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On Thursday nights, Syracuse University students pool outside of the Cage, swaying to electronic dance music and forgetting the worries of the week. Most Fridays, students file out of their dorm rooms and onto Euclid Avenue, headed toward the house with the red torii gate that’s playing live music.
On Saturdays, Crater entertains students with alternative and rock bands. Of course, Sage Haus and Thornden Underground are part of the rotation adding their musical vibe, too.
The paced-out schedule of these shows is no coincidence. These student-run music venues are connected through more than just a shared love of the arts.
“It’s one big community of friends,” Troy Connor, a junior and member of the Cage Collective, said. “We all know each other.”
Last summer, Romy VanAlmen and Anjali Engstrom made a shared Google document with all the other students who run house show venues at SU. The Bandier Program students had seen their upperclassmen friends organize joint schedules when they led the venues.
Now, running their own venue as juniors, the two wanted to continue the tradition.
Each house venue adds their planned shows for the year to the document to prevent overbooking artists, and so that students don’t have to choose between similar shows. Shows that do overlap are usually intentional, as they cater to different audiences.
“We see this great diverse scene for what it is and we pick our favorite bits of it,” Oliver McKay, a Bandier junior and member of Crater, said.
In his freshman year, Connor said he met many Dazed members on his floor in Brockway Hall. This proximity quickly turned into........