The phrase was further popularized by the viral "Bing Bong" trend on TikTok where users would recreate various different quotes from Sidetalk. “Bing Bong” even received two write-in votes in the 2021 New York City mayoral election. The phrase was picked up by the official New York Knicks Twitter account, Knicks announcer Mike Breen, and Knicks forward Evan Fournier, and was featured on the cover of the sports page of the New York Daily News. While the phrase itself had been previously popularized in earlier Sidetalk videos, by rapper Nems and others in episodes from Coney Island, it quickly became a rallying cry for the Knicks after the "Knicks Season Opener" video went viral. One of the fans in the video, Jordie Bloom, says "Bing Bong" into the microphone, a reference to the New York City Subway "doors closing" warning sound which is used at the beginning of each Sidetalk episode. On October 21, 2021, Simonian and Byrne released an episode titled "Knicks Season Opener" featuring New York Knicks fans celebrating the team's opening night double-overtime victory over the Boston Celtics. The show received a nomination for the 2021 Streamy Awards in the Indie Show category. The duo signed to Brillstein Entertainment Partners and WME in April 2021. Prior to co-creating Sidetalk, Simonian hosted a similar interview-style show in high school called Shark TV, while Byrne interned for The Fat Jewish for five years beginning at age 14. They had first met after being accepted into NYU during their senior year of high school through mutual friends. They were devastated to have to interrupt their project.Trent Simonian, a graduate of Malibu High School, and Jack Byrne, a graduate of Xavier High School, started the show in the fall of 2019 during their first semester as students at New York University. With no school and no dorms, Simonian was forced to return to his parents’ home in Malibu, Byrne to Long Island with his family. The Sidetalk account went from a few thousand followers to tens of thousands in a matter of days. Nicolas Heller, whom they had befriended on Instagram not long before, was with them at the time and posted his perspective on tagging them as a promotion. But it was the Purim video that was their breakthrough. We were just like, ‘Hey, guys, what’s up?’”Īfter starting Sidetalk their freshman year in the fall of 2019, the duo spent most days of the week outside, after, before, and in between classes, filming the people they encountered. “We ran up the steps of the brownstone into the house, and there were all these Hasidic men going crazy, jumping around. “We filmed that video in 30 minutes.” They’d been having a terrible day finding nothing to shoot, but with a mix of ease and fearlessness, they happened to see an open door and walked through. “We couldn’t remake it if we tried,” Byrne admits. There’s an unhinged energy to the encounter. In one of the boys’ favorite episodes, filmed on the dangerous cusp of lockdown last year, they crashed a Purim party in Williamsburg and danced with Trump-loving Hasidim. Watching them, I couldn’t always tell if they were being judgmental or celebratory. In the best episodes, Simonian has a subdued joy at being around chaos, like an anthropologist excited to join in the customs of a foreign land. 54, turned out to be fairly tame-less guerrilla than some of the most memorable Sidetalks. While working, they commune through a mix of whispers and what seems like ESP, never losing their cool no matter how many times it takes Mo to nail the line. Byrne, who resembles a Kennedy and speaks in the octave of Sam Elliott, is the cameraman, but beyond that, it would be hard to pick apart who’s really doing what-they often finish each other’s sentences. Simonian, the one with a shock of black Timothée Chalamet hair, is the straight man on-camera.
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