

Like, right after Orlando beat us, they bing-bonged in our face, right? The brand wasn’t as strong then. But the more you say it, the more it catches on.Īlmost. That’s why people got behind it, because it sounds a little ridiculous at first. Then there’s fact that it relates back to the subway doors, the fact that it has New York ties, and the fact that what it means is only positive things. This moment comes up where you’re kind of caught off guard with the bing bong, you know, like you’re hearing some guy basically have a seizure and then, bing bong. Why do you think it caught on the way it did?įirst of all, you gotta give a shout-out to the way that Sidetalk, Trent and Jack Byrne, edited it. It wasn’t because I thought to myself, Ooh, if I say bing bong, this is going to go viral.

There were a bunch of reasons that all calculated into me doing it. So I had seen previous videos where the rapper NEMS had done it, and there’s the Sidetalk doors-opening sound effect. Was saying “bing bong” just word association when you saw Trent from Sidetalk? I went to the playoff game where we beat Atlanta at home last year, and the energy outside of the Garden was … I wouldn’t say identical, because when we beat Atlanta, there was a party all the way down to, like, 27th Street on Seventh Avenue. It was as if the Knicks had just won a playoff game. What was the scene like outside Madison Square Garden on opening night when the video was filmed? We spoke with Bloom about the Knicks, his sudden viral fame, and the phrase he will perhaps forever be associated with. Knicks fans, desperate for a contender and psyching themselves up for what could be the most fun squad in years, made bing-bong memes, carved bing-bong pumpkins, and dressed as Bing Bong Guy for Halloween. But it was Bloom’s one-second “bing bong” that emerged as the standout moment.Īs the Knicks got off to a hot start, winning five of their first six games, the phrase became an early season rallying cry, appearing in back-page headlines, on the scoreboard at Madison Square Garden, and even in a Mike Breen play-by-play call of a Julius Randle bank-shot three-pointer. All the borderline-terrifying shouting was one reason the clip went viral the next day. The video that resulted showed Knicks fans in all their mad glory, absolutely losing their minds over precisely one (1) regular-season win. Familiar with Sidetalk’s videos and riding high from a thrilling game, the longtime Knicks fan walked over to the mic and simply recreated the subway-door sound effect that begins each of Sidetalk’s episodes: “Bing bong.” When Jordie Bloom left Madison Square Garden after the Knicks’ opening-night double-overtime win against the Celtics, he spotted Trent Simonian, host of the 60-second Instagram show Sidetalk, interviewing a group of elated fans.
