By Emily Christensen

Some people are calling it the song of the summer. 

An apparent low-budget commercial for Seneca Street Liquor, 403 N. Seneca St. in Wichita’s Delano neighborhood, blew up last week on TikTok. Hundreds of creators have used the sound as a dance beat or added commentary to the catchy tune that advertises “the best liquor on Seneca Street.” 

“I’ve had a horrendous grief-filled week, but this audio has brought me great happiness,” reads the text on one video. “The fact that it sounds like Nethan Fielder or Tina Belcher. The smoke detector beat. The fact I’ve never been to Wichita but wanna go.” 

“I mean do I need to take a trip to Kansas to get liquor? Seneca Liquor Store seems pretty lit!” reads a caption to one of the more inventive dance numbers. 

The thing is, the viral video is not a commercial for Seneca Street Liquor, nor is it a tribute made by a longtime customer. It’s the work of video creator and Wichita native Maximum James, aka Maxx. And what he would call “the lore” behind the video is at least as compelling as its improbable virality. 

“I was laying in bed, and I literally woke up with this jingle in my head” 

James hadn’t walked through the doors of Seneca Street Liquor until this year, but he has history with the place. He grew up nearby, and his father was a customer. “I remember Seneca Street just being a place where I sat in the car my whole life while my dad ran in.”

The store is perhaps best known for the humorous messages on its sign. In James’ video, it reads:

I scream
You scream
The police show
It’s awkward

“You weren’t going to stop, but now here you are,” read an earlier version. 

Inside, you’ll find a modest but decent selection of beer, wine, and spirits accented by seasonal decorations. 

“It hasn't changed since I was three years old … like it’s stuck in time,” James said. “It’s not that extravagant … but it’s such a family-owned place. It’s homey. They have dogs in there.”

After waking up with the hook in his head, James recorded a voice note in his bathroom at 3:30 a.m. and sent it to his friend Caleb Hope, who left him on read for a couple days.  

“He texted one day and was like, ‘I have this really good idea,” Hope recalls. “He knew he wanted the beat to suck, so he just kept making these bleep-bloop noises.” 

Hope eventually complied, adding a “cartoon spring noise,” a “record scratch for no reason,” and, at James’ request, the beep of a smoke detector on low battery, Hope’s longtime beat tag.

“Part of the reason it’s funny is … it feels like they hired someone and gave them $20 to do it.” — Caleb Hope

The pair met as sixth graders at Brooks Middle School, and though they went to different high schools — James attended West, Hope Northwest — they became friends their freshman year.

“The first time he ever came over to my house we made stupid music and videos,” Hope said. They’ve been collaborating on and off ever since.

It took them about an hour to create a track and record the ad reads: seven different versions to be posted on seven consecutive days. 

“I wanted people to think I was losing it,” James said. But the opposite was true. 

A Wichita boomerang story

The success of “Seneca Street Liquor” follows a difficult year for James. Since 2021, he had been living full-time in Atlanta, where he was an assistant camera operator for Lifetime movies. He also had the chance to work on music videos, and he loved living in a place steeped in the culture of hip hop, his favorite genre. (“I never heard an alternative song in Atlanta anywhere.”) 

James has bipolar disorder, and last year he experienced “the worst crash-out I ever had,” he said. “I just spent all my money (and) had to come home.”

James posted on Facebook that he needed help getting back to Kansas. In an example of “God’s timing,” a former employer offered him a job and covered most of his moving costs. 

But some of the habits he picked up in Atlanta worsened when he got back to Wichita. “I was distracting myself and disassociating and being very self-destructive,” James said. He didn’t make a single video, either.

He’s proud of himself for breaking those patterns. 

“It's a blessing that this year so much changed,” he said. “I started caring about myself, and I got myself off of alcohol and drugs, and then I got medicated for my bipolar, and then I started making videos again.”  

An "iPad baby" finds his tribe

James, 26, identifies as one of the first “iPad babies”: “Before I could speak I was typing.”

He got his first camcorder, a Flip, at the age of 8. “I was always making videos, and at in that same time, I was also making music.” 

