LOGAN SQUARE — A crowd of over 100 gathered in Logan Square Saturday for the second celebrity lookalike contest to strike Chicago in two weeks. The celebrity beau of choice? None other than DePaul University alumni and “Stranger Things” star Joe Keery.
Hot on the heels of the Jeremy Allen White lookalike competition last week in Humboldt Park, the contest sought to find the person who most closely resembles Keery, who plays teenage jock Steve Harrington in the hit Netflix series “Stranger Things.”
Each of the nine contestants on Saturday who gathered near the Illinois Centennial Monument was asked to perform their best Keery impression, with audience applause deciding the winner. Two Keery doppelgangers tied for first place: Max Rocchio, 20, and Troy Farsakian, 30, split the coveted prize of $50 and an Old Style beer.
Farsakian, 30, from Roscoe Village, says he is no stranger to being mistaken for Joe Keery’s twin.
“I’ve been stopped multiple times throughout the years,” he said. “Especially when the show came out and then when his Domino’s commercial came out. I was getting stopped on the streets and stores and things. It was pretty wild.”
Farsakian also happens to be a Keery fan. The two met seven years ago when Keery was playing a show with his band Post Animal in Milwaukee.
“He realized [the resemblance] right away. He was like, ‘You look like me,’” Farsakian said.
Co-winner Max Rocchio, 20, showed up at the last minute after his roommate told him about the competition. Rocchio is a student at DePaul University, where Keery himself graduated with a bachelor’s degree in acting in 2014.
“We expected I was gonna win, because I get that I look like him all the time,” he said.
Autumn Little from Belmont Cragin attended the event with her dog Liberty after seeing the competition’s flyer on TikTok.
“I was hoping they’d come with sailors costumes from Scoops Ahoy,” Little told Block Club while surveying the contestants at Saturday’s event. “It’s a little cold [out], but I think they should commit.”
(“Scoops Ahoy” is the name of the sailor-themed ice cream parlor that Keery’s character, Steve, works at in “Stranger Things.”)
Keery lookalike Kolin Lawler, 23, did not disappoint when it came to the “Scoops Ahoy” brief. Lawler came straight from the thrift store where he picked up a vintage sailor uniform.
“I figured this would boost my odds a little,” said Lawler of his naval costume.
Columbia College student Emily Pavlick came with a group of friends to check out the Keery dopplegangers on Saturday.
“My best friend is madly in love with Joe Keery so I was like, ‘I’ll stake out the competition for you,’ and I do love his music.”
Keery was the drummer for the Chicago psychedelic rock band Post Animal before embarking on a solo music career in 2019 under the name Djo. Keery’s sophomore album “Decide” earned him a Billboard Hot 100 title for his song “End of Beginning,” which can be read as a love letter to his former home with lyrics like “And when I’m back in Chicago, I feel it” and “You take the man out of the city, not the city out the man.”
Saturday’s event was organized by Logan Square resident Elizabeth Kohler, 27, who wanted to create a contest for her celebrity crush after seeing the buzz around similar lookalike competitions in New York and San Francisco.
“Joe Keery is my number one crush, so I was like, let me just get a group of all my favorite type in one room. I just wanted it to be fun and silly,” Kohler told Block Club.
In advance of the event, Kohler printed out flyers and pasted them around Logan Square, Humboldt and Wicker Park. The flyers were quickly circulated on TikTok and a Joe Keery Twitter fan account.
With four celebrity lookalike competitions happening in Los Angeles alone this past weekend, some are wondering if the celebrity lookalike craze has jumped the shark. Still, it all seems to be good fun, an opportunity to get people together for a brief moment of levity.
“Honestly, I did not even think one person was gonna show up,” Kohler said after the event. “It turned out to be the perfect amount of people, and just a fun thing to do on a Saturday.”
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