Cross-posted from Double Consciousness.
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Sorry to intrude with facts from an SF Chron editorial board piece, then:
For the V-day pillow fight: The Department of Public Works deployed 69 workers in three extra shifts, at an estimated cost of $19,000, to rid the city of the sticky feather litter.
A “flash mob” shaving-cream fight last week left yet another big mess at the cable-car turnaround at Powell and Market streets. That turnaround is a major gathering place for tourists.
If you look at all the pictures posted at SF Chron, none of the aftermath pictures that have lots of participants in them show the ground as clean; in all of those, it’s still covered in shaving cream. Only the pics of the cleanup worker show a … what do you know … cleaned-up space. If anyone has pictures of the participants grabbing mops and buckets from the city sanitation crew (or having brought their own), I’ll believe that they did take responsibility, but given what info we have, that doesn’t seem to be what happened.
Seriously, how difficult is “clean up your own mess” as an ethic?
Killjoy. :-)
Maybe I misunderstood your previous statement about the rain washing it away. Are we in agreement that it’s likely that *someone* cleaned up the bulk of it? (A quick note: I worked in San Francisco for a year, and while it did rain very often in the winter, I wouldn’t say it was every single day. My husband, who grew up in the Bay Area, confirmed this.)
I could just as easily say that you’re bending over backwards to find any possible reason to defend it. I don’t think guessing at personal motives is going to help anyone’s argument here.
I still think the damn groups are performance art. The first time I ever heard of one was a zombie flash mob in 2005 that happened while I was visiting NYC. It was on Halloween.
What else is a bunch of people showing up — at a time and place that is theoretically unexpected — pretending to act out something that exists only in our culture’s fantasies (books, movies, television shows), but performance art? Spectacle for the participants to enjoy, but also for everyone else to marvel at.
Of course, I didn’t know that they sprayed blood at those affairs, and if they spray blood on people who don’t want to be sprayed, then that’s a problem that needs immediate management, because of consent.
I find less inherent delight in things like shaving cream fights or pillow fights. Those aren’t things designed to make me stop and blink for a moment, puzzled, at how they can possibly be occurring. But that’s personal taste in art, it seems to me.
A while ago, a friend of mine from MIT linked me to a page of images taken of places where people had carefully built constructions to make parks, and campus buildings, and other places, look as though they were levels from one of the Mario video games. That wasn’t specially commissioned either. It was, again, a spectacle to surprise and delight everyone — the people who made the level, and the people who discovered the world transformed.
I think adding random moments of joy and strangeness to the world is a good thing. It’s a thing I *want* my society to support — just like I want them to support the painting of murals on abandoned walls, even if the artists are armed with spray cans and have no training, because I’ll be damned if I haven’t seen gorgeous art emerging out of graffiti, particularly when people can take their time and do their work in the open — and maybe that means allocating more money to clean-up budgets every year. So, okay. More money to clean-up budgets it is. More art in the world please, not less, even if that art takes new forms, and is transitory.
Julie, I agree, someone cleaned the bulk of it up. There’s still signs of it around in the second photo, but the next rainfall will clear it up.
I didn’t guess at anyone’s motives; I said that your arguments seem to be weak, but I didn’t speculate on what’s motivating you to make weak arguments.
If I argued “we have no photos of the city workers cleaning up the ground, so the flash mob must have cleaned it after themselves”, then I’d be bending over backwards as much as PG is in comment #101 (and with an equal lack of logic). But I’m not, so I don’t think the equivalence you’re making is fair.
Yes, I agree that someone cleaned it up, but we don’t know who cleaned it up. Maybe they were jerks and left the ground as completely coated with shaving cream as it was in the slip-and-slide photos; maybe they cleaned most of the mess up. We just don’t know. And to pretend we do know — or to say, as PG does, that a lack of evidence is proof of one’s own views — is not a reasoned judgment of the situation.
Amp,
If I argued “we have no photos of the city workers cleaning up the ground, so the flash mob must have cleaned it after themselves”, then I’d be bending over backwards as much as PG is in comment #101 (and with an equal lack of logic).
Where is there any indication that the participants would even be able to help with the cleanup? I’m not saying that we lack only pictures of them doing the cleaning; we also don’t have any reason to believe that they came prepared with the tools to clean (as city workers clearly did). Cleaning shaving cream with one’s bare hands doesn’t sound effective. Why do you think it’s of equal or greater likelihood that they did clean up than that they didn’t?
