Arts & Entertainment
Palo Alto Brothers Take on LGBTQ Teen Bullying
Noah and Julian Hornik's "It Gets Indie" benefit concert is this Saturday at the Great American Music Hall
At first, It Gets Indie was just a school project. In 2011 as a student at the Nueva School, Noah Hornik was assigned to pick a passion and use it as inspiration for a project that would somehow make the world a better place.
With the help of older brother, Julian, a senior at , Noah organized It Get’s Indie, a concert in San Francisco benefitting The Trevor Project and It Gets Better Campaign, two organizations that help LGBTQ youth.
“It Gets Indie began as a school project combining my activism for gay rights with my indie rock fanaticism, then branched out from there,” Noah, currently a freshman at the Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., said.
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The first year of the event, held at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall, brought in about $20,000 for the campaign.
Now, the Hornik brothers are at it again. The second round of It Gets Indie will be held on Saturday, June 23, again at the Great American Music Hall. This year, Berkeley band Local Hero and Los Angeles’ Princeton will headline the event, which is scheduled to start at 8:00 p.m.
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“The goal is just to have it be as big of a success as last year,” Julian said. “Besides the fact that it’s really going to be a fun concert with great music, it would be a great way for [the community] to show their support for two great organizations and what is a pertinent issue.”
The venue, sponsors and bands were all contacted by the Horniks, and the entire event is funded through a Kickstarter page and sponsors, like Ask.com, and a donor who promises to match all funds raised.
This year, the Horniks decided on just two bands instead of three, but that did not make contacting or booking the talent any easier.
“Almost always you’ll get a response [from a contacted band] that says, ‘That sounds like a great cause, we hope it goes really well but we’re touring that day,’” Julian said. “It’s almost always a ‘no,’ but if you email enough of them, at least one will actually be free that night and interested in the cause.”
The brothers also decided on a date smack in the middle of Pride Weekend in San Francisco. In fact, Noah applied for and succeeded in getting It Gets Indie to be an official, Pride-sponsored event.
The prime time slot has led It Gets Indie tickets to sell faster than expected. A few are still available here for $25, or $15 for students who show their school I.D.
