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That's the fountain seen in "La Dolce Vita" - it's those crazy anarchists!
The young people blocking the street are raising awareness about global warming at the IMF/World Bank meeting.
(thx toAbracada News and K Bradley, respectively. 
UPDATE: (Ontario Five - who had their car & ID confiscated)>
I was sent this yesterday from a new "friend" on FaceBook and literally picked up and went.
From CleoZombieLiveJournal:
Zombie Walk October 21st 2007
Walk with your un-dead brethren through the streets of Seattle in the light of day. With all your gore and glory, let’s mob Fremont! Be one of us because you are a Horror movie fan, because you love cosplay, or just for the hell of it! How often do you get to participate in something this weird and free? All that is required is that you show up in costume, respect traffic laws and practice common sense. Bring your friends! Nothing says you love someone quite like caking yourself in make-up, limping down the street together and eating them by a big bronze of Lenin!
OCT 21st- Fremont
Start: 2:45pm sharp
Meet: @ THE TROLL under the Aurora Bridge.
North 36th Street at Troll Avenue North
Seattle, Washington 98103
Milling in Fremont from 3:00pm-4:30PM
Stopping by various establishments.....arriving at Hale's Ales by about 5:00pm for food and drink. Under 21 ok.
* As mentioned previously - zombies are only really effective when traveling together in large groups. Bring your friends, foes, family and other loved ones.
*Check other sections of this LJ for makeup tips etc....
*TRY TAKING PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION TO AND FROM THE EVENT!
Potentially useful things to keep in mind:
1. Participate at your own risk.
2. Do not pretend to “attack” people not part of Zombie Walk who do not obviously want to be involved.
3. Only swarm parked cars because, if we cause traffic problems, the Police will interfere.
4. There are no permits for this event. Be safe and look out for the safety of others!
More info:
Cleozombie (how to's, inspiration, planning)
Tribes.tribe.net
MySpace
Note: I will put up parts 2 and 3 as I collect more "responses" and press reactions, etc. The only "press" I saw were some people who claimed to be making a "zombie documentary" and actually, a BUNCH of zombie press from KAOS TV from Evergreen in Olympia, I presume. I knew about KAOS Radio, but tv?!
I also put some of the photos on FaceBook and this guy from LA that I met at the Democratic Convention in 2008 told me that he is actually a zombie. It didn't really surprise me, I guess. I think there are more. Linked to the MySpace local zombie group. Found out Seattle Times & PI both did stories (see next entries)
More "pro" looking videos are showing up at YouTube!! The first one here is mine, with some good moments. The other one is set to piano music.
From KOMO:
SEATTLE - So, you're walking down the street in Seattle, and you come across a pack of zombies. What do you do? Give them a little space.
They're beckoning in Ballard, they're striking fear in Fremont, and they're causing a calamity on Capitol Hill.
Just keep in mind, you're safe if you steer clear of the three ways one becomes a zombie:
"The first one's by infection, like if they bite you," says Cleo Wolfus. "The second way is by voodoo."
The third, according to Wolfus, is by way of the Apocalypse. Wolfus, known today as Cleo "Zombie", is organizing the first ever Zombie Walk in Seattle. "I like the idea of something that's very creative and free happening," Wolfus tells KOMO 1000 News.
"Your limbs have to be really, really limp," the zombie woman says. Wolfus says Zombie Walk is supposed to be fun by design, and she expects that some participants will really get into it. "You don't smile, your eyes don't track, you have a blank stare," says Wolfus, who's spent this past week passing out cards and flyers advertising the random zombie events.
She passes a young guy in front of a coffee shop, and approaches him with a card.
"Hi, I was wondering if you knew about this Saturday's 'Zombie Walk?'
"Yes, I planning on doing it," replies the man, named Travis.
Everyone's invited. Just be in costume, and remember there are some rules.
"The number one rule is to not cause traffic accidents, and two, not to make a mess," Wolfus says.
And we're assured that no innocent bystanders will be maimed by the living dead.
"But I do like the classic scenario of someone who's 'volunteering' to be a victim, laying in the street, and people piling on them and pretending like they're eating them."
Seattle Times covered the Zombie Walk!
article
Lurching "undead" liven Fremont
Traci Biegenwald, of Seattle, lurches from the Fremont Troll toward the neighborhood's business district during Sunday's Zombie Walk. Around 150 zombies — oozing fake blood and moaning — limped across the neighborhood — just for fun. It's hard work being the undead.
Staggering to the grocery store takes so much longer than walking. It's hard to make conversation with friendly passers-by when your primary instinct is to lunge and attack. And who knew life as a zombie could be so messy?