PG, it doesn’t take sophisticated equipment. It requires a bunch of toweling that you don’t mind getting dirty. Don’t take this the wrong way, but did you never have a shaving cream fight?
I think we have no evidence about who cleaned up because we have no evidence who cleaned up.
* * *
I really agree with Mandolin’s most recent post; I think this is a form of art, and we should consider what it would mean to forbid it. And unlike Mandolin, I do find this delightful. But the real-life video game installation she describes is better.
Any possible reason? No, just personal experiences including having to stay late and clean up after “performance art” because some people might think it’s shaving cream, some might think it’s pillow fights and some might think it’s food fights. And some people might think it’s people staying two hours late at work when they really have other places to be (including bed) to clean up someone’s idea of art, a political statement or whatever. That has a tendency to dampen your enthusiasm for someone else’s horseplay. And I know many people who work in positions which clean up after this because it would be like SOOOOOO great if these “performance artists” or whatever they were called, did clean up for themselves. But at least in this corner of the world, it hardly ever happens. But then they have to learn how to move through the world while cleaning up after themselves and not leave it to the maid, housekeeper or whatever.
I don’t know if it’s true elsewhere but most of these types of horseplay involve young men, more so than women. And often (though not in this case) women are involved in the cleanup especially in terms of food fights at restaurants b/c in fast food in many places, most of the employees especially front-line are female. And when I see that, I just think it’s back to women being taught and men being taught who’s supposed to clean up after who.
I’m not wringing my hands over it beyond the reaction of watching it beng done (which it has been done) and thinking that their horseplay is getting a little too close to this elderly woman or is going to have
Incidentally, maintenance workers for cities aren’t always the most secure jobs. Many cities including my own have laid off people in these positions (within most city departments which include maintenance employees like parks, public works and public utilities, etc.) and contracting those same services out with private companies. In fact, there’s a joke within the parks, recreation and community services department that the “parks” part has been removed via private contract. Though it’s not funny for the employees who were mostly Black and Latino who were laid off.
And if it does feel like my comments are somewhat personal, perhaps they are. This whole thing of entitlement to make messes to have fun that other people have to clean up just is a pet peeve of mine, having done more cleaning up.
So putting money into the budget to accommodate art clean-up is… what? Do you just object to division of labor?
” it’s people staying two hours late at work when they really have other places to be (including bed) to clean up someone’s idea of art”
And we have total evidence that workers were abused because of this because… oh, wait, no we don’t.
Yeah, your comments do come across as personal, and when you specifically ironicize my interpretation of events, without criticizing it or explaining why… it also comes across as hostile toward me, personally. Or an “indirectly hostile” attack as I believe LaLubu put it earlier.
But seriously, is the basic objection here to the fact that there are jobs which require one to clean up? That’s frnakly what it sounds like.
There are legitimate issues there. Those jobs aren’t properly compensated. Great. Let’s properly compensate them. They aren’t respected. Let’s give them respect. The jobs reflect racial class divisions, and that sucks, and needs to be solved on a structural level.
But the mere existence of such jobs, and the mere existence of cleaning up? No. I don’t think that’s an argument against any activity. And if it is, then it’s an argument against EVERY messy activity we engage in as a culture for fun. It’s an argument against parades. Its an argument against fairs. It’s an argument against public celebrations that require public clean-up.
Personally, I like having a civilization that allows us to celebrate together and also have clean places to live. I’d like that civilization better if it included respect and proper compensation for people whose labor is deemed “menial” but who work just as hard as people whose labor is deemed more important, and I’d like that society better if it wasn’t racist and classist. But even in my utopia, yeah, there would be division of labor, and I don’t think that’s an inherently bad thing.
Mandolin,
And if it is, then it’s an argument against EVERY messy activity we engage in as a culture for fun. It’s an argument against parades. Its an argument against fairs. It’s an argument against public celebrations that require public clean-up. Personally, I like having a civilization that allows us to celebrate together and also have clean places to live.
But that assumes that “everyone” is included in these flashmobs. As I noted many comments ago, that’s not how flashmobs work. I don’t mean they’re intentionally exclusive, but by operating through social networks and who visits which awfully-white-looking website — instead of being broadly advertised — they’re necessarily rather cliquish, in-the-know events. That makes them completely different from something like New Year’s Eve in Times Square, or the St. Patrick’s Day parade, or any other event where I’ve seen a much more diverse crowd than the apparent demographics of the flashmob.
