Whether you call it ‘Not-Fred Fest’ or refuse to let the original Fred Fest title die, the weekend Fredonia homeowners have come to know and fear has once again come and passed.

As far up as the Brigham Road apartments, music blared at full volume day and night throughout the weekend, only stopping when a police siren screeched through the bass, bringing the ‘sick beats’ to a grinding halt.

In the field behind Park Place, a circle of students laughing and rolling around in the wet grass was met with the same sirens, prompting all of them to immediately scatter midday Friday. At Park Place itself, internet rumors of a massive parking lot party were never made to fruition, as local police patrolled the lots Friday evening into Saturday.

Just before dusk Saturday, the driveway that leads down to Canadaway Creek from SUNY Fredonia campus was clogged at the mouth with students stumbling backwards into traffic, while blue denim and white t-shirts dotted the tree line at the creek itself.

OBSERVER Photo by J.M. Lesinski Canadaway Street is seen Saturday evening of Fred Fest, where the road was swarmed to the brim with SUNY Fredonia students.

Downtown, students could be seen walking the streets in groups as massive as 20-40 all weekend long. The groups created a mask of sorts, keeping anyone who may appear outwardly intoxicated blended in with the group, before they all joined up with the mobs of hundreds on Canadaway or White streets.

Canadaway Street was virtually impassable Friday and Saturday evenings, as well as the majority of the day Saturday. Mobs of students congregated in the middle of the street, while others played beer pong on the front lawns, and seemingly without fail, others could be seen clear-as-day casually urinating into Canadaway Creek.

“I know that alcohol plays a part of it,” local Fredonia resident Ashley Johnson noted of this year’s Fred Fest. “But I can’t believe some of them. Girls are just peeing on the side of the road in plain sight.”

Fredonia police were seen on foot patrol throughout the day Saturday, as well as routinely patrolling the streets throughout the entire weekend. Fredonia Police Chief Brad Meyers was unavailable for direct comment during the weekend.

Traffic congestion and incidents of road rage best illustrated the frustration between residents and students, as one driver got into a verbal altercation with a student, only to leave a crowd of onlookers oddly disappointed when the light turned green and he actually turned instead of throwing down in the streets.

OBSERVER Photo by J.M. Lesinski White Street is pictured late Saturday afternoon, covered in litter left behind by students partying on the infamous avenue.

While taking a photograph downtown Saturday, the OBSERVER witnessed two near-misses within thirty seconds of each other at the corner of Temple and W. Main. During both instances, the students failed to obey the crosswalk signals.

In terms of damage, however, the village has been lucky (as of Saturday night at least) compared to prior years.

“Last year, we saw a fight outside Valentine’s,” said Fredonia graduate Joe Kepler of last year’s Fred Fest. “The one guy smashed into the window and it cracked almost halfway up.”

While the weekend is never truly tame by definition, the scene downtown wasn’t as intense as years past, with noticeably less fights and displays of public drunkenness. The majority of questionable behavior seemed to take the form of lewd acts, rampant littering and open container violations instead.

“We were students here the year this one kid threw the propane tank through the window at LoGrasso Hall,” Fredonia graduate Monica Kepler commented. “We went to high school with him, so we recognized the name in the police blotter.”

Students were much more mobile this year as well, moving from area to area, rather than congregating at one central location for too long. Those who ‘posted up’ on Canadaway were really the only stationary group throughout the day Saturday, as White Street was nearly empty by the early evening, save for an enormous amount of trash strewn about the streets.

With the streets in the state they are now, one could say for certain that the clean-up process, however, is sure to be anything but ‘tame.’