More than 150 zombies — or rather, software developers, structural engineers, administrative assistants and other upstanding folks oozing fake blood from a variety of costumes — lurched across Seattle's Fremont neighborhood Sunday afternoon, groaning through a third-annual Zombie Walk.
Zombies, as the stories go, are trapped between the worlds of the dead and the living, on an unending quest for human brains or flesh. And just as "Pirates of the Caribbean" helped spawn a pirate resurgence, movies like "Shaun of the Dead" and "28 Weeks Later" have raised the undead's profile and spurred zombie fans across the nation to organize walks and other zombie-themed events.
But why devote hours to playing zombie over some other horror-flick staple?
It's the horde mentality, says Eric Pope, one of the Seattle walk's organizers. Werewolves, vampires and other monsters tend to be loners.
These part-time zombies, brought together for film festivals and other gatherings by zombie aficionado and local jewelry designer Cleo Wolfus, say they're on a quest for togetherness, for free expression, for fun. (The next walk is set for next Monday; visit details here).
"We put a lot of smiles on people's faces. Now I understand why clowns do what they do," Pope said.
Most shoppers at Fremont's PCC Natural Markets store laughed as the zombie procession staggered into the bakery, past the frozen-food aisles and through the produce department. Teens lounging outside a nearby coffee shop laughed off the first few zombies, then looked increasingly concerned as the horde advanced. A bookstore under "attack" had a fitting title in its display window: "The Zombie Survival Guide."
Like any urban gathering, a few participants carried signs of political protest. "Stem cells might have saved me," read one. And, there were chants, logic aside.
"What do we want?"
"BRAINSSS!"
"When do we want them?"
"BRAINSSS!"
Robert Riedl, of Bellevue, shuffled in red slippers and a green terry bathrobe, his mouth bleeding a concoction of corn syrup, cornstarch, red dye "and some mint — to make it taste better." Traci Biegenwald, of Seattle, thrashed arms that bore several gashes crafted of liquid latex, tissue and makeup.
"You look hideous!" Katherine Lee complimented a fellow zombie, whose martini was garnished with a fake eyeball. Dressed as a corpse bride complete with a dead bouquet, she joked that the walk was a dress rehearsal for her upcoming wedding to fiancé Chris Stearns. He showed up as a construction worker, a fat screw poking out from his bloody forehead.
Nick Goossens, of South Africa, watched the horde lurch by from inside companion Dena Singleton's silver BMW, a bloody handprint on the hood.
"I thought it was a riot, then he was like 'No, they're in costume,' " Singleton said as Goossens laughed beside her. "Now he's going to think all Americans are like this."
"I'm from Madrona," Singleton said. "A zombie-free zone."
Zombie Attack video:
NOW the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has chimed in:
Undead use a little mischief to shake up society's zombies
It was a sight to behold, for sure. Some 70 zombies walking, limping, dragging their rigid limbs down Market Street, a lumbering mass of decomposing flesh reanimated on a crisp autumn afternoon in Ballard.
Traffic slowed. Throngs of the living stopped and stared. Some fled. A few pretended that the monstrosities before their very eyes did not exist. (I do not see dead people! I do not see dead people!)
Heather Porter of Des Moines limped down Market Street in Ballard with about 70 other zombies on Saturday, the first of three monster invasions scheduled to go streetside in Seattle this Halloween season.
"The hardest part," murmured one zombie (his name Dan Garlington before death got a good grip), "is trying not to smile." He grinned then, from ear to fetid ear, his crinkled cheeks speckled with maggots.
Hell hath wrought many an aberration on this earth ... but happy zombies? Giggling ghouls who snicker as they plead for "Braaaains?" What madness is this?
"I thought it was a bowling team at first," said Scott Anderson of Seattle, who was busy knocking down a few pins at Sunset Bowl when the undead started shuffling by, demanding gray matter. "They just kept coming and coming."
Saturday's Zombie Walk was the first of three monster invasions scheduled to go streetside in Seattle this Halloween season. Part performance art, part traveling costume party, the Zombie Walks are a protest against the zombiefication of our television nation. They're an opportunity for those with an exhibitionist's bent to shock and amuse. They're good, clean holiday fun.
"They can be a lot of things to a lot of people," says Cleo Wolfus, the 30-year-old Seattle jewelry designer who masterminded these days of the undead.
It also happens that these Zombie Walks are the latest in a growing number of guerrilla-style events organized grass-roots style on the Internet by some of Seattle's best jesters and jokers, a loose-knit band of merry makers and malcontents dedicated to grabbing the humdrum firmly by the ears and giving it a good shake.