My objection is different than PG’s. What I’m reacting to (and I will admit right now, yes, I am projecting my own experiences onto something I have incomplete information about, but so is everyone else) is the difference between ordinary types of messes and an extra special mess that is particularly onerous to clean up. Perhaps the shaving cream doesn’t fall into this category, but the feathers sure do. To me, it’s the difference, back when I bused tables, between the people who ate their meal and left plates, glasses, a wadded up napkin and that was it, and the people who spilled everywhere because they were horsing around, tore up their napkins into little pieces and shot spit balls, etc. The people in the latter category were not acting maliciously, but they were not thinking about the effect of their actions on other people, and we generally consider that, at the very least, inconsiderate. Yes, I was being paid to do a job, and I had no objections to doing my job. But I resented people who made my job harder than it should have been. What’s so weird about that?
And yes, I understand parades and fairs also create extra special mess. I also think that people should not litter at parades and fairs and should take the time to find a trash can. I, at least, am not saying there should be no flash mobs, the city should ban flash mobs, the city should ban parades and public art, everything should be grey and drab and while we’re at it, bread and water for everyone! All I’m saying is people should be conscientious about the impact they’re having.
Okay, I think we’re getting frustrated with each other but we’re basically in agreement. I interpreted this statement:
as saying that the “worst of the mess” meant any other solid trash besides the paper plates. But I think you meant most of the shaving cream, right?
Anyway, looking over this part of the thread, I suspect our arguments don’t make sense to each other because of a lack of clarity, not a lack of logic, so maybe it makes sense to just move on.
“instead of being broadly advertised — they’re necessarily rather cliquish, in-the-know events.”
You know, I keep hearing people asserting this, but the group of people who I didn’t attend the flash mob with in NYC, but who I learned about it from? Many ages, many classes, many ethnicities. The only thing we all had in common is that we were all artists. Well, and all in NYC.
And anyway, if I’m calling it performance art, then I’m saying that the participation comes not just from being IN the mob, but from being NEAR it. From being placed in an audience role. In which case, the demographics aren’t all about who’s slinging shaving cream.
we were all artists
does not seem to me to be incompatible with
cliquish, in-the-know
If I learn about an event in NYC from an African American friend working in government and making $70k a year, and also from a white friend working for a nonprofit and making $40k a year, and from an Asian friend working in the private sector and making $200k a year … but all of these people are lawyers? Still a clique that’s not open to the folks who are cleaning up after us even if the cleaners are unionized, will earn overtime pay and end up making more than my white friend at the nonprofit.
And anyway, if I’m calling it performance art, then I’m saying that the participation comes not just from being IN the mob, but from being NEAR it. From being placed in an audience role. In which case, the demographics aren’t all about who’s slinging shaving cream.
Sure, there are many more participants in a parade than just the folks on the floats, and many more participants in New Year’s Eve in Times Square than just Dick Clark and the folks performing on stage. But those are events clearly done primarily for the benefit of the people watching. Dick Clark ain’t going out there unless there’s a lot of people, whereas I never heard of flashmobbers calling off an event because they thought there was insufficient spectator interest.
And some people don’t like some art. So what?
And the art that is chosen by someone who has no relationship to democratic processes doesn’t get supported by taxpayer dollars. The fact that my friends and I would have fun doing Shakespeare in Central Park, and that some people might be amused momentarily by our doing it (even though none of us are trained actors and we’re not doing it for their benefit), isn’t an argument for why the city should pay to clean up after us when we strew stuff all over the place.
If the people of the city want to pay for an activity, they can elect an executive who then hires administrators who will approve that activity and bear the cost. If the people of the city want to live in drab dullsville that maxes out its budget on higher teacher’s salaries and does nothing to support the arts, that’s an option too through the democratic process. It seems a bit arrogant to *assume* that other people will find my performance so awesome (or will think it’s so likely to benefit fellow citizens who couldn’t afford to buy it in the private market, which is much of the premise behind free access to the arts) that they’ll want to bear its costs by paying higher taxes.
That’s why I keep coming back to the externalities. If you’re creating a public good, then it’s OK to create externalities as well. But we have processes for deciding what does constitute a public good for which the public also will bear the cost of externalities. I don’t get to play benevolent dictator and unilaterally decide for other people that they’re going to benefit so much from my art that they also will bear its cost.
