Every year on Valentines Day, there is a city wide pillow fight in San Francisco. It is called the "Great San Francisco Valentines Day Pillowfight" and this year it was pretty crazy. Approximately 6,000-7,000 people gathered at this event. It was not hosted by anyone in particular, it just happened through word-of-mouth, emailing, and of course facebook.
At 6:00PM, when the Ferry Building's clock tower rang, everyone exploded into what one of my friends called a pillow fighting "massacre." People didn't get hurt, they just got swept along for the ride.
Upon stepping into the fight I was swallowed up by the crowd and pushed, pillow by pillow, through waves of people. My hight made the experience surreal and slightly terrifying because I couldn't see the top of the crowd. It was exhilarating. I couldn't see how far into the pile I'd sunk. I couldn't see anything but feathers and smiles and always checked aggression.
When I did finally get out of the swarm, I still felt the need to go back. I sunk in again amongst the costumed characters, teenagers, college students, 40-somethings, senior citizens, and more. It was a huge undulating swarm like a school of fish or a rage of hornets.
The best descriptor of the the crowd's sentiment though is to describe something I saw upon coming back to the pillow fight an hour or so after leaving. A tall and lanky teenage boy was wearing an adult sized diaper and metallic fairy wings. I was so scared because one after another he was being pounded on by pillows. He'd hit one person and then three more would gather around him, hitting him with pillows. I wanted to step in, to stop them. Then something amazing happened, he lost his glasses. This, I was sure, was going to be when they pummeled him. I wanted to jump forth and stop them, to pull the pillows away from each of his attackers. Just as I was about to try and stop them though, he stopped and yelled "please! please! stop! I've lost my glasses!" and everyone around him dropped their pillows, their smiles left their faces, and they all dropped down to the feather covered floor. I watched as each person searched for those glasses. Their hands swept through piles of down and fluff until someone yelled "I found them!" and everyone cheered.
A boy pilling up pillow cases with fluff and down so as to continue with the fight. He came up to me after I took this photo and said "Here, you don't have a pillow. Take this, I've just stuffed it."
Location: The Great San Francisco Valentines Day Pillowfight, Justin Herman Plaza, SF, CA, U.S.A.
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