

Valle and Boccuzzi are excited to highlight younger bands like the Shwegs, Dogs Playing Poker and Rhodes Corduroy, while also bringing back bands like Pop Culture, OTC and Backhouse.

They are also bringing new elements, such as vendors like Pit’s Vintage and Selfloved, food vendors and porta-potties. While investing in these differences, Valle and Boccuzzi are also aiming to restore traditions of pre-pandemic Redfests. Valle said their plan is to make the event just as large as it was before. They’ve notified the entire block and are aiming to revitalize the block party sensation of Redfest.

“Once you leave college you don’t really get to do this kind of stuff anymore, it’s just not the same,” Valle said. “ So when you can be there in the moment enjoying yourself and loving what you’re doing and who you’re with, that’s really what stuff like this is about.” cmroshu@syr.edu golden ticket, betting that if he beats Jesus, his son would attend “Big State.” Jake knows he’s going to lose but he gives Jesus the chance to get his revenge. He reminds Jesus after the game to get the “anger out of his heart,” and he does, choosing “Big State.”

It’s not rare for the emotional climax of a sports film to take place on the court or field. But the difference with “He Got Game” is that the majority of the movie takes place off the basketball court, making it similar to movies like “Jerry Maguire.” The stakes are higher too since the game quite literally decided the length of a prison sentence.

There are parts of this film that feel unnecessary, mainly the romance between

Jake and prostitute Dakota Burns, played by Milla Jovovich. But overall, Lee foreshadowed the atmosphere of basketball today, how 17-year-olds can turn into nationwide celebrities. At one point in the film, Jesus is handed $10,000 by his head coach to give him an insight into where he’s going. Today, it’s common to see $1 million promised to a player for just attending a college.

“He Got Game” will always be universal in this way. Jesus made the right choice but the film’s ultimate purpose is to show how temptations could get the best of a young player. anish.sujeet@gmail.com @anish_vasu