Joe Di Capra enters his senior year of high school determined to break out of his predictable life and expand his world, as he prepares for the future. His neighborhood on the East Side of Genesee, New York has seen better days. The recession and social upheaval of the late 1970's hit Upstate hard, leaving Joe's East Side in turmoil.
With a job at the neighborhood grocery store, a championship run with his CYO basketball team, and success in the classroom, Joe makes great strides in expanding his world and reaching his goals. He meets a new group of friends that are a little rowdier than his Catholic High School buddies and they help Joe in many unexpected ways. Together they stretch the limits of having fun and what used to be acceptable in Joe's predictable life. They secure the job of painting a friend's house with his father paying them with a keg of beer per side finished, vaulting them to the top of the neighborhood social party strata. Everything Joe hoped for was in motion except his biggest goal, finding a girlfriend. Through a quirk of fate, war and magic, a stranger arrives in Genesee and changes everything.