Flash Mobs

While sitting on the subway in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, we noticed a lot of young people schlepping a pillow around... Our initial thought was: well, there must be a sporting event somewhere with some intolerable benches. Then it occurred to us that early February is not the right season for any event that requires wodden benches.

I finally asked one of the girls and she replied: "Haven't you heard about the pillow fight at the Embacadero?" "No, I'm sorry but I'm not from here," I replied apologetically. While the girl kept on iterating how much better it is to fight with pillows instead of real weapons, and how liberating it is to relieve all inside aggression in a pillow fight, I was thinking "San Francisco students are truly creative... and how could I potentially have missed that announcement over the last couple of days walking the city?"

Little did I know that the event was not announced in the mass media, but was a flash mob! Yes, a flash mob as I found out today in the news. And like the one at UH a couple of weeks ago, I missed this one as well. Oh boy!

Now the sad part of the story is that the city of San Francisco is stuck with a cleaning bill of $20,000 for the pillow fight... which reminded me of the story how the "Love Parade" died in Berlin. Every year there was a struggle between the parade organizers and the city about the cost of cleaning. If run as a demonstration, the city would have to pay; if run as a commercial parade, it would be on the organizer's tap. As you can imagine, over the years it got harder and harder to sell an increasingly commercialized "Love Parade" with over a million visitors a year as a political demonstration. So they moved...