Another school year begins and Cornell’s campus is flooded once more with routine talk of hometowns and majors crowding Class of 2030’s North Campus. The beginning of college life for the Class of 2030 is shaped by Ithaca in its busy season. Double-parked cars, Collegetown Bagels crowds, packed buses, Orientation week Eddy Street — an overwhelmingly (and excitingly) loud atmosphere that returning Cornellians have become accustomed to. Though I’ve done it smoothly twice before, coming back to this resonance of Ithaca gave me whiplash. Having an Ithaca summer will do that to you.
Spending the summer here and enjoying Ithaca’s rare sunny days is a bucket list item shared on both The Sun’s and Cornell Chronicle’s “161 Things Every Cornellian Should Do,” despite the lists’ numerous differences (i.e., the Chronicle’s #1: “Meet Touchdown the Bear, in each of his outfits,” versus The Sun’s first order of business: having sex in the stacks). I always thought the fantasy of an Ithaca summer was some sort of joke, a coping mechanism to soften the blow of spending your couple of free months away from school at school.
Whatever negative remarks people make about Ithaca during the year — its remoteness, biting cold, cost — are all cushioned by the fact that they are endured together, as a student body. In the summer, the temperature changes, but Ithaca is still expensive and even more isolated: a ghost town. But, against all odds, I didn’t see any tumbleweeds blowing down College Avenue; the exodus of students brightened the Commons, gave way for pre-college campus buzz and revealed a rarely quiet Collegetown. Ithaca in the summer is the flip side of the coin. Below are only a few of the sounds of my Ithaca summer, some that especially reveal the nuances of a town that Cornell students rarely experience during the school year.
Kicking off Ithaca summer was Ithaca Fest, jokingly referred to as a celebration of college students leaving — a calm after the storm. The festival, however, was anything but calm, with live music, vendors and all sorts of entertainment, from belly dancing to magic shows. I entered the Commons alone, with headphones in and the goal to spark as many conversations with the vendors and townies as I could. The music and overlapping voices in the crowd created an atmosphere that allowed both for complete anonymity and shared community. At first, I enjoyed the former, walking solo with my headphones slightly blurring the festival’s buzz. Lacking the influence of outside noise, my environment became a scene easier to interpret, one which I was watching but not necessarily engaging in. The performance of the magician was as palpable as that of a family walking their golden retriever through the crowd, trying desperately to keep him from jumping on the children running down the populated streets of the Commons. Soundless and apart from the crowd, I was watching an authentic Ithaca — something that can’t be fully achieved during the school year with hoards of college students crowding the town.
As I took my headphones off and began to engage acoustically with the community, I gained closer insight into the town I have lived in for 16 months yet never truly explored. Vendors happily shared their wares, causes and businesses, searching for deep conversations with passersby. Before leaving the festival, I stopped at the Bernie Milton Pavillion — you know, the outdoor concert space in the Commons (or did you?) — to briefly listen to a local band, Scratched Vinyl. As the last song I planned to stay for began, I recognized it immediately — “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones, a song I’ve had on repeat for the past year. Walking out of the venue, I muffled the applause by putting my headphones back in, mindlessly resuming my playlist from before my conversations with locals. It was “Sympathy for the Devil.” Ithaca’s community blurred into my solitude. Was I becoming a “townie?” Can an Ithaca summer even grant me this epithet?
On campus, there was not the expected hush (save for open seats in Temple of Zeus Cafe) as it was overrun with hoards of pre-college students, easily recognizable by red lanyards, single-file lines and stickers repping every Ivy League on their computers. Of course, the chimes persisted, peacocking for the tour groups that invaded all corners of campus under the scorching summer sun. Sitting outside of Goldwin Smith Hall, I had never felt more like a zoo animal; I was one of the students they had heard about, checking Ithaca summer off the Cornell bucket list.
The streets of Collegetown were surprisingly the quietest location I encountered this summer. Perhaps it doesn’t have the community and touristic appeal of the Commons nor the academic appeal of campus. It was stuck in between — a place for students, for sure, but not a loud one. Don’t get me wrong, Collegetown was not a ghost town! Remember: no tumbleweeds. At night, there weren’t the infamously deafening sounds of Collegetown bargoers — ones anyone living in Collegetown during the school year know intimately. Actually, the loudest I heard Collegetown this summer was during reunion, when Cornell alumni of all generations came together to bar-hop (maybe more like a bar-flip-flop?) between Level B and Hideaway. Still adorned in their reunion lanyards — and looking eerily similar to the pre-college students — they flooded the streets of Collegetown. Class of ’86 shared pitchers of beer with Class of ’21. It was the O-Week of Ithaca summer.
There is so much more to hear: Ithaca Farmers Market concerts and conversations, silent solidarity on the running trail in the blistering heat (a head nod, a short hello, etc.), jazz outside of CTB, an empty Second Dam (without O-Week crowds), BBQs with friends laughing around the crackling fire … the list goes on. But I’ll leave that for your Ithaca summer. And I’m not joking — you’ve got to check it off the list.
‘Surround Sound’ is a column investigating soundscapes — how sound and spatial environments shape one another.
Hazel Tjaden is a member of the Class of 2028 in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is an assistant arts editor for the 144th Editorial Board and can be reached at htjaden@cornellsun.com.
