“How you partied in high school determines what kind of adult you’re going to be… Sonoma kids partied a little differently,” Ethan Cohen narrates in his TikTok while walking up the trail to the Plat, an open space near the Montini Preserve where generations of Sonoma youth threw parties. “We used to hike up a mountain through a cemetery, then used $5 dollars from our parents’ allowance to buy a solo red cup, which bought us unlimited beer from kegs.”
Warning: This content contains explicit language
In the TikTok that’s been viewed 570,000 times as of Thursday, Cohen describes the Plat as a space where all Sonoma youth were welcomed, often to a round of applause by teenage drinkers. The typical caste system of high school society was suspended, and football players had deep talks with mock trial team members.
“High school is rough for most people,” Cohen said, “But when you showed up to the Plat, you felt like a somebody — if only for a night.”
Using the TikTok emoneydoes it, Cohen has nearly 40,000 followers on TikTok and almost a million views for his comedy videos that feature names like “Don’t take a date to Applebee’s” and “Should I drop this?” The musician, rapper and comedian also appeared on the MTV dating reality show “Are You the One” in 2017, and the comedy show “Wild ‘N Out” in 2018. His YouTube channel has 18,000 followers and features songs like “Sonoma Ain’t the Ghetto.”
Back on his TikTok, he explains that police cracked down on Plat parties in 2009, and “parents had enough of us drinking on mountains, I guess they rather we destroy their house while they’re out of town… parties at the Plat became a thing of the past, and today teenagers talk about it like we used to talk about Woodstock ‘69.”
Contact Chase Hunter at chase.hunter@sonomanews.com and follow @Chase_HunterB on Twitter.
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: