Snowball Mobs!

December 5, 2003 12:08 PM

With a potential blizzard blanketing the northeast, it looks like flashmobs are out and snowball fights are in. What do you think, are we gonna see a lot more of this kind of thing now that online invitations are setting the standard? This invite seems to be flying around NYC pretty fast indeed. The question is: How big will the battle be?
posted by n9 (24 comments total)

You'll put your eye out young short alphanumeric string!
posted by substrate at 12:12 PM on December 5, 2003

Is there gonna be television live news coverage? I mean I generally tend to avoid network TV on weekend afternoons because I find professional sports boring and.. uhm, lemmingesque? That's not a word... However, I'd tune in to watch half of the Big Apple throw snowballs at the other half of the Big Apple. That'd be fun! So long as I was safe and cozy and warm down here in the Big D, where we'd have to make like, mud balls. That would suck.
posted by ZachsMind at 12:29 PM on December 5, 2003

Damn. Sounds like fun. But even better if people organized into snowball fight teams by affiliations - by political parties, sports teams of choice, income levels, religions. Or maybe that would be too divisive.

Different boroughs. Yeah, that's it
posted by troutfishing at 12:32 PM on December 5, 2003

/me wonders if he'd be able to catch a train up from Philly...
posted by thebabelfish at 12:43 PM on December 5, 2003

troutfishing: "But even better if people organized..."

Uhm... then how would that be different from professional sports? Isn't that how baseball was destroyed? A century ago it was just a bunch of guys who loved the game. Today it's a multimillion dollar conglomerate behemoth thing that squeezes all the fun out of the game in interests of money and fame..

Nah, just let the snowball fight be every New Yorker for his or her own self. The last one standing out in the cold, who hasn't retreated to the nearest Starbucks, is the winner. And if someone shows up trying to sell T-Shirts that say "I survived the great new york snowball fight of 2003!" everyone gets bonus points for pelting him with snowballs on sight!
posted by ZachsMind at 12:47 PM on December 5, 2003

What a bunch of babies. Back in my day we had broken glass and hot ember fights!
posted by Kafkaesque at 12:48 PM on December 5, 2003

But even better if people organized into snowball fight teams by ...Different boroughs. Yeah, that's it

Qu-izz-eens repraznetin'. We'd whup the yuppie Manhattanites Burberry clad butts. Although I have a feeling, if I showed up n9 would take my head off with a tightly packed iceball. :)
posted by jonmc at 12:53 PM on December 5, 2003

I can't go, sadly, and just for the record I aim for the neck like all bleeding heart NPR listening snowball fighters do. Nonletha snowball tactics. :)

I wish I could go but I'm looking after my baby. I hope there are pictures to see.
posted by n9 at 1:06 PM on December 5, 2003

As a veteran of a rather large Central Park snowball fight back in January 2002, I highly recommend attending "The Great Manhattan Snowball Fight." Seek high ground, fighters. (Oh, and what jonmc said. Queens represent.)
posted by VulcanMike at 1:06 PM on December 5, 2003

But even better if people organized into snowball fight teams

As someone who was once a freshman in prep school, let me say, "You'd think so, wouldn't you." The thing is, there won't be any noodle-armed 9 year-olds on the other side. You haven't known fear until you're 13-14 and the first good snow hits the ground. There you are: huddled in a group in the common room dressed for winter athletics (basketball requires shorts, thank you very much) and you all know you have to run the gauntlet in approximately 2 minutes.

It probably looked like a nature documentary from an outside perspective, the healthiest and biggest making it out alive while the slow and small get caught by the Scylla and Caribdis of campus: one dorm's three-man slingshot and another dorm's set of baseball pitchers. Both of whom are trying to find puddles to cover their enormous snow spheres in ice before launching them at 90mph+.

Good times. Someone let emergency rooms around the 5 boroughs know they will be packed with eye and ear injuries, twists and sprains from the slip-and-fall older crowd, etc.
posted by yerfatma at 1:12 PM on December 5, 2003

*cough* Snow Craft *cough cough*
posted by silusGROK at 1:16 PM on December 5, 2003

I'm SO there.
posted by rushmc at 1:48 PM on December 5, 2003

posted by quonsar at 2:12 PM on December 5, 2003

Wow, been a while since I've seen a good, old-fashioned NYC-filter thread...
posted by kaibutsu at 3:04 PM on December 5, 2003

Flashmobs, not blogs, are the CB radios of this decade.
posted by pmurray63 at 3:06 PM on December 5, 2003

Wow, been a while since I've seen a good, old-fashioned NYC-filter thread...


And it's making some of us terribly homesick, damn it.
posted by CunningLinguist at 3:48 PM on December 5, 2003

*throws virtual snowball at Cunning*
posted by amberglow at 4:00 PM on December 5, 2003

*lords it over CunningLinguist*

*throws snowball at amberglow* :)
posted by attackthetaxi at 4:31 PM on December 5, 2003

*packs snow around some frozen dog doo and hurls it at taxi* ; >
posted by amberglow at 4:35 PM on December 5, 2003

*accidentally drives taxi through huge slush puddle near amberglow at high speed*
posted by attackthetaxi at 5:11 PM on December 5, 2003

you win!
posted by amberglow at 5:12 PM on December 5, 2003

Darnit, amberglow, and I was just getting started. ;)
posted by attackthetaxi at 5:25 PM on December 5, 2003

splashing slush beats everything except a snow-covered rock (and i only use those on people i don't like)
posted by amberglow at 6:06 PM on December 5, 2003

But snowy poo on those you like? I'll take the rock!

Will anyone who actually goes to this shindig report back so exiles can live vicariously?
posted by CunningLinguist at 6:15 AM on December 6, 2003