Participants can just show up on the day of the free event to register and sign a waiver, but online forms are available, which can be printed and filled out ahead of time, simplifying the process. “That usually involves talcum powder or corn starch to make their face really white, some fake blood, and then dark eye shadow around their eyes.” “We have a table set up with volunteers who will do quick, on-the-fly zombie makeup,” she says. Many of those folks, Oppelaar says, decide to take advantage of free zombie makeup offered on-site, and eventually jump into the fray, as well. Others come just to watch Save Our City unfold. “And we had a local chef show up in a gross chef costume with blood all over it and a fake eyeball coming out of his cheek.” “We had one person show up like the grim reaper,” says Oppelaar. Some participants go all out and dress up in elaborate zombie-themed costumes. Prizes are given for first-, second- and third-place teams. The winning team collects all the items and brings them to a designated area known as the helicopter lift-off point. Last year, Black Drop organizers added an objective-based team element, with slightly different rules and the necessity to visit sponsors’ storefronts – or “safe houses” – to pick up a picture of an item needed to escape a zombie apocalypse. The first small group of zombies is given a five-minute start, and then the survivors are set loose. “We have one family who every year goes all out – the dad, the twins, their younger kid – with full-on prosthetic makeup, scary-looking zombies,” says Oppelaar. “But eventually you will be it’s just going to happen.” Photo credit: Madeleine Easton “Even if you come dressed as a zombie, you won’t start as a zombie,” Oppelaar explains. The game as it’s played now starts with a much smaller number of zombies initially released. Afterward, we said, let’s do it again next year, make it even bigger, and define the rules a bit more.” “We just gave up on having tag, threw all the water balloons into the middle of the park, and had a giant free-for-all,” says Oppelaar. Within five minutes of the inaugural event’s start, everybody was a zombie.
When survivors run out of wet weaponry, they must return to the safe zone to re-up their ammo. If a zombie touches a survivor before being hit by a water balloon, the survivor returns to home base and changes their green armband to orange they are now also a zombie and re-join the game to try and “infect” remaining survivors. If a zombie is hit by a water balloon, they must “freeze” for 60 seconds, allowing the survivor a chance to escape. The object of the game is simple: Survivors, equipped with four water balloons each, search out zombies within a designated “zombie containment zone” in the downtown area.
Twenty zombies (wearing bright orange armbands) left the home base and safe zone of the steps at Maritime Heritage Park, pursued by a crowd of balloon-wielding “survivors” (designated by vivid green armbands). The first Save Our City event was fun, if a bit chaotic. She liked the idea of a water balloon fight – another event Bryant and Mastema once put on – but she envisioned it as tag with a twist: Zombies! “We were looking for something that was a spectacle and fun to participate in – that didn’t involve vomit,” Oppelaar says with a laugh. She was looking for something to replace the Peepfest event that the shop’s original owners, Teri Bryant and Alexarc Mastema, had thrown in the past (Imagine an eating contest involving ingesting copious amounts of delicious marshmallow Peeps, which ends in, well, a most unsavory way.) The idea originally came to Black Drop Coffeehouse co-owner Stephanie Oppelaar in 2010. Survivors V – the popular Maritime Heritage Park-based event that grows bigger each year. It’s all part of the Black Drop Coffeehouse’s Save Our City: Zombies vs. Sounds fun, right? Now throw in hundreds of balloon tossers decked out as zombies, and it gets downright crazy. Imagine a massive downtown water balloon fight.
0 kommentar(er)
