Happy October! I love this month, because I know that the DC Zombie Lurch approacheth. Here are some shots I snapped at last year’s lurch:
Look fun? It is.
But let’s take a quick look at Zombie Lurches in general, shall we? This DC Zombie Lurch is hardly an isolated occurrence.
Zombie lurches (also known as zombie walks, marches, hordes, shuffles, or pub crawls) are essentially gatherings of genial individuals dressed and made up as zombies that slowly make their way through an urban environment. While many happen around October, lurches take place year-round, and should not be categorized as a strictly “Halloween-ey activity.”
Lurches and walks take place in a wide range of locations, from San Francisco to Sydney, and are occuring in more cities every year. While zombie walks started small (some say with a six-person ensemble in Toronto in 2003), they have grown to become, in some cases, quite large (the record stands at 3,370 attending a 2008 lurch in Grand Rapids, Michigan: video below).
The growing success of these lurches is due in part to online forums and other messaging boards that make assembly for strange and unusual purposes exceedingly easy. This same technology facilitated many other interesting meeting forms as well. The first lurches emerged in 2003- at the same time as other sorts of flash mobs (pillow fights, coordinated dancing, wifipicning, etc…) began popping up around the world.
Generally speaking, zombie lurches, along with their flash mob cousins, are a wonderful manifestation of technology-facilitated playfulness and creativity. It will be interesting to see what new developments emerge in the months and years to come.
Additional Resources:
The History of the Zombie Walk (a detailed, current explanation by Jason Meehan)
ZombieWalk.com (A site for the zombie walk community)
“Zombie Nation” (A piece on the history of zombie walks by Karina Wilson)
The History of San Francisco Zombie Walks (for the SF Examiner)
The Toronto Zombie Walk (Where it supposedly all started- here’s the official site)
One Comment
Hi! I just wanted to say that I’ve run the DC event for the past 3 years, and how nice it is not only to see such great “press,” but also just to hear as an organizer that people are having a good time @ something you were bizarre enough to put together.
Thanks so much for the mention, and I’m really glad you’ve had a good time! ^_^ I -love- your pics!!
:D
Cheers,
Nae (the former DC Lurch Mistress)
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[...] I wrote in my zombie lurch post, flashmobs are a fairly new development relative to culture jamming- the former concept emerging [...]