Infamous for its high arrest totals, previous house fires and riots, Palmer Fest is about to celebrate its 24th edition Saturday.
Former Ohio University students Chris Loy, ’92, and Doug Powhida, ’93, helped organize the first Palmer Fests, which would later become one of the 10 craziest college parties in the nation.
Before the eventual building of the Palmer Place apartments, Loy and Powhida lived at 19 Palmer St., one of a few houses on the block that shared a large, open backyard.
“So we have this big backyard and like most college kids, we enjoyed a nice party,” Loy said. “The folks that had lived at our house the previous year left remnants of a stage that could be assembled, and so we were just hanging out playing volleyball with people in the neighborhood and someone said, ‘hey, let’s have Palmer Fest’ and we said, ‘sounds like a plan.’ It was kind of spontaneous.”
With the layout of the street being different, Powhida said people were in the backyard playing volleyball and wiffle ball as well as listeningto the bands that performed on the remnants of the stage Loy described.
The eventual erection of the Palmer Place Apartments, which will be holding its annual Palmer Place Fest Friday, brought sadness to Loy, who grew the original Palmer Fests out of his backyard.
“It breaks my heart now to see what they’ve put up in the backyard, but hey, I guess people want to make money,” Loy said.
At this year’s Palmer Place Fest, police officers will have the right to enter any property at any time, and no more than 10 people will be allowed on the balcony at any time, according to a release from Palmer Place owners Cornwell Properties.
Powhida thinks the lack of a backyard actually leads to a lot of the trouble at the event today.
Powhida added there were always street parties before Palmer Fest, but the name itself is what caused the event to stick. Palmer Fest grew right as the university sponsored Spring Fest died out in the late ’80s into 1990.
“The fact that it kept getting bigger and bigger is quite amazing,” said Powhida, who currently runs the @Fake_Dispatch account, which has more than 16,000 followers. “Every year it kept getting bigger.”
Loy said the initial event saw a peak between 500-1,000 partygoers, and stayed steady around 300 at any given time. The event has since seen crowds in excess of 8,000 people in recent years, according to the Columbus Dispatch.
"I don’t know what it’s like now, it was big but from what I understand, it’s massive now,” Loy said. “Back then, less than half the houses on the street had some kind of party going on. Those that did had a hopping party and people would go back and forth to listen to music.”
The idea that the party has evolved into one of the craziest in the country — named one of the ten craziest college parties by The Huffington Post — is hard to believe for Loy and Powhida.
“I don’t know if I’m proud or (if) it just puts a smile on my face,” Loy said. “We all had a blast and we welcomed whoever wanted to come. We never really had trouble. No fights or broken bottles. I feel good about it.”
The original Palmer Fest actually led to Loy meeting his eventual wife.
“I had a crush on her and she didn’t know me that well,” Loy said. “I had a class with her and she was running for student government. She wanted to hang up a banner with her and the people she was running with for student government at the party and I looked out the window and said, ‘oh my god there’s Karen!’”
He rushed to put on some sweats and ran outside, pretending to play volleyball while he got her attention.
“I helped her out with the banner and made sure she came back later,” Loy said. “I wouldn’t call that a date, but that’s where we first really started seeing each other. Lo and behold, it’s 2014, we have three kids and we live in Tampa, Fla., so life is all good.”
For Athens Police Chief Tom Pyle, who will have his department out in full force Saturday, some of the fests during the past quarter century haven’t ended with similar happiness.
He said the editions of Palmer Fest in the late ’90s, as well as the ones that fell between 2009-2012 were the most chaotic and dangerous of the parties.
“I’m glad we have it to the point we have it now where it is mostly during the day and that these things are shutting down before dark,” Pyle said. “I think this is a successful approach and everyone seems to be satisfied with that, both partygoers and law enforcement.”
Athens EMS Chief Rick Callebs encouraged students to have a good time while behaving responsibly.
“We just want to see everyone having a good time,” Callebs said. “Just stop setting things on fire and throwing beer bottles at people.”
@akarl_smith
as299810@ohiou.edu
