MONDAY
sep t ember
PAGE 9
19, 2011
the daily orange the sweet stuff in the middle
Crowd goes wild for Tiësto By Karin Dolinsek ASST. COPY EDITOR
veronica magan | staff photographer JIAN ZHONG AND EILEEN MARTIN, a senior interior design major and a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences, respectively, paint a house at Block Blitz. Hosted by Home HeadQuarters, the event aims to revitalize local communities.
Project pickup By Dana Rose Falcone
C
STAFF WRITER
andus Carmon has lived on Otisco Street with her husband and three kids for four years. Several houses that line the street have multiple broken windows, unkempt lawns and faded or chipping paint. Some of the neighboring houses are abandoned and garbage litters the street. “No one wants to pick up their trash around here,” Carmon said. “And when you try to bring it up, no one wants to talk about it.” But after Home HeadQuarters’ Block Blitz, Carmon sees the neighborhood heading in a positive direction. “My house looked like an office building before, and now it looks like a home,” Carmon said. Home HeadQuarters is a nonprofit organization aimed at revitalizing and rebuilding homes in Central and Upstate New York. At its annual Block Blitz event, a fundraiser and neigh-
Home HeadQuarters’ annual revitalization event beautifies local neighborhoods
borhood cleanup, volunteers flock to two streets in the downtown Syracuse area to do basic home repairs and beautify residents’ homes by painting, gardening and landscaping. They also board up abandoned homes. This year’s event took place on the 700 block of Otisco Street of the Near Westside and the 100 block of Hoefler Street of Skunk City on Friday. “The goal of the day is really to get people into the neighborhoods that we’re working in and show that significant change can be done if we all really work together,” said Ali Jackson Popp, Home HeadQuarters’ marketing coordinator. The streets were lined with half a dozen pickup trucks, construction vans and paint cans marked with numbers according to which house they would be used to paint. A handwritten sign that read “WET PAINT” was taped on a freshly painted porch. A group of volunteers plucked weeds by hand while others assembled a shed. Volunteers included large corpora-
tions, like Bank of America, IBM and Sherwin- Williams; local businesses, like Murtaugh Restoration and Syracuse United Neighbors; and students from Syracuse University, Onondaga Community College and the State University of New York at Oswego. Residents of the homes on Otisco and Hoefler streets helped out as well. Local businesses feel personally connected with Block Blitz because of the event’s dedication to bettering Syracuse’s less fortunate neighborhoods. Boyce Murtaugh, owner of Murtaugh Restoration, even earned the nickname “King of the Block” because he is a frequent volunteer for Home HeadQuarters, Popp said. Murtaugh and his fellow construction workers had their trucks parked along the streets of both locations, carried long planks of wood out of the trucks and then cut those pieces of wood with an electric saw. The small group of SU students took direction from Block Blitz supervisors by painting porches
SEE BLOCK BLITZ PAGE 10
The crowd went crazy the moment Tiësto’s first beats sounded out. The artist stepped on the stage and the venue was engulfed by the screaming of excited fans, who have waited to see the famous DJ perform since the buzz about the event began early this summer. The line of people waiting to enter the venue started forming at 7 p.m., as soon as the doors to the Oncenter Exhibition Hall opened. Dressed in neon colors and wearing sunglasses, people waited calmly for the anticipated electro dance show. Syracuse is Tiësto’s fourth of 19 stops on his three-week “Club Life College Invasion Tour,” which ends in Los Angeles on Oct 8. The show started at 8:30 p.m. when opener Porter Robinson took the stage and began mixing electro sounds. Robinson shot to fame when he joined Tiësto during his Canadian tour before graduating high school Taking inspiration from established artists like Wolfgang Gartner and Deadmou5, Robinson mixed sounds from Gartner’s “Illmerica” and even Lady Gaga’s recent hit, “The Edge of Glory.” As he began the countdown to his hit “Say My Name,” the anticipation had everyone alert and ready to erupt into another series of fistpumping dance moves. As soon as the fist beats of his song played, the crowd’s energy seemed to surge and the mass of people began leaping and jumping. “Put your hands up for New York,” Robinson said to the crowd as he was concluding his set. “I love my city.” The crowd joined in. Porter Robinson’s set was long; he performed for 1.5 hours. Even though people were dancing and singing along to his music, the crowd soon started chanting: “Tiësto, Tiësto, Tiësto,” eagerly awaiting the man of the hour to hit the stage. The wait was finally over. Tiësto took over the stage, ready to show the crowd why he is “The Greatest DJ of All Time,” according British publication Mixmag. Lacking flashy accessories and dressed in his usual attire, a simple, purple T-shirt, Tiësto immediately got to work on his set and the crowd began reacting to his every beat. Behind his DJ set, a giant screen showed images of female silhouettes moving to his beats and pop cul-
SEE TIËSTO PAGE 11