Hot Child in the City

Today I got my first taste of a New York summer. Ninety-four degrees, 60% humidity- what better to do than run around and play outdoor games in the city? This weekend is the Come Out and Play festival in New York. I'm not sure how to describe it, but its a non-profit organization that coordinates this annual festival in different cities each year. Games played are usually scavenger-hunt, hide-and-go-seek type games, but played in public spaces on large scale, and with total strangers. Its a recipe for madness, and incredible fun.

The games we got a chance to play were: Super Happy Fun City Bingo and Search Brigade, both taking place in Tompkins Square Park in the Lower East Side. In the first- we received a poster-board and a polaroid camera, and had 10 minutes to capture stills of as many bingo squares as we could. A few examples of the squares were: a Toyota (we never found one), a flying fish (the organizers put a Nemo doll in a tree), and a dance party (we created one with a stranger carrying a boom-box and two confused old tourists). It was insane running around the park in that mid-day heat, we were sweating profusely from start to finish, but it was totally worth it: we got 14 squares. Unfortunately some other team got 16, so we got 2nd place. Our prize? Dildo-resembling 'Bingo markers' of all colors.

The 2nd game, Search Brigade, was something I had never played before, but out of the group of ~20 people, 3 were made Brigadiers, aka searchers, and the rest were Fugitives. We were all given walkie-talkies (the fugitives and searchers were on different bandwiths) to coordinate cornerings. The Fugitives were to hide in the park, and every time one was caught by a Brigadier, they also became a Brigadier. I volunteered to be a searcher, which was really fun, because I'd much rather chase than be chased. And chase I did. I'm proud to say I caught 3 people on my own, plus an awesome 3-way assist catch between myself, Derek and another Brigadier. So the game comes to conclusion when only one fugitive is left, he/she must survive 5 minutes without getting caught, and they win. Our last man standing was actually very sly, inconspicuously lounging in the grass with the other park-goers. Derek spotted him, however, and this crazy chase began. Me and another Brigadier were hot on his tail, and had him cornered in a basketball court, but he scaled a NINE-FOOT fence in like 35 seconds and survived. Insane. Below is our Search Brigade crew, CW from top: Derek, Laura, Michelle, Jiasi (pronounced Jesse), and me.

The funny thing was that Jiasi was still an un-caught fugitive, but either her walkie-talkie died or she was out of range, because she never heard the end of the game and was sitting in her bush for a good 10 or 15 minutes after the game ended, sorry Jiasi. Needless to say, she didn't like this game very much.


Afterwards, tired, hot and sticky as can be from all the running and sweating, we decided it was food time. Where to? White Castle we decided. But first we blazed up and danced around with giant bags of weed, of course. A full meal under $5, the cost and taste of McDonald's, but I'm glad we knocked that off our list of places to eat.

I feel like Nick Gilder's song never applied more than today, to our entire group:
Hot child in the city
Runnin' wild and lookin' [sweaty],
So young to be loose and on [their] own,
When [they] go downtown, [they] walk like [they] just don't care, care
Hot child in the city

I love you New York!

OMG I totally forgot, I met Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock!