History of the Subway Zombie Walk - Part 2

With the creation and successful run of my birthday zombie walk, I was left with a feeling of euphoria.  It actually went better than I thought it would.  Our group may have been small, but everything went down without a hitch, and fun was had by all.

In the first couple days following the walk, pictures and friend requests on facebook started rolling in.  People would tell me that they had a great time, and were curious if I were going to do it again.  The seed was planted.

A year passed... a very eventful year for me.  My daughter was born in August 2010, and zombies were the furthest thing on my mind.  In September, I brought my wife and newborn to St. Louis for my friend's wedding. We had a great time with old friends that night, and went back to my mom's home exhausted.

We had gotten the baby settled in for the night, and both me and my wife were wiped out.  As I was laying my head down to sleep,  I got a text my friend Peter, who lurched with us on the '09 walk.  He was curious if I was planning on doing another walk in October.  My mind snapped into focus, and without really thinking about it, I jumped into the same routine as last year. The difference was I was 1800 miles away from home, and setting this all up using my iPhone.

I brought up the zombiewalk site, fired off my post, shot the link back to Peter, and went to bed.

Initially, the walk was scheduled to happen on Saturday the 16th.  My first walk was on the Saturday before my birthday, so I figured that would work this time too.  Turns out that Saturday conflicted with my wife's work schedule.  I couldn't see this happening if she wasn't able to come, so I moved the date to the 17th. I now think that Sunday is the better choice for the walk anyways, simply because no one throws a Halloween party on Sunday, so there are less schedule conflicts overall.

Once back in Los Angeles, I got to work on the hype machine.  I made a new flyer...

There was less crappy photoshopping than the year previous.  It helps to have actual photos to work from.  I knew I'd want a flyer that would help last year's walkers identify this as a continuation. I wanted my friend Nate on there, because his look was very iconic from the first walk, a skateboarder drenched in blood.  If there was anyone from the previous year that wasn't sure whether or not this was the same production, this should help solidify in their minds that they'd be in good hands. 

In the first year, the facebook invite clearly stated that this was my birthday.  This year, since I was only turning 31, making it common knowledge that I walk to celebrate another year on this planet, seemed less important.  I felt it would feel more inclusive to strangers if the invite was more generalized.  Hence, the 2nd Annual Subway Zombie Walk.  Mention of my birthday was completely stripped out of the facebook and zombiewalk posts.  The only place I mentioned my birthday at all, was on my twitter profile.

I broadcasted to the same places as last year, and found myself a couple new spots too.  Somehow the hype machine started working on its own.  Links to the walk were appearing in places that I had never heard of before, and the number of potential zombies grew.  I had started to see the number jump 50-100 attendees each day, and I got spooked.

If you're not into the whole flash mob culture, a key thing to remember is that no one claims responsibility for the group.  We're all individuals. We're all just people walking down the street.  But the first year I didn't even break 100 zombies, and this year I had over 1000 people saying they were coming.  I didn't know if the train would handle that many people.  I didn't know if they'd all pay attention to the code of conduct. I didn't know if I was gonna get royally screwed.

 "You've gotta understand, man, I never even saw these assholes before!"

So in this moment of freak out, I altered the plan slightly.  Everyone was to get to Hollywood & Highland by any means necessary.  I was hoping that a strong contingent of zombies would still be taking the Red Line from North Hollywood, but I felt that the important thing was to get everyone to the actual meat of the event, the walk, on time. At least everyone would get there safely.  Who knows what would happen after that? It was really out of my control.

Oct. 17th had come and, whether I was ready or not, this mob was lurching. 

One thing I couldn't have foreseen, however, was a rainy day in Southern California.  I mean, how many of those do we get a year?  The weather reports called for cloudy skies and a slight chance of rain.  Well shit, in LA a slight chance of rain might as well be no rain at all.  I assured everyone that no threat of precipitation would deter this zombie walk from going down.

Organizationally speaking, a zombie mob had no hierarchy.  I don't lead the mob, I don't use officers to help wrangle zombies.  I figure, if I don't control this mob, then no one else should be in a position to either.  What we get is freedom to have a good time. Unfortunately, the drawback is chaos. 

Recall that I was concerned that the zombies would fill the entire train.  I decided, on the spot, that there should be 2 groups.  Group 1 would take the 4:39 train.  Group 2 would take the 4:49 train.  Group 1 would wait for Group 2, at the H&H station, then both groups would emerge from the station at 5PM. 

I sent Group 1 ahead, and remained to greet the stragglers and bring them on the 4:49 train with Group 2.  When we got to H&H, I was told that Group 1 had already left the station.  Ahh... c'est la vie. There's nothing I could have done to stop them, and very little I could've done about it then.  I was curious about where the hell they went though.  Group 2 surfaces and heads down Hollywood Blvd on the south side of the street towards Vine, according to the plan.  

While walking, I got my phone out and started checking my texts... in character.  I found out it's very difficult to frantically text while trying to look dumb while doing it.  My agents on the surface had reported in.  My friend Jake told me that Group 1 had apparently left a couple minutes before Group 2 arrived. My friend Pat had joined Group 1, but was in no position to slow the mob. 

At that point, I figured, I'd just make do. Group 2 was a solid group, and I was glad to have them.  Besides, if Group 1 was sticking to the plan at all, then we would run into them at the turn around point.

And that's precisely what happened.  Group 1 had apparently taken the north side of Hollywood Blvd, and had turned at Vine to come back around on the south side of the street, putting them directly in our path.  Group 2 was now face to face with a zombie horde of equal size.  I led Group 2 into a crush with Group 1.  It felt like that scene in Braveheart when the Scots and the Irish meet in the middle of the battlefield...

