Spring Fling 2016: A total success

On May 7^th, 2016 Binghamton’s Student Association Programming Board hosted annual concert and all around chill fest Spring Fling. Since orientation we’ve been conditioned to be excited for this and I honestly can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told by BU staff that Spring Fling was ranked number six in College Magazine’s “Top Ten University Festivals to crash”.

Maybe it worked though, since we voted for Spring Fling performers early first semester, up until April there was much anticipation over who was going to perform. In the weeks leading up to event T-Pain and Walk the Moon were named headliners, the Three Fours won Battle of the Bands to earn a spot on the bill and the carnival rides filled the peace quad.

Yet despite all the buzz surrounding the event, when the Saturday morning of Spring Fling finally arrived the Friday Night prior to Spring Fling left me almost too exhausted to leave the cocoon I made for myself out of my bed spread. However, after a much needed blasting of Kanye West’s The Good Life, the realization that this was our last weekend of fun before finals week and a quick shower my mood shifted drastically and my friends and I head off for Spring Fling.

Pregame

One of the more valuable lessons college has taught me is that if you truly believe, anything can be pregamed, especially the music festival of the year. All it took for this pregame was an aux chord, half a bottle of skyy, beer pong, endless banter, a suite in Mohawk and a good group of friends. By 3 in the afternoon we were tipsy and ready to go.

The Festival

Spring Fling’s festival has rides that line up along the peace quad, tables set up by student run organizations that were giving out free stuff to bribe your attention, booths with games where you could spend two dollars to prove you and all of your friends that you suck and are way more uncoordinated than you realize and typical fair food that clogs your arteries one bite at a time. It was for all intents and purposes your every day fair, just at a college. Rides included Bumper Carts, a hammer ride, the hurricane, round-up and swings. As fun as this might sound none of us were in the mood to wait on the half hour lines that plagued each ride.

So we settled for fair food, our haul included two corndogs, two hot dogs, one blooming onion and fried Oreos.

With our smorgasbord of greasy and fatty foods our spring fling festival shouldn’t be considered a bust, especially when we were left with this ensemble of drunk selfies.

Post-festival coma and feast

Some might consider a nap after only 4 hours of being outside outrageous but when you plan on going to a concert and then going out after, a md afternoon nap is a key move. So after a couple hours of wandering around the festival we returned to our rooms and fell into comas. At 6:30 we all wandered into C4 like zombies and instantly the incredible selection at C4 shook us from our funk. Because let’s be honest nothings better at C4 than the steak, mac and cheese, potato and gravy combo.

Crowding up for the concert

Around 7:15 we regrouped and made our way to the concert. The stage was set up in front of The Student Wing and the mass crowd covered the area between the lecture hall and science 1 stretching all the way to the library.

And so we piled into the crowd and endured people pushing through the crowd to “meet their friends”, awkward encounters with strangers after being shoved up against them and even puke, because nothing makes the experience of being in a packed crowd better than being in a packed crowd next to puke.

At around 7:45, the Three Fours took the stage alongside members of the SA to perform the annual stomping of the coat. The Stomping of the coat is done to symbolize the end of Winter and cold weather, and to welcome the warm weather of Spring.  

The Three Fours

Allie, Eric, Joe, Pete and Rob of The Three Fours followed the stomping of the coat. The Three 4’s certainly rocked the crowd by performing Sinking Down, Chatter, Fool and Anaheim. Their performance captivated their initial fans and made many new fans.

T-Pain

T-Pain Followed the Three 4’s taking the stage at 8:30 and opening his set with the classic “Booty Wurk (One Cheek at a Time)”. T-Pain continued to absolutely work the crowd with hits such as “Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin’)”, “Bartender”, “Up Down”, “I’m in Luv (Wit a Stripper)”, he even threw in his remix of Desiigner’s “Panda” and songs that he’s featured in like Kanye West’s “The Good Life” (definitely the song of the day) and DJ Khaled’s “All I Do is Win”. He might not get the acclaim that Kanye or Drake get but if his set proved anything is how many hits T-Pain has put out/been featured in and how much people love T-Pain. The crowd during T-Pain was absolutely electric, he had everyone bouncing during “Up Down” and everyone shouting the lyrics to the classic and universal ballad “I’m in Luv (Wit a Stripper)” His MC, his band and his background dancers all shared his energy and enthusiasm as everyone on stage and in the audience was having a good time especially when his bassist started playing the Pink Panther theme, that’s when everyone even T-Pain himself who was dancing along to it lost it. By the time his set was over T- Pain had left the crowd completely thrilled and ready to be see Walk the Moon.

Walk the Moon

If T-Pain’s performance hadn’t exhilarated the crowd enough, Walk the Moon certainly did. As soon as Walk the Moon took the stage the energy they projected onto the crowd was almost palpable. Known to most for their hit single “Shut up and Dance” They boasted a diverse and large catalogue by performing lesser known songs that fans and strangers to the bands alike were dancing and singing along to. Their set list included “Work This Body”, “Different Colors”, “Tight Rope” “I Can Lift a Car” “Down in the Dumps” and more.

Throughout their performance we were all put through the emotional ringer, we were given multiple motivational by the lead singer, Nicholas, who reminded us about the beauty of diversity and our power to influence elections, we were collectively as an audience hit on by the hip shaking bassist, Kevin, who reminded us how good looking we all were and we were almost all put into epileptic shock as a result of their incredible laser and light system they had running through their performance. And finally close to the end of it all when we were all exhausted they shot a final jolt of energy into every single member of the audience by closing their set with Shut up and Dance.

Walk the Moon left the stage after Shut up and Dance but the we weren’t ready to let them so we cheered until they returned to the stage for an encore. When Walk the Moon returned, they capitalized on the energy the audience was throwing back at them by finishing their performance with the uplifting, feel good song Anna Sun. When it was all over my friends and I were exhausted, our legs were asleep, we had other people’s sweat on us and we were in no mood to go out, but it was our last weekend and it was Spring Fling so we took the obvious next step.

 

Pregame part 2

Not much to say about this one, it was pretty much the same as the last one and most of them for that matter, there was pong, banter, someone playing fire on the aux and good friends. However, this time we were in a flat in Rafuse and everyone was talking about how great the concert was. By 11:30 though we were buzzed and on our way downtown to State Street.

Last night on State Street

We all knew that it was most likely going to be our last night on State, so determined to have a great time we piled into recent favorite, The Rat, started ordering Jäger Bombs and started dancing. We danced in our own group, with other people we knew from campus, with people we didn’t know and then back again into our own group.

The vibe of the night was great either because everyone else was also determined to make their last night great or because we all collectively had an awesome day thanks to Spring Fling. Whatever it was we all ended up dancing for hours to a playlist that included at least 5 different remixes of Drake songs, 90s gangsta rap, pop punk hits we all loved in middle school and much more typical Binghamton night life staples, and loving every second of it.

We walked (drunk stumbled) out an hour before closing unable to hear anything because we spent too much time on the dance floor and exhausted. As soon as we got back to campus we officially ended our Spring Fling with a traditional late night feast (late night mistake more like it) at Nowl. Our night came to a close at 4 in the morning when we all collectively collapsed into our beds, stomach’s full, feeling fulfilled because of the incredible day and night we had thanks to Binghamton’s Spring Fling.