AFM#13: Thumbwar Championships, Event Report
Our last flashmob event was all the way back at the end of 2008 so it was good to get back in the hot seat. The weather looked a bit dicey for a while but turned out great for the duration of the event even though it managed to run an hour overtime. We were a little light on numbers at the meeting place so I made a last ditch attempt to recruit some more mobbers by handing out instructions in the mall and directing them to our first activity, “Thumbwar Championships.” I managed to get another 5 or so people which swelled by an additional 4 or 5 before the event’s end.
For this event we also had two uni students, Jay Anderson and Andro Malapira, filming for a doco project for their uni course. The finished product is below.
(also available on youtube)
Here’s a basic rundown of the four activities from this event. If you participated then please leave your thoughts and comments about the event in the comments below. We should have a video coming shortly as well.
Thumbwar Championships
“Sign Up” at the malls balls meeting point and pair off for round one of the thumbwar championships. “1, 2, 3, 4, I declare a thumbwar,” and the battles begin. At the end of the round the losers are eliminated and the winners progress to round two. This continues until we have a Thumbwar Champion.
Boing, Boing
Mobber 1 starts bobbing up and down and saying “boing, boing, boing… etc” reasonably loudly. Other mobbers gradually join in. We started this behind the busking magician who’s often in the mall and he felt the need to make a number of comments as he thought we were stealing his show.
Simon Does Loop
Everybody walks a looping route from the mall and through the Myer Centre that includes… Check watch, walk towards Myer, tie shoe, go down escaltor, walk left, fake trip, go up escalator, go back out into the mall. Repeat the loop 5 times over, keeping your head in your newspaper all the time through.
We only managed 2.5 times through the loop before a security gaurd kicked us out… apparently reading the newspaper is against their conditions of entry.
Mouse honeydripper movie
Find a seat in the City Cross food court, near the Subway and Hungry Jacks. As mobber in mouse costume approaches shout out “Mouse!” and jump up on chairs, searching the floor. Mouse will walk through the food court and out the door into Grenfell Street. Once he is gone, sit back down and go about your business.
The female security guard chased down the mouse and stopped him just before he did his walk through the foodcourt. She didn’t want to chuck him out, but ask for a photograph with him. Unfortunately that put her right there for when we all shouted out and we were quickly asked to leave.
June 15th, 2009 at 11:00 am
I’ve been doing thumb pushups since the event to restore my honour. Gotta get in shape; Train harder for next year. My spirit was weak, next year I shall prevail.
I thought the loop concept was a great idea, by far my favourite ‘concept’ and a lot of fun. I reckon giving it another shot in the future (maybe in an area with less anal security guards) would be great. For some reason I keep picturing the end of The Thomas Crowne Affair, with the men in suits…
June 15th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Great fun. loved how we got more and more ppl joining in then we started.
The best bit was the boing boing i love the interesting things that come out of their mouths when they see like 10ppl walk up near them and start just acting crazy.
Dam security guards and old man for spoiling our fun.
C u at the next one ppl
June 15th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
In theory this was a very entertaining way to spend a Saturday afternoon, but so many things didn’t go according to plan.
The thumbwars idea went well except for the ambulance taking much of the attention away from us. The ‘boing boing’ was probably the most successful in my opinion and is visually a great event.
The loop idea just went downhill very quickly. Security guards stopping us at every turn, but we retaliated when we went around the back (North Terrace entrance) with our newspapers hidden and then came out of the Myer Centre with them out.
The mouse idea was probably the least successful, unfortunately. It was a great idea and we had the costume and everything, but again security ruined it.
It was a fun day, but due to security, a lot of things didn’t go to plan…but it was funny to see all of us standing outside the Myer Centre pretending to be reading our 2-3 pages of newspaper.
June 15th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Perhaps we should check with security before we do this sort of thing again? I was very uncomfortable doing some of the mobs in this one.
I know that the idea of a flashmob is to meet up, do something weird and then disperse – however shouting “MOUSE!” in a food-court is getting closer to being arrested as I would like.
The fact that we were all standing outside the Myer centre in a line seemed to be funnier than the going through the shops did.
Remember when we did the march down Rundle Mall to the body shop? They were warned beforehand and yet everyone had fun.
Perhaps we could let the relevant authorities know that we’re going to show up some time in the day, that we’re not collecting money and we’re not going to hurt people??
I’m sure something like this was done for the Ninja Run.
June 15th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
I’ve just thought of something else entertaining…when Josh ran up to a car stopped on Grenfell street in the mouse costume and the woman on the passenger side nearly jumped out of her seat.