Inside STATTfest, Long Island's Newest Festival

FARMINGDALE, NY — Summer is nearly over, but don't let the group of young Long Islanders behind brand new festival STATTfest hear that.

STATTfest, which stands for Summer Time All The Time Festival, features an array of entertainment ranging from live music, games, video games, art, food, drink and more. The inaugural Farmingdale-based festival will take place on Saturday, Sept. 7 and run all day from 1 p.m. to 11 p.m. The project is an ambitious undertaking by Moverz, a collective of entrepreneurs co-founded by Ryan Costello, 24, of Farmingdale, in late 2016.

The festival is being held at the US Academy of Soccer, located at 875 Conklin St., Farmingdale. Inside and out, the venue has a maximum capacity of 4,500. Tickets range from $65 for general admission to $100 for VIP access, which gets you all-you-can-eat-and-drink brunch from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., as well as exclusive performances by comedians and musicians.

Costello, with help from other Moverz members including Mikey Foschino, 25, who founded Live Mic Music, assembled a lineup of over a dozen artists; both local and all over the country. While live music is arguably the biggest draws of the festival, Costello said STATTfest aspires to be known as so much more.

"We wanted to create this happy, summer vibe," Costello told Patch. "As much as the artists are one of the biggest assets of the festival, we don’t want to be defined as a music festival. We want to be defined as something more: an opportunity to come alive and come together. So although the artists are important, there’s so much other stuff at the festival, so anyone can enjoy it."

Let's delve into the plethora of entertainment Costello, Foschino and the other members of Moverz have devised.

Live Music

The predominant genre of music at STATTfest is funk, so it's fitting that the headlining act will be The Floozies, a Kansas-based funk and Electronica duo band founded by brothers Matt and Mark Hill. Other leading acts include Santa Cruz, CA-based The Expendables, South Africa-based Goldfish, Sublime-tribute band Badfish and more. The full list of artists, both local and international, is:

• The Floozies
• Goldfish
• Badfish: A Tribute To Sublime
• The Expendables
• SoDown
• Mosie
• Oogee Wawa
• Nonstop to Cairo
• Samurai Pizza Cats
• Vana Liya
• Aqua Cherry
• Bunktown Falls
• The Big Happy
• The Mariguanas
• Zak Reyes
• IRIEspect
• Karen Bella

Additionally, Costello started a new band called Friendz, where every song will include a different local artist already performing at the festival. An example is "Oogee Wawa and Friendz."

"It was built on collaboration; that’s what this whole festival is built on," Costello said.

Costello said 40 percent of ticket sales as of Aug. 30 have come from outside of New York, as fans of performing bands and festival-goers are intrigued by the idea of STATTfest.

Food and Drinks

There will be an assortment of food trucks and vendors in the venue's parking lot. All food vendors will have at least one pineapple item, the official theme of STATTfest.

"We’re the pineapple festival at this point," Costello said.

Food trucks include:

• Neapolitan Express: pizza
• Meats Meat BBQ
• Green Street: vegan food
• Kona Ice: shaved ice and ice cream
• Crepes and Bakes: crepes

As far as drinks, there will be domestic beers and spiked seltzers. However, Lithology Brewing Co., a Farmingdale brewery, will be at the festival with its brand new pineapple wheat, brewed specifically for STATTfest.

Games and Entertainment

You can compete in games such as corn hole or giant Jenga. Get a complimentary haircut done by The Holy Black or take a yoga session if you'd like. If you can hang the longest on the Humble Gainz pull-up bar, you'll win a $100 cash prize.

The STATTfest Official RPG

Alex Piccirillo, a Farmingdale native and member of Moverz, led the creation of The STATTfest Official RPG, a video game that can be played on the festival's website. The game is roughly 3.5 hours, and you play as members of Moverz with the objective of building STATTfest. Costello likened it to Pokemon where you level up your characters and interact with other non-playable characters to meet your goals. Whoever beats the game before Saturday will be granted a special promo code towards a discounted ticket.

Other Video Games

While the aforementioned RPG will be available to play at STATTfest, there will also be two projectors and six televisions present at the venue where anyone can take a break from the music and play one of 30 or more video games.

Art

One artist will be spray-painting a 12-foot mural just outside the venue, which Foschino referred to as "a saran-wrap palette." Another spray paint artist will be painting lawn chairs where people can sit after they're dry. Essentially, it's live art.

"[The venue] is going to decorate itself throughout the day," Foschino said. "At the end, it’s going to be fully decorated."

