At the stroke of 3pm this afternoon on the public space at the rear steps of Vancouver’s Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG), a couple of hundred people came together and beat the living daylights out of one another with huge smiles on their faces and laughing all the while!
Believe it or not, April 3rd is International Pillow Fight Day. With coordinated, feathery battles being held in over a hundred of cities world wide, the day is the brainchild of “The Urban Playground Movement” – an organisation whose goal is to:
…make these unique happenings in public space become a significant part of popular culture, partially replacing passive, non-social, branded consumption experiences like watching television, and consciously rejecting the blight on our cities caused by the endless creep of advertising into public space. The result, we hope, will be a global community of participants, not consumers, in a world where people are constantly organizing and attending these happenings in every major city in the world.
The Vancouver event was another “flash mob” style event with participants casually milling discretely around the VAG/Robson Square area until the war cry went up at 3pm. The signal triggered the spontaneous emergence of pillows of all shapes, colours and sizes which instantly began being flung by their masters at neighbouring willing participants.
Although smaller in scale than what I was led to believe it would be (and sans the babes in lingerie, by the way Buzz), it was quite the spectacle and you just got the sense that everyone was just there to have a good time. Laughter was in abundance as pillow fighters of all ages went at it for over 20 minutes.
While I was there primarily to be a spectator and grab a few shots of the event, I was offered a feather-filled weapon at one point so I jumped in, pillow blazing, and got amongst it all. Who doesn’t love a good pillow fight after all.
Anyway, the following are a few of the images I snapped, finishing off with “Spandy Andy” – some colourful character that turned up at the very end and performed an impromptu dance of sorts in front of the gathered onlookers.
Muzz
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