International Pillow Fight Day 2010 – at Pershing Square – Los Angeles, CA

While part of the population was out Saturday at the Apple store to get their new iPad, the other half were on their way to downtown LA for some fun with friends and total strangers. This was the International Pillow Fight day that takes place every year all over the world where this loosely organized event is staged in cities all over the globe. The people at NewMindSpace who inspired this and other like event are all about using the urban landscape as a playground. Getting there early and scooping out things around downtown LA it was hard to tell that anything was about to go down at Pershing Square with the mix of people cruising around. After all, people walking around in a costume carrying a pillow or even a group of three people with pillows is not that abnormal for downtown.

Even with 15 minutes to go before the official start at 3pm there were not too many people there yet, but every 5 minutes more and more people started to fill Pershing Square. Now with 5 minutes to go, our photographer was fully embedded in the midst of the crowd that had seemingly swelled in just 10 minutes to what could be estimated at 600+ people.

From looking around it was pretty clear that there was no one really in charge, if there was no one could really tell. As the minutes clicked down to 3 o’clock sharp the anticipation could be felt in the air as people were stretching their arms, making sure that their glasses and other loose items were secured in their pockets and some were positioning themselves to beat the day lights out of certain people that only a pillow could deliver. This years event was certainly a lot larger than last years event and the pillow fight was moved to the grass instead of by the fountain as before.

Then at 3 a loud yell went out and the pillow fight was on!

After the first 10 minutes of relentless mayhem group pillow fighting like a scene out of the movie Braveheart, a bunch of one on one pillow fights broke out all over. Some of the pillow fighting also saw gangs of pillow fighters targeting certain people all in the name of fun.

Random people throughout the crowd were fighting with couch cushions that in all likelihood were liberated off couches along the streets of downtown. 30 minutes into the event the fighting was still continuing and the grassy area of Pershing Square was now full covered with pillow feathers. The feathers were flying everywhere all over the square, so much so that it looked snow.

Being right in the middle of this if was impossible to not inhale the feathers and stuffing that consumed the air. With many pillows now beaten to a pulp many of the participants started to refill their empty pillow cases with the feathers that covered the ground so they could get back into the fray.

Part of the fun was just seeing the reaction of passersbys that stumbled on to the hundreds of people pillow fighting that from a far may have look more ominous. On closer examination they could see that this was an old fashioned adolescent pillow fight that was taken out of the bedroom and put into a public space. During the event there really was no police presence to speak of, or really needed, only 2 cops could be seen at the far end of the park who very unconcerned about the overall event.

After about an hour things started to die down and the crowd that assembled for the 2010 Pillow Fight were slow dispersing to local bars, eaterys, the metro and the surrounding parking lots. A handful of participants stayed behind to help clean up all the feathers which is quite a big task, so props to them for being stand out people for helping return the space to it's former state.

Stay in touch with theses websites on going out to next years pillow fight no matter where you are in the world.  www.pillowfightday.com   www.newmindspace.com   www.pillowfightlosangeles.com


The over 90 photos in the gallery tell the story better than words, so go check them all out HERE