Now San Francisco is usually seen as a haven of tolerance and open-mindedness but that reputation has been tarnished of late.
Fresh from the ban on gay marriage that passed last November the city authorities are now looking at banning flash mobs following the now-traditional St Valentine's Day flash mob pillow fight.
Flash mobbing, if you aren't aware of the phenomenon, is the sudden grouping of like-minded individuals who don't know each to perform seemingly bizarre actions and then disappear, never to meet again. Think Situationists with cell phones and you're not far wrong.
In the past these have included
mass disco dancing while wearing headphones, mass freezes in
New York and
London and the aforementioned pillow fight.
But it seems last month's frolic, which involved up to 3,000 participants and went on for hours, were too much. The city
reports that the cleanup of feathers cost thousands of dollars and it wants the organisers to pay.
However, Sleuth thinks the authorities should beware from being too heavy handed. After all, there may be a way to spontaneously organise off-the-wall protests against such a crackdown...
10 Mar 2009