"Tweaking perceptions, that's what interests me," says Ivan Cockrum, the organizing force behind two such events -- Santarchy and Brides of March.
On Dec. 10, a herd of a hundred-plus unruly Santas will storm the streets as part of an annual soiree known as Santarchy (think Old St. Nick plus anarchy and you get the idea). In the spring, the Brides of March (dozens of brides of both genders) will flounce and flurry about Seattle in their flowing whites and will then wed themselves to one phallic city icon or another (in years past they've married the Space Needle and Hammering Man).
And then there's the Guerrilla Masquerade Parties. On any weekend -- no telling when or where -- a mob of costume-clad partiers might just descend upon your favorite watering hole, transforming it into an instant costume ball.
"Our motto is: Dress up, go out and take over because Halloween isn't often enough," says Garlington, who not only turned out for the Zombie Walk, but also organizes the Guerrilla Masquerade Parties under his better-known identity: Dirty Bunny.
On Saturday night, the Twilight Exit became the target of his latest takeover. Word went out over the Internet and, presto! the place was packed to its smoky ceiling not with the usual jeans-and-T-shirt crowd ... but with superheroes and their sidekicks.
Spandex and capes were the evening wear of choice. Wolverine made an appearance, as did a host of lesser-known crime-fighters. There was Super Dog and her sidekick, Captain Ketchup. There was Super Glue and his partner, Super Visor.
"When you're in a costume you feel less inhibited," said Captain Ketchup (aka Michele Brown, 31, of Seattle) as she maneuvered through the crowd dressed like a caped condiment.
"It's an attention-getter and also a conversation starter," said Super Dog (one Rose Mitchell, 29, of Seattle) who dressed like a giant hot dog. "There's this instant bond."
She was right. Though many of the costumed partyers had never met before that evening, they milled about merrily, swapping stories about their crime-fighting lairs and secret weapons, fantasy blurring with reality, a splash of booze to wash it all down.
Some onlookers got into the fun -- such as Alex Whalen, 6, who got a fright from Janine Gellerman of Shoreline.
Seattle certainly isn't the only city playing host to these insurrectionary adventures. Santarchy, for example, has sprung up in cities all over the world. While Wolfus thought up the Seattle Zombie Walk all on her own, it just so happens that a group of like-minded folks in Vancouver pulled off a similar stunt earlier this year -- drawing some 300 zombies.
It was the Guerrilla Queer Bar movement in San Francisco that inspired Garlington to get started. At these events (which now take place around the globe), gay revelers select a traditionally "straight" bar and invade it for a night. Garlington, however, strives to make his events more inclusive -- gay, straight, whatever. When his people overrun a bar, it's not with the hopes of driving other patrons out, but with the hopes of drawing them into the silly melee.
"The idea is to make the night a little more fun for people," said Garlington, a 30-year-old data analyst for Amazon. "If we can go into a bar and slowly dress everyone up, that's my goal."
Garlington started his Guerrilla Masquerade Parties in 2003 and has since thrown 22 of them at various unsuspecting locales, each time focusing on a different costume theme (circus freaks, pirates and medical mysteries among them).
"The bars tend to love us because we fill them up and drink a lot," Garlington says, explaining that only on the rare occasion does anyone complain.
Meanwhile Santarchy has been growing in size each year here in Seattle. Cockrum estimates that more than 120 Santas showed up for last December's daylong melee, during which the Santas rode the carousel at Westlake Park, swarmed a fetish convention and bar-hopped their way through downtown.
"I guess the thing for me that I enjoy is the juxtaposition of these elements that are common in one setting but then putting them in a completely unexpected setting," Cockrum said. "I like to think that it breaks people out of their routine for a moment and hopefully entertains them. I think it wakes people up and makes them pay attention."
The Zombie Walks are a protest against the zombiefication of our television nation, organizers say.
People were certainly paying attention when the zombies galumphed through Ballard Saturday. Done up in surprising detail -- oozing wounds, sloughing skin, severed limbs -- the undead were a delightfully varied bunch. Dani Rawson, a 51-year-old Seattle lawyer, strode down the street in a pale business suit next to corpselike kid brothers Andrew and Patrick Knoblauch (14 and 12 years old, respectively).
Onlookers stared and laughed and took photos with their cell phones. Some even played along, shrieking in mock horror.
"Everybody get in the ambulance," shouted Capt. Raul Angulo of the Seattle Fire Department. He and his crew from Engine 18 were in the midst of assisting a struggling homeless fellow when the zombies came marching by.
