Rocket Talk: When's the TTC Going to Roll Out More Fare Collection Methods?
Newsstand: November 9, 2009
Zack Taylor in Disney Mama Drama
The Daily Photoist: November 9, 2009
Elsewhere in the Ist-a-Verse
Earlier this afternoon, an army of pillow-wielders (and camera-wielders) descended on Nathan Phillips Square to take part in Newmindspace's hopefully-annual pillow fight.
While the floor of the square filled up with feathers (which were, of course, cleaned up at the end by a pack of volunteers), some fighters hurled out lines from movies like Scarface ("say hello to my little friend!") and 300 ("tonight we dine in hell!"); some picked out and fought intense one-on-one battles; and others just randomly hurled their pillows in every possible direction. Those in search of a reason to slag Newmindspace would be hard-pressed to find one: injuries were as minimal as injuries get—a slightly bloody nose—and the worst mischief in the day seemed to be the theft of several pillows.
Numbers didn't quite approach the 1,000 confirmed attendees on Facebook, but a few hundred strong still showed up to fight—or record the action around the square with everything from holy-crap-thank-God-I-had-this-on-me cameraphones to the another-day-at-the-office video cameras of the local mainstream media. The abundance of cameras wasn't surprising for a Newmindspace event (after all, even CNN had a slideshow for the New York pillow fight on their website), but there were so many lenses that when, as the number of participants started dwindling after about an hour, those with cameras actually started to outnumber those with pillows.
While some fighters seemed a little unhappy about the omnipresence of cameras (especially when a circle of photographers formed, as it did around a smiling little kid pinning down his friend dressed in a Spiderman costume), the nature of Newmindspace's events is that they are both participator- and spectator-friendly. Toronto needs more of what they've got to offer.
Photo by David Topping. Lots more are in the event's Flickr set, or can be found by searching Flickr at large or Torontoist's Flickr Pool.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
I was afraid that would happen. It looks like way too many people standing around with cameras. How can you have fun when everywhere you turn you have to make sure you don't hit a camera man?
I think it's part of the fun. The photographers who genuinely didn't want to get hit kept their distance, but a few who didn't really care (or wanted to have more fun) waded into it (I figured I might as well hang out in the middle and I definitely got smacked a few times). Eventually, I just got kind of tired of watching and borrowed Chris Tindal's pillow and got in there.
I wasn't there, but have seen the pictures and talked to someone who was there and there is something I find puzzling... no cops. anywhere. not that I want cops to show up to everything, but I just find it curious that these nice white downtown hipsters can organize a gathering of 100's of people and a) not get shut down by cops or security and b) that there were no cops around at all (even for something like first aid) during the almost hour long 'fight.
Can you imagine if the African/Caribbean community organized a pillowfight where up to 1000 people were expected to show up? Do you think some cops would check it out?
Power to the newmindspace organizers who can put together these big fun public events. I just hope they never have to deal with any liability issues.
k
Karen: Are you thinking of any specific examples?
there were cops at capture the flag.
Cops at events are generally paid-duty officers, booked by the organizers, if needed. It's a cushy job in this case because they make good money, so I'm sure an officer would love to be standing by at something like this.
Pride, Caribana, etc. pay for extra policing. Until recently, I think, a large number of police were switched to 8-hour shifts from 10-hour shifts so they have to work events like Caribana to meet their weekly 40-hour quota. An officer told me once that Pride was the favourite event to work for police because nothing ever happens at it and people are having fun. Not sure how they feel about Caribana, but it gets a lot of bad press for what is statistically pretty uneventful considering that it's a mass influx of a million tourists.
Karen, maybe I'm crazy, but I totally remember seeing cops around the perimeter keeping an eye on things.
Plus, the attendees weren't all "nice white downtown hipsters"; there were tons and tons of people in pretty much every imaginable definable category. Well, they were pretty much all nice, but you get what I mean.