...only to shake hands and join forces.  I spotted so much recognition from the faces of Group 1. They knew that something had gone awry, and were looking to me to issue a new command.  That command was a zombie grunt for "turn around, back the way you came."

The zombie mob was now unified! We lurched down the drizzle slick Walk of Fame, back towards Hollywood & Highland.  We mobbed the Christians, we mobbed Superman, we mobbed Grauman's Chinese.  This group was large and spread far.  It would take 7 minutes for the whole herd to pass you. It was quite a sight.

Even though things had not gone quite according to plan, everything worked out in a happy accident.  But here's the lesson I learned that day, don't worry so much, and never split up the group.

2 years, 2 successful lurches.  Dare I go for 3?

History of the Subway Zombie Walk - Part I

In 2009 I created The Hollywood Subway Zombie Walk to celebrate my 30th birthday. I had no intention, at the time, of making this a re-occurring event. I made an Evite page and sent it to all of my friends hoping they'd come, dress up, and act like idiots with me on Hollywood Blvd. Had I left it at that, I doubt that the walk would have turned into an annual event.

Evite had limitations Not everyone used it, you'd have to have the correct email for everyone you invite, it was kind of exclusive in a way. I wanted a big turnout. If we were going to form a serious mob, I'd have to broadcast my intentions on a grander scale. So one evening, I started working the web.

My first stop was Twitter.  I didn't know much about the mechanics, but I figured, if it's good enough for the kids, then I guess I'd better get on board.  I figured I'd be able to relay up to the minute information to my mob and answer any questions they'd have through tweets.

With my new Twitter account squared away, it was time to tell people where to find me.  I started a forum post on zombiewalk.com that gave only the time, date, location of the walk, the previously mentioned twitter address, and a link to the Evite. It was bare bones, but I figured as long as the particulars were in the post, then I could focus my efforts on @SubwayZombie to fill in the gaps.

I suppose a couple years ago I hadn't seen many Facebook event pages. Evite seemed to be the way you got people to go to stuff back then.  But the goal was to get more than just my circle of friends on board, so I figured I'd experiment with creating one.  I found it was a lot like Evite, so I just copy and pasted the info from one to the other, invited the same friends that I had invited on the Evite, and left it at that.

It was a month before the walk, and I felt my internet presence was good, but maybe I needed more advertisement.  I designed a flyer with some crappy Photoshopping and got a couple hundred printed out at Kinko's.

I needed a good place to distribute them.  Fortunately for me, zombie interest was high this time of year thanks to the upcoming release of Zombieland to theaters.  The studio had even organized their own zombie walk to promote the event.  So that's where I decided to canvas.

The Zombieland Zombie Walk was my first time dressing up and lurching with a group of strangers.  It was an odd experience.  The idea was simple: Get a bunch of people to dress up, walk around Hollywood, and they get to see the movie for free. Zombies were collected in the courtyard of the Chinese Theatre, and when there wasn't enough zombies to fill the studio's quota, the organizers started pulling people in off the street, painting them up, and putting them in the mob.

I schmoozed my way through the courtyard, passing out flyers to those that I had profiled as true zombie walkers.  In my head I thought, they'll tell 10 friends, who will tell 10 friends, etc. etc. until we hit some sort of critical mass.

When the lurch started, I played my part, and got a feel for how a zombie walk works. I also got a feel for how one could fail.  This walk contained undesirable elements.  Rogue zombies that used the anonymity of a zombie pack to behave badly.  Some would invade businesses, another would overturn the public trash cans, another would block traffic in the street and get into arguments with the drivers.  This was probably the effect of pulling people in off of Hollywood Blvd to be in the walk.  Luckily, there were good zombies too.  Zombies who would put the trashcan back after that last jerk turned it over.  Zombies that never broke character, and were just fun to lurch with.  It was a learning experience.

Now that I had actually participated in a zombie walk, I could better lead one.  The month went on, and I didn't really see the numbers jumping that high on either Evite or Facebook.  I didn't have many followers on Twitter either. I didn't worry about it. I had cast a wide net across the interwebs. I figured that people who were going to attend may not have replied to the invites.  Maybe the listeners of the Pretty Good Podcast had heard Randy and Gina talk about the walk.  Maybe readers of the Examiner were planning on coming. I had to trust that word had gotten out and that the numbers would be there.  My biggest concern at the time was that there would be more people there to photograph the event than there were zombies.

October 17th, 2009 - 2 days before my birthday... a Saturday. Me and the wife got all made up in our finest zombie apparel and drove to the staging area for the walk, The North Hollywood Metro Station.  I remember seeing a father and his kids getting made up in the parking lot, and thinking how cool that was. Here was a family of zombies that I had never met, ready to walk with a group of people they'd never met. It gave me good vibes.

I made sure that we got there early so we could greet our guests. I stood in a high profile location near the gaping entrance to the subway system.  Friends and strangers alike started stumbling in, and our group became a mob.  There wasn't even a hundred people with us that year, but the group that we got together was great at being undead.

The subway ride was the best.  The zombies "sang" happy birthday to me during the ride to Hollywood and Highland.  The brain puns were already flying.  People were in character and were having a good time.

It was a nice day for a walk.  Our timing was perfect. My course kept us in the shade for the most part, and we hit the Chinese Theatre just as the sun was setting so no one had to cook in the sun.  At stop lights we'd pause to "feast" on a volunteer from our own ranks.  I'd chase cyclists, and yell for brains from the bowels of my lungs. We'd stare at the tourists, try and give them the creeps.  This was a much better experience that the Zombieland walk.

When the walk was over and the zombie's were kinda of directionless. I posed for a few photos with my new zombie friends, shook hands, and started talking about what to do next. To this day, I've never figured out a good way to break up a zombie walk. I had so much fun, that I didn't want it to end. I think some other people felt the same way.