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Thursday, July 31, 2003
That rumbling you hear is the stampeding of dozens of bloggers back to their computers to share details of this evening's first Boston Flash Mob.
Ok, technically, it was in Cambridge. Harvard Square to be exact. The masses descended on their assigned locations, picked up their instructions, and headed over to a store called the Harvard Coop at around 7pm. If mob success is measured in sheer numbers of mobsters, it went well. If it's measured in subtlety, or how well people followed directions ... not so well. The media attention garnered in the past week was both good and bad... it blew much of the surprise, but it brought what I think ended up being a much wider variety of attendees, and a whole new aspect to the mob experience. I was glad to see a mother and daughter waiting at the Border Cafe to pick up their instructions. While the majority of the crowd was probably 20-30 something hipster-types, it certainly wasn't exclusively so. What the attention also brought was a whole lotta cops. Seriously. Count 'em...  Walking cops, bicycle cops, motorcycle cops, cops in cruisers, cops in unmarked cars, even an ambulance. And then there were the reporters. TV reporters, print reporters, cameramen. There were reporters talking to the police. There were reporters on TV talking about the police. There was even a helicopter in the sky waiting in vain for footage (not only were they an hour too early, but the thing was happening indoors. Oops.) Everyone was all worked up for this 'hot new fad', which may have been officially dead the moment it hit the Yahoo front page headlines a couple days ago.  But one Boston mob needed to be attempted, and so it was. As interesting as it was to have that many people crammed into the greeting card section of the Coop, it was more a noisy gawkathon than mysterious occurance. The crowd was supposed to remain "eerily quiet", and didn't even come close until someone shushed 'em near the end of the 8 minute greeting card search. People were also instructed to wait quietly a few minutes before pulling out the cameras. Apparently no one read that part, or thought they were exempt. Go figure. It was an out and out flash-fest. Sometimes it looked like the picture takers outnumbered the subjects. There will be no lack of documentation of this Mob.  The only thing the crowd did do 'right' was stick to the story. Every person that I overheard answer a reporter's question of "Why are you here?" responded the same... "Just looking for a card." "For who?" "For my friend Bill" "Where's Bill from?" "New York". I asked the confused sales clerk at the counter "What's the deal with all the people, anyway?" His explanation? "I dunno... some Channel 4 thing." "All I wanted to do was pick up a card." "Well, good luck with that," he said. Then, of course, somebody jumps in and starts tellin' the guy "Oh, actually, this is a new thing called a Flash Mob, where random people get together and... blah blah blah." Yeesh.  |
 neil halstead live in cambridge, ma on november 14th, 2008 previously: joy formidable - boston 2011 recent posts on the 'nac...
on the nightstand boston-area music bloggers
boston music media 
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