In high school, James discovered a crowdfunding campaign for a feature-length film by another Wichita teenager, Jacklyn Laurie. “They were young, just like me. They like had a fully funded Kickstarter for a movie they were going to film, and I begged them. I was like, "Can I please be a part of this?”

The opportunity came along when James was “desperate” to hang out with people who wanted to do something more interesting than prank one another.  

While the film was never completed, he and Laurie became close. James often stayed at Laurie’s house, and they were later roommates in Atlanta. Through Laurie, James learned about the Tallgrass Film Festival. He was part of its Emerging Programmer program at the age of 17 and participated in the film races Down to the Wire and Take 36.

“He was always a really cool, creative kid, so I wasn’t at all surprised that he went on to have a creative career,” said Lela Meadow-Conner, former executive director of the Tallgrass Film Association. “Not just him but Jacklyn — they were quite a dynamic duo.”  

Through Tallgrass, James met mentors like Andrew Claycomb, Dre Kahmeyer, and David Quick. The late Nick Brown got James his first paying creative job at Digital Brand, a Wichita marketing agency that specializes in video production. 

“Tallgrass exposed me to other locals who make cool shit,” James said.

He and his friends joined their ranks by finding an audience for their own videos, including a celebration of QuikTrip and “Green Screen Lambo,” which features Wichita lawyer Brad Pistotnik’s bright green sportscar. Later they produced a short film, “Go Demarcus: The Documentary,” which revisits a viral video several years after its release.  

“I just like being me”

“Seneca Street Liquor” has the same offhand quality as the videos James first became famous for when he was still in high school. He used a cheap camcorder to record it, and he took inspiration from low-quality local TV ads to give it the feeling of a commercial from the mid-aughts. 

James still hasn’t talked to the owner of the liquor store, but he got the shop’s endorsement by way of the now-iconic letter-board sign, which employees switched out last week to match the jingle. On Friday, clerk Nissa McWhorter said the uptick in traffic to the store has been appreciated — less so the folks who are calling to sing her the jingle over the phone. 

That morning, James realized TikTok had started to take down some of the videos. A few hours later, the platform banned his account without warning for “multiple policy violations.” (TikTok did not respond to a media inquiry from The SHOUT.)

“It think TikTok thinks I’m promoting alcohol,” James said in a voice note sent Friday. “For anyone in the future who would want to go back and look at the Seneca Street Liquor thing that people were talking about for a couple weeks … Don’t be sad that it’s gone. Just be glad that it happened.”

But while James’ original video has disappeared from the platform, creators are still using the sound to make videos — more than 650 so far, some of which were filmed in the liquor store parking lot. There’s already an EDM remix (a mashup with the “Ghostbusters” theme) and an acoustic cover version.

James has also registered the domain senecastreetliquor.com, where you can buy a T-shirt (in your choice of seven colors) that features the store’s sign with the message “best liquor on Seneca Street.” 

You can even preorder the 12-inch vinyl, which will have all seven versions on one side and various instrumental versions on the other. As James says, “It’s so stupid.”

And so him. After years of trying to get away from the kind of work that first brought him success, James is ready to embrace the goofiness.

“This year I found a childlike wonder again that I had when I was 18,” he said. “That's why 'Seneca Street Liquor' is so great, because it was some shit I thought I outgrew and I was embarrassed of … I should just lean in on what I like. It took me a long time to get back to that.

“I just like being me.”

He and Hope have restarted work on their documentary project about Danoiz, a ’90s Wichita hip hop group that almost made it. And in another full-circle moment, James is working on promotion for the 2026 Tallgrass Film Festival. 

Perhaps best of all, he’s making videos with his friends again. 

“It just proved to me that all these things can change … but who we are and our relationship with each other and the art we make hasn’t changed,” Hope said. “He’s my brother.”

And “people still think we’re funny.” 

Emily Christensen is one of the co-founders of The SHOUT. She is a past fellow of the National Critics Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and a recipient of an Arts Writing Grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation. Send her a message: emily@shoutwichita.com. 

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