By Andrew Rose and Jennifer O’Connell
A joint breakdown of a flashmob by two of Rookerville’s finest, Andrew Rose and Jennifer O’Connell. You’ll find Andrew’s responses in Black and Jennifer’s in Blue. Enjoy.
The first time I ever stepped foot in San Francisco, my weeklong vacation just so happened to overlap with Halloween, which, that year, just so happened to fall on a Saturday. I was out west doing the tourist thing – heading out to Alcatraz, taking a side trip to wine country, walking across the Golden Gate Bridge, etc. – but mostly I was visiting a good friend who I hadn’t seen since the twilight of college. Leading up to the 31st, I asked her if she had any potential plans for us (I had, in fact, packed a costume in my luggage), to which she explained that there was a secret email thread she had been subscribed to that would detail the whereabouts of guerrilla dance parties situated at the end of piers and other random, out-of-the-way locations. The point of these mobile, public celebrations was to “take back Halloween for the city”, or, for the more mischievous participants, get wild all night devoid of police interference.
I was skeptical at first that there was an online entity capable of organizing all this, as these were the days before Occupy Wall Street and other social media-initiated public events. But as it turns out, the fine citizens of San Francisco are quite fond of their free, internet-fueled social goings-on – citywide pillow fights, pub crawls, and most importantly, flashmobs. During this very same Halloween planning, my friend revealed she was also subscribed to an email list that provided her with dates, locations, and tutorials for the choreographed dances that broke out at random throughout the city. In the few years since then, these have become more organized, spawning a website and even scheduled group rehearsal times leading up to the big events. Of course, there are freelance flashmob planners as well, one of whom is the very same friend that first introduced me to the concept.
The day after Whitney Houston’s death, I woke up on a couch in Tahoe thinking, someone needs to throw a flashmob in her honor. Who could DO that? A month later, I found myself on a street corner in the Castro with 1,000 other people busting a move to “Dance With Somebody.” It had taken a youtube instructional video, my friends’ mega-speakers, a well-timed biopsy, and a website called funcheap.com to generate this much enthusiasm. We took the street, closing down the intersection for 4 minutes and 53 seconds. After the dancers had dissipated, a woman from a rougher part of town approached us. She told us about how she had gathered all of the young girls from her neighborhood and brought them to the flashmob so they could feel what it was like to dance in the street with no fear. I cried. I was hooked.
The Macklemob started as one of my half-baked ideas to empower kids and spread mass amounts of joy. I had big plans. I would get a real marching band to perform the horn breakdown! I would write to Macklemore himself and convince him to come! I enlisted the help of my two friends Sam and Ricky, and together we made an instructional video and started to spread the word.
Macklemore never wrote back. The college marching band I had lined up went on summer vacation. I was called to attend staff training away from phone and email contact the week leading up to the mob. By the time Friday rolled around, four unlikely people had answered the call for marching band musicians: a viola, a trombone, a melodica, and a piccolo. We had our speakers, we had an ad on funcheap.com, and I had the sinking feeling you get in your stomach when you set something in motion that is spiraling wildly out of your control.
I was tentatively planning on showing up in the first place, but when Jenny ended an unrelated email with the line, “COME TO THE FLASHMOB!!! And if you know any marching bands, send ‘em my way”, my curiosity piqued. A few days later, when I walked into the kitchen for a glass of water only to discover my wife practicing the moves in the tutorial, attendance became all but guaranteed.
We hopped on the BART Friday evening without a great deal of time to spare, but as we dashed up the stairs of the station, people were still milling around on the sidewalk. As is often the case when presented with the task of trying to corral a group of free spirits into concrete plans, things were running a bit late. There was definitely a feeling of anticipation in the air, as the “surprise” factor of the the flashmob had become mildly diluted after the event was featured on a popular local website. Of course, the gathering hordes of amateur performers ready to break out in dance at a moment’s notice didn’t exactly help things to remain inconspicuous, either. It didn’t matter. Once the opening piano chords of “Can’t Hold Us” began to play, cheers erupted and teenaged break dancers took to the proverbial stage. As the vast majority of observers pushed forward in attempts to secure a better view, I decided ‘up’ was the more appropriate direction to move in this instance. I was fortunate enough to locate an empty spot on top of a newspaper stand, and a quick climb resulted in an unobstructed seat for the remainder of the performance. As it turned out, I had managed to sit right next to three large garbage bags full of balloons, and when cued by those better informed than I, my small contribution in the special effects department was assisting in their release.
The amount of fun the participants were having was evident in the smiles on their faces. Was it so crowded that many of them weren’t able to move effectively? Sure. Did a large of amount of them ignore the “don’t mirror this” instruction in the video tutorial? A solid yes, to the point where the incongruence actually looked planned. But in the end, it was all irrelevant. The flashmob’s mastermind was hoisted up on the shoulders of her fans, and everyone ran it back one more time for good measure.
A scene was unfolding at the Powell Street BART Station, and it wasn’t pretty. A cop and a preacher were engaged in a shouting match, and a crowd had gathered to watch. Sam took advantage of the commotion, and pulled the car up to the curb. “What did I do wrong?” the preacher demanded. Posturing wildly, the cop slapped handcuffs on his wrists and growled something about amplified sound. Shielded by a row of newspaper boxes, we unloaded two giant speakers, a generator and a gas can, and I covered them hastily with a tarp. I might be going to jail tonight.
It was 6:54pm, and there were way too many people for comfort at this particular intersection on this particular Friday. I nodded at a group of my Frisbee friends, waved cheerfully at my cousin, and tried to pretend like everything was normal. I walked through the buzzing mass of people and they parted, unbidden, to let me through; each person I passed trying to catch my eye as if we were good friends in on the same joke. I realized we might as well be friends – we’d likely spent a few hours together on youtube. “It’s her!” someone whispered. “That’s the Macklemob girl.” They snapped pictures. I squirmed under their attention, suddenly self-conscious of my moon boots and sparkly neon adventure pants.
The cop had caught sight of our equipment, and he was on the warpath. Smiling sweetly, I listened as he spat out words like misdemeanor and arrested and video surveillance, and calmly explained what we were here to do. I could see him sizing up the growing crowd (we were reaching 500 now), and he deflated a little. He gave the go-ahead to Sam to set up the speakers, and biked away. The trombonist’s mother appeared at my shoulder. Her son must have been in elementary school. “The police are across the street! We have to go now,” she said. “GO!” I yelled to Ricky, who was controlling the play button. He went, and the cheer from the crowd was the last thing I heard before the beat dropped.
I have seen it once before, but the sight of hundreds of people dancing the moves that I created in imperfect unison is one I may never get used to. I could almost feel every heartbeat thumping in time to the bass, and I knew that we would remember for a long time that we are part of something much bigger. We ducked, we rolled, we jumped, we threw our hands in the air (carefully, because we were packed in so tight); we danced. The marching band solo hit, and the unlikely quartet played their unlikely instruments like they might never play another note for as long as they live. The song ended and people were buzzing with joy, hugging each other, hoisting me up on their shoulders, chanting, “One more time! One more time!”
We did it one more time, with feeling.
