The San Francisco Pillow Fight Club 2009 at Justin Harmon Square in the Embarcadero definitely qualifies as one of those "only-in-San-Francisco" moments; I mean, what other US city would allow its denizens to run amok, wielding pillows as their choice of weapons, reenacting fight scenes from "300" or "Braveheart"? So in spite of the looming rain, my roommate and I decided to brave the elements and check out this annual quirky event.
I would've thought it was going to be weird riding on the MUNI with my pillow only to find twenty other people with their pillows in their laps. In some sense the kind of pillow that people brought with them reflected a part of their own personalities. It was cross-section worthy of a United Colors of Benetton advertisement: a young Japanese couple, the girl with a Hello Kitty pillow, and the guy with a plain white pillow, with no pillow covers; a group of middle aged friends with their psychedelically groovy designed pillow cases; and a woman who must've been in her late fifties who had with her a small pillow but had decided to become a spectator of the festivities instead.
My friend who had been to last year's fight has told me to make sure to bring masks or any protective face guards. I scoffed at that advice, thinking that it will just get in the way, and definitely ate my words (among other things); by the end of it, I must've inhaled and ingested three pillows worth of down feathers. She also warily warned me that apparently, last year, some no-good troublemakers decided to put rocks in their pillows and inflicted unwarranted pain on others. Luckily, I didn't encounter any rock-filled pillows, though I did get hit by a wet one; it was neither pleasant nor welcomed.
The pillow fight started at 6pm, but we were running a bit late (c'mon, did you expect anything else?) and didn't get there until about 6:15; it surprised me a bit when I saw some people leaving as we were getting nearer the plaza. For a moment, I thought that we had missed the entire thing, though as we got to the plaza, throngs of people were bashing away. My roomie and I headed for the middle to see what kinds of trouble we can get ourselves into.
There were so many people, that for awhile, I got separated from my roomie and the other people that I came with. But somehow, I managed to bump into Kendra and Zach, my CouchSurfer friends whom I haven't seen in awhile. Since school work has been piling up, I haven't been able to host or attend any of the events, but it sure was nice catching up with them, however short it might have been.
It was organized chaos, to say the least. Everyone was hitting everyone else, in varying levels of force, which I guess was the point. Every so often, someone ripped their pillow and throw all of its contents up in the air. I felt like I just got feathered and tarred as I walked out of the huddled mass of hysteria, gasping for fresh air.
I didn't think about this at the time, but the really good thing about this whole exercise was that it gives you a chance to flirt with someone without actually "flirting". If you hit someone and they hit you back, you can initiate a "pillow fight"; if they keep hitting you, I guess you can take that as a sign to pursue it; if they stop, then you can turn your attention elsewhere. I guess this gives some credence to that age-old theory that was promulgated when we were in kindergarten: "when someone hits you, that means that he or she likes you."
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