Dear PG and others,
To everyone who has suggested the filing for permits, okaying with administrators, etc. for these flash mobs, you seem to be missing one of the core tenets of the flashmob philosophy: the sense of (momentary) freedom from the capitalistic economy.
Flash mobs are disseminated freely through networks of friends, can be participated in at no cost to those involved, and are (ideally) done without sponsorship or the intent to promote or advertise. Spontaneity and anonymity are key tools in separating flash mob activity from a larger corporate structure. Were flash mobs forced to organize along “accepted” channels of municipal bureaucracy, it would be opening the doorway for corporate culture to plant its foot, and the entire counter-capitalist ethos of the mobs would be lost.
Also, a question to those commenting on this thread “based on their own experience” and operating under a severely limited understanding of what a flash mob actually is: do you appreciate it when especially ignorant people make blanket assumptions/generalizations about events and causes close to your hearts?
It’s not hard to do at least some research on a topic before you start shooting your mouth off about it.
Love,
Sam
It’s interesting how fifty years ago young rich white male liberals were all about race and class equality but couldn’t see sexism and now they’re a little better about sexual equality but blind to racism and classism.
you seem to be missing one of the core tenets of the flashmob philosophy: the sense of (momentary) freedom from the capitalistic economy
Sam, I would have had a hard time understanding what you meant by this, if nobody.really hadn’t first explained where he was coming from with this:
So, for what it’s worth, here are one white, white-collar, male’s hopes and fears: I feel the need to guard myself both from those above and below me in the social hierarchy. From those above me, I live with frustrating demands for mindless conformity, and anxiety that my tentative efforts at non-conformity with provoke their ire and unknown consequences. Beneath those fears lie the deeper fears that authority figures aren’t demanding mindless conformity, they are in fact demanding a kind of excellence that I can’t even recognize, let alone provide. From those below me, I fear attack that I’m selfishly concerned with my own problems and insufficiently concerned with their much bigger problems.
Here’s the part that stood out to me: From those above me, I live with frustrating demands for mindless conformity, and anxiety that my tentative efforts at non-conformity with provoke their ire and unknown consequences. Beneath those fears lie the deeper fears that authority figures aren’t demanding mindless conformity, they are in fact demanding a kind of excellence that I can’t even recognize, let alone provide.
Wow! That was a window on a world to me. I have never felt that, mostly because I’m in the category of folks that Maia so aptly termed “invisible cleaning pixies”. I’ve never felt that pressure that nobody.really describes because I’m one of the people for whom it is routinely assumed excellence is impossible, or irrelevant.
So, while nobody.really is thinking, “these guys are my heroes” for doing something incredible silly (if inconsiderate to others for leaving a big mess behind), I’m coming from a place where I have to fight to prove my worth, to prove my intelligence, to prove I’m as capable, creative, bright, etc. as anyone. Unlike nobody.really, I can be invisible when I want to be. Unlike nobody.really, I can’t take for granted that I can be seen, or have my talents recognized, when I want them to be. And that colors our different perspectives.
I think it’s also worth mentioning that I see inclusive events differently than exclusive events. From what I have read about flash mobs, I’m thinking more like PG, that they’re more for the in-crowd—a private event held in public space for the convenience of not having to pay for and/or take care of private space.
Sam, I can’t speak for others but the reason I emphasized that I was basing my opinions on my own experience is for the simple fact that it is what we all, regardless of our opinion are doing on this thread. There isn’t “Lubu’s uninformed opinion” and “the facts”; it’s more like “the actions that took place and the effects of those actions” and “the perception of those actions”. Ok? We all stand on our own speck of ground here, and I’m used to having to defend where I stand (hence, my defensiveness).
And I’m still of the opinion that when you live in close community with others, that you have to respect the public space you share with others—to not do so, is to disrespect other people. Chingona and PG, while coming from different perspectives, have both said that the participants should clean up after themselves. Others are of the opinion that the cleaning is something that should be in the city budget. I live in the rust belt—-it’s hard for me to imagine how an already strained city budget would absorb the $19,000 in extra charges that PG cited. When I think of city budgets, I’m thinking not of city officials, but the city residents who pay for those budgets. If the public is expected to shoulder the cost, shouldn’t the events be geared towards public participation? In my city, if something similar took place, the absorbtion of the $19,000 of cleanup effort would mean the closing of or cancelling of a lot of free public events—opportunities for the general public (and especially families—a lot of performance art takes place in for-pay venues where children are prohibited or parents are strongly discouraged from taking them, so free public performances are a great way to expose children to art and nurture the next generation of artists and art enthusiasts—ok, off my soapbox now!) to enjoy. Again, putting that out there to explain why I hold the opinion I do.
