 "Photo: Alec Pinterpe")
 "Photo: Alec Pinterpe")
Even though it’s called the National Buffalo Wing Festival, there was a lot more going on at the seventh annual “Wing Fest” on September 5 and 6 than chicken wing tasting.
When you first enter the wing festival, you see a band set up. They’re called The Innocent Bystanders and they started playing back in 2007.
“We played at the Wing Fest to get in front of new people,” said Kevin Sampson, lead singer of The Innocent Bystanders, who was very excited to be playing at the festival. The band members all agree that their band is modeled after a mix of Green Day, Weezer, and a little bit of Ben Folds Five. Their biggest hit so far is “Under Wraps,” because when it was released, it was played all over Buffalo as well as other places across the country.
If you walk past the band towards the entrance, you see a stand that reads, “Where are you from?” It was run by a group called the “B-Team.”
Two representatives of the B-Team talked to people about their organization. “Our goal is to bring other non-profit organizations, like ourselves, together to promote Buffalo,” said one of the representatives.
The stand itself seemed very popular with the crowd. People visited this booth from places as far as England, France, and even Australia.
If you looked past the “Where are you from” stand, you see a giant fireman’s boot. The boot was there for donations to help the families of Lt. Charles W. McCarthy and Fire fighter Jonathan Croom, the firefighters who were lost in the fire on August 24.
Drew Cerza, founder of the National Wing Fest, announced before it started that there would be a fundraising effort. Cerza even pledged $5,000 himself to help start the campaign. The total amount raised at the Chicken Wing Festival was $55,000.
With all of this excitement going on, one must not forget the most important part of the experience. It is, after all, a wing festival, and let’s just say the wings did not disappoint.
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