Five or six artists will be at the scene, including one doing caricatures where you could sit down and be drawn in cartoon form.

Why pineapples?

Moverz was looking for a logo for STATTfest when Foschino suggested a pineapple with sunglasses due to the summer theme. With the apparent popularity of pineapples this summer, the idea stuck.

"It's like the summer of pineapples," Costello said.

Free pineapples will be given out to festival-goers as frozen leftovers from a drone video where 100 pineapples were used to spell out STATTfest. Additionally, a stop motion video was created using pineapples.

Charity

The ticket service fees (roughly $5 per ticket) will be donated to The Only Love Foundation, a Valley Stream-based nonprofit organization that travels the world and builds schools in underdeveloped communities as well as provides school supplies. David Martinez, who co-founded the organization along with Craig Taylor Jr., is performing with Friendz.

"One of my workers has been working close with them in all their endeavors," Foschino said. "If you give them a dollar, he’s not putting it in his pocket; you know exactly where it’s going. The two guys that run it are the two guys on the dirt and making this happen."

Costello said it costs roughly $3,000 to build a school in an underprivileged country. So if 1,000 people attend STATTfest, it'd be more than enough to build a school. Costello said as of Aug. 31, roughly 650 tickets have been sold. His goal is to sell 2,000.

Goals

If the first-ever STATTfest is a success, Costello said the vision is to make it an annual, two-day festival. From there, if the festival skyrockets in popularity, the big dream would be to have pop-up festivals across the country.

"We’ve had people tell us ‘Come to Michigan.’ ‘Come to Florida.’ ‘Come to Cali,’" Costello said. "Right now, it’s too hard for us to pop these places all over."

Foschino added that Moverz would like to create a commercial using footage from Saturday's festival to use going forward.

"It was very hard to get sponsors or even get ticket sales," Costello said. "We’re selling something that’s never happened before; we don’t have footage of ‘This is what it’s going to be!’"

Costello also hopes to create a new Friendz album each year using lineups from STATTfest.

More Venue Information

Originally, Costello and Moverz had no idea the US Academy of Soccer could even be used as a venue. He got the idea when a fellow Moverz member held a beer festival there last October. With the soccer academy being an unknown commodity, Moverz got a good deal when organizing STATTfest.

There will be a grass field in the back where the main stage will be. The beer truck, some vendors and a row of port-a-potties will be in the back, as well.

There will be a soccer bubble that fits about 400. Part of the space will be a green room for the artists to hang out, while most of it will be earmarked for a DJ and line of video games.

Most vendors will be stationed in the parking lot where you can find merchandise, haircuts, artists and more. The lot will also serve as the site of corn hole, the pull-up bar and other games.

Moverz partnered with Quick Ride, which will be providing shuttle rides to and from Main Street's municipal lots and the venue, due to the lack of parking space at the venue itself. For those who wish to take the 10-minute walk, there will be spray-painted arrows directing them to the venue on Conklin Street.

Overcoming Doubt

Costello said in the beginning, naysayers told him that STATTfest wasn't going to happen. Foschino said some even compared it to Fyre Festival, an infamous fraudulent "luxury music festival."

"The difference is we’re trying to grow something," Costello said. "We’re trying to make something happen on a community level."

Foschino noted that the reputation of Moverz and everyone involved is staked to STATTfest to the point where it will be a big relief on Sunday.

"It’s almost like I can’t wait until the day after," Foschino said.

"Then it's back to planning next year's [STATTfest]," Costello added.

Costello said he's gotten very little sleep in the final weeks leading up to the festival; he's been staying up until 4 a.m. and getting out of bed at 7 a.m. to resume work.

More About Moverz

Costello said the idea behind Moverz is to move and go for your ideas. The initiative started as a group of five, but now has a close-knit group of 30. He said there are also over 100 people involved in the network, which is essentially an incubator of entrepreneurs who each have their own ideas and businesses, but are willing to use their resources to help other members.

"The cool thing about Moverz is you have the freedom to work on your own projects, but it’s still growing the entity as a whole," Costello said.

Preparing STATTfest has become a full-time gig for Costello. The idea for the festival came when the members of Moverz were trying to find a way to showcase the movement of going for your dreams and molding different ideas into one thing.

"[STATTfest] is almost a launch of everything that we’re doing and incorporating it all together to make this one big idea: this festival," Costello said.

The future of STATTfest will likely be decided on Saturday. The hope is that the allure of live artists, food, entertainment and more will draw families looking to squeeze some last minute fun out of the dwindling summer 2019.

The STATTfest website can be seen here.