I’m really tempted to take the thread on a total derail and talk about the issue of image being everything with unions, but I won’t do that yet.
Maia, you just let me know when and where you want to talk about unions, ok? It would be so cool to hear your non-U.S. perspective! (I think people seriously underestimate the effect of the Palmer Raids on the labor union movement in the U.S.—and also, the lack of a strong left in the U.S. on the development of feminism, too, but I don’t want to derail, either! ;-)
entire counter-capitalist ethos of the mobs would be lost.
Sam, can you explain how a counter-capitalist ethos works in terms of the bill for the cleanup effort, and the unscheduled overtime for city workers? How do you imagine the person cleaning up views the mess—the mess that is over and above what hir typical duties entail (as both radfem and chingona described earlier)?
Since you brought in the term “counter-capitalist”, how do you think the average proletarian views this form of activity? Do you think we see it as counter-capitalism, or do you even care what our opinions are? And if you don’t care about our opinions, how again, does that work into your counter-capitalism philosophy?
“Hostile”? Gee, thanks. Whatever.
As for personal, judging by the comments directed my way by people who disagree which seem a little bit more personal than usual, I would imagine I’m not the only one who’s taking this personally. I’m just admitting it up front. And its’ mostly irritating especially the entitlement but it’s not a huge issue so it’s not really much beyond that.
And yes, shaving cream does happen to be slippery. Depending on the surface.
La Lubu, thanks for your contributions. I see what you mean about this thread.
It would be really nice if that courtesy was extended to those who might be operating under a “severely limited understanding” of what it’s like to have to clean up messes made by those who may or may not fit under the definition of “flash mob” which face it, is even a topic of disagreement on a thread that is defending them.
No, I don’t appreciate it when people tell me that I’m “hostile” because I take issue with having to stay late for several hours to clean up a “fun” food fight or soft drink fight which might fit under someone else’s definition of horseplay and have to listen to a boss who’s really pissed that he has to stay and can’t direct it at those responsible who were usually, long gone. Maybe they’re responsible flash mobs out there in other places and the situation is totally different. Maybe they do bring rags and mops and cleaning equipment with them and spend as much time leaving the place as they arrived as they do preparing and organizing and performing the flash mob activity.
If they cleaned up after themselves, that would go a lot of way towards mitigating their activities in the minds of a lot of people who just see them as people making a mess. You know, it’s really not that hard to just take a few minutes and clean up. And to keep the activity away from where you could potentially harm individuals. And it’s not difficult to spread that through the underground or whatever of flash mobs but that’s clearly not been done or there wouldn’t be as much a debate of whether or not this group did clean up. I would guess based on the after-shots compared to the activity shots that they didn’t clean up but that the shaving cream is trying to dissolve into the surface of the street as noted by accumulations of it in between the individual bricks. It would have to be cleaned because as someone said, depending on the surface, shaving cream can cause people to slip and fall and no city wants to assume civil liability for that b/c tracking down those responsible for the shaving cream even with the photos would be difficult to impossible unless they had a habit of doing these within the same city.
Sam,
Yes, I get the whole “Fight Club” sort of mindset that nobody.really was elucidating: this is your opportunity to have fun and stick it to The Man and so on. Unfortunately, in this case The Man is not some for-profit worker-exploiting corporation; it’s the municipal structure that we all collectively support through our taxpayer dollars and our sense of civic responsibility. You’ve made absolutely no argument for why I should have to pay for your fun when I didn’t get an invitation to the fun, wasn’t interested in watching the fun, and didn’t have a democratically elected representative involved in approving my paying for your fun.
Sam,
Please explain how a “leave it as you found it” policy and flash-cleaning after flash-mobbing fails to fit into an anti-capitalist project. An “oh, someone else will clean this up” seems to me to be the heart and soul of the atomized capitalist project. It is all about maximizing your externalities.
Flash mobs that do things that don’t leave a mess are not something that anyone here has a problem with, but flash mobs that have the potential to leave a mess have a responsibility to see that that mess gets cleaned up and doesn’t get dumped onto the city.
