Zombie Pub Crawl: Tales of survival and insobriety
A horde of costumed zombies gathers in Gold Medal Park prior to the pub crawl.
The anarchic chaos of Zombie Pub Crawl reached almost unmanageable numbers Saturday night, as all good zombie swarms should. Lines at the participating downtown, West Bank, and Seven Corners bars kept the 5,000+ zombies in attendance shuffling in the cold, waiting to get their maws on some delicious brains. Every bar along the crawl reached capacity before 10 p.m., with dozens of costumed, fake-blood-drenched revelers waiting outside to get inside for bands and zombie-themed specials like the Acadia Cafe’s "blood and baby flesh"—rum punch and turkey legs.
In addition to the sounds of car horns (zombies tend to disobey anti-jaywalking laws) and the constant clamoring for brains, the night was flooded with the sounds of many evil local bands, including Satanic surf-rock combo Lusurfer at the Nomad, dark cabaret band Butcher’s Bag at the Acadia, and rappers MC/VL at the Cabooze. At Palmer's, Cadillac Kolstad was one of the highlights of the night, raucously banging out foul-mouthed blues with his backing band The Flats, local legend Cornbread Harris, and a zombie burlesque dancer shaking her moneymaker on the piano. The packed Palmer’s bar cheered loudly for encores and brains throughout the night. At the 501 Club, Gay Witch Abortion made sure the crowd's eardrums were just as dead as they were, pulverizing the zombie hordes with their blistering noise-rock. Drummer Shawn Walker did his best to fend off a zombie who attempted to play his cymbals with a severed hand.
As costumes go, of course, merely being a zombie was just the baseline for many of the more creative participants. Clever variations on the theme included clown zombies, Mario and Luigi zombies, Santa Claus zombies, and an MC Hammer zombie (complete with questionable zombie blackface). A pair of Mormon missionary zombies shambled in the Seven Corners area complete with white shirts, black ties, and bike helmets, and one enterprising group had redone the entire main cast of The Wizard Of Oz in undead form.
Amid the throng of zombies there were a few human "survivors" as well, doing their best to (pretend to) fight back against the carnivorous undead, some resorting to camping atop bus shelters and firing shots at the undead with a Nerf gun. But as the official ZPC web site clearly states, “unlike many zombie movies, at the pub crawl the zombies always win. Always.” By the time the crawl-ending concert at the Cabooze was over, the thirst for brains (and booze) was, at least temporarily, quenched.