Also, [speaking as a Mod] unless you have a lot of experience with being required to clean up other people’s reckless messes as well as having a lot of experience with flash mob culture, please back the hell off from telling other people here that they are speaking from especially ignorant positions.
Agreed with what Charles said — although also speaking as a moderator, I’d add, welcome, Sam! I hope you stick around. Because although no one here is totally ignorant — we all have different experiences — having someone with real firsthand experience of flash mobs in this discussion would be beneficial.
Charles, people here do disagree on just what level of mess is reasonable to leave behind. I think that the mess left behind in the second photograph in the OP is a reasonable amount of mess to leave behind — the worse of the mess is gone, the rest will be cleaned up by either rain or the next morning’s dew. IF that is what the flash mob left behind (and I don’t know if it is or not), then I think complaining about it is unreasonably restrictive and, frankly, making a mountain out of a molehill.
Also, I want to point out that although the people renting my workplace are supposed to clean up after themselves, they don’t always; sometimes they skip out and on many occasions I’ve had to clean up their messes, including spills, garbage, mud and grease tracked across floors, food smeared into carpeting, endless clogged toilets (including the inevitable floors flooded with shitty and pissy toilet water, if they attempted to flush again after it was clogged), and on one memorable occasion a sink absolutely filled with vomit.
(There is a custodian, and if it’s the end of the day I can leave things for him; but if it’s not the end of the day, then it’s my responsibility to get the whole building perfectly clean before the next renters come in.)
I know Elkins once worked a summer job cleaning up a college campus (dorms and so on) after all the other students went home.
I say this mainly because some folks seem to be implying that the folks here speaking out in favor of the flash mobs, don’t have any experience being paid to clean up after other people’s messes. That isn’t true.
By the way, regarding inclusive/exclusive, my impression is that any passerby who wanted to voluntarily join in an event like the shaving cream fight, would have been welcome to. I might be mistaken about that, however.
Sorry to post three times consecutively, I keep on thinking of “just one more thing” to say.
I pretty much agree with the poster on CatCubed (linked earlier in the thread by Elusis in comment 21):
I think “leave no trace,” taken literally, is too restrictive. Even playing frisbee in the park leaves a trace — sod gets torn up, sweat spatters, etc.
But leaving as little trace as possible — and not participating in events, like the pillow fight (photos here), which are certain to make a large impact — seems like a reasonable thing for everyone to attempt. (Although a socially-enforced “no feather pillows” norm might save the pillowfight.)
FWIW, I think that the perception of flash mobs as an egalitarian and anti-corporate phenomenon may or may not hold true now; but the guy who invented them did so as an experiment to see how well he could manipulate hipster culture and its propensity to adopt fads just because they are Something Different and *also* Something Exclusive that Demarcates People in the Know. He wrote a long article about it in Harper’s (where he’s a contributing editor). Their site is subscribers-only, but most libraries have access to Harper’s. If anyone is interested enough to look it up, it’s this: “My Crowd: Or, Phase 5: A report from the inventor of the flash mob.” Wasik, Bill. Harper’s Magazine (Mar 2006: 56-66).
He writes “Not only was the flash mob a vacuous fad; it was, in its very form (pointless aggregation and then dispersal), intended as a metaphor for the hollow hipster culture that spawned it.”
Like I said, I have no way to assess what flash mobs are these days. But people who perceive them as exclusive (and intended to be that way) certainly have some historical data on their side.
Ruth,
Thanks for the heads-up on the Harper’s article. You might be interested in the response from a West Coast flashmob organizer who says she thinks Wasik is biased by the East Coast flashmob experience. (http://blog.avantgame.com/2006/02/maybe-i-take-play-too-seriously.html) That response in turn should be modified by noting that Mumbai didn’t impose strict rules on people’s gathering because it’s mean and anti-fun — the flashmob in question took place 6 weeks after Mumbai suffered a terrorist attack, and those rules were imposed in an effort to prevent follow-up attacks. The flashmobs moved to other cities because they were ones that were not terrorist targets as Mumbai had been, 5 times in just 8 months.
Why Hipsters Aren’t All That Hip by Forrest Perry. Review of: Richard Lloyd, Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City (New York: Routledge, 2006).
To me, Perry’s conclusion is the ultimate conclusion I draw from this very long (but, I agree, intriguing) discussion.
Thanks, Jack, for keeping the discussion interesting :)