"It's too late," a zombie called back. "We're already dead."
Wolfus' fascination with death was a driving inspiration to organize the three Zombie Walks (the second one on Oct. 29th in Fremont and the third on Capitol Hill on Halloween). But for her, there's even more to it than that. She sees these events as a statement about the walking dead among us -- a wake-up call aimed at those who move mindlessly through stagnant lives.
"There are a lot of soulless people plodding along out there," she says. "It scares me."
WANNA WALK?
Most guerrilla-style antics and events are orchestrated online in a rather loose-knit style. So if you want to walk among the undead in the streets of Seattle or play the part of an unruly Santa come Christmas time, check out the following Web sites.
The next Zombie Walk is scheduled for Oct. 29th, starting 2:45 p.m. at the Troll in Fremont. The final walk will take place Oct. 31st on Capitol Hill, starting at 3:45 p.m. at the reservoir on Nagle Place and working its way to Pike Place Market. For more information visit: www.livejournal.com/users/cleozombie
For more information about the Guerrilla Masquerade Parties visit: gmpseattle.com
For more information about Seattle Santarchy visit: Santarchy
For more information about the Brides of March visit: Brides of March
The Cacophony Society is a good resource for all manner of "experiences beyond the mainstream." Check out Cacophony.
It's ok if 111 men of varying body type meet in Central Park and invade Abercrombie and Fitch with their shirts off. watch the videos!.
It's pretty cool if Zombies meet at the Fremont Troll in Seattle today and invade local stores and pubs with their whitened faces and flaking flesh (just found out about it on MySpace).
It's NOT ok if these imported creepazoids with their virulent homphobe message invaded Lynnwood, WA.
Watchmen on the Walls are an international anti-gay group who brought their Talibenesque selves here this weekend. One from their ranks wrote The Pink Swastika, which blames Nazi Germany on gays and lesbians.
As reported in The Stranger, the author of the book wrote:
“There is a war that is going on in the world. There is a war that is waging across the entire face of the globe. It’s been waging in the United States for decades, and it’s been waging in Europe for decades. It’s a war between Christians and homosexuals...And in the United States where the sexual revolution began, it was the homosexual political movement that designed this strategy to attack Christianity. The homosexual movement teaches sexual freedom, and its first target is the heterosexual people...Now, the homosexual movement has been winning this war in the United States, and it has been winning this war in Europe. And we’re looking at the future collapse of Western civilization. And Watchmen on the Walls is an organization to fight against this collapse. .."
The Stranger’s public intern discovered that officials at the Lynnwood Convention Center thought they were renting their facilities to an entirely different organization called Watchmen on the Walls, a seemingly sweet and non-violent group of Christians that support Israel.
I notice also that the Family Research Council in DC had no problem with this group - all part of their Conference on Values Voters stuff r/t the upcoming election.
(Seattle Times photo)
The Stranger's "Wierdo Watch" also reported that the homophobes are mostly Eastern European conservative evangelics. Two years ago, 20,000 homophobes converged on a stadium here, and the guy who spearheaded that (surname Hutchinson) will be involved with this. We have a "Latvian megachurch" and they are deep into this stuff. Friends include the Family Policy Institute in Wahsington, linked with Focus on the Family, and Vlad Kusakin, from an anti-gay radio show in Sacramento and also editor of a Russian-language newspaper here.
Souther Poverty Law Center considers Watchmen on the Wall one of the most virulent anti-gay groups they've encountered, and that there are thousands of them. It is now too late to turn the group away, though they misrepresented themselves. It is considered a mere "church meeting."
This is cool .. I first knew about it because of Wooster Collective. Listening to Gato Barbieri ("Last Tango in Paris") & wishing the Giaccometti exhibit had been open when I was there, or I'd stayed .. Slugbug
“Two men born on the same day, George Bush and the Dalai Lama.
“One who forgoes all thoughts of self to set the Wheel of the Dharma in motion, dedicates his existence to saving all life from suffering.
“The other, seemingly ethically mute to thoughts of peace and the fortunes of mankind; acts as an axis around which evil conspires.
“Kharma abounds in this contrast. It is prophetic, a struggle of such proportions that Christianity and Islam are reduced to bit players, themselves alternating between good and evil in the ‘all’ of the cosmos, in the all of time.
“Something strikes me as poetically divine that our President would more than likely just mangle the word sentient, as in saving all sentient beings from suffering, the Buddha’s goal.
“I still believe in man and our inherent goodness. I think we have a leg up.”
“The alternative is beyond my visceral ken.”
I couldn't resist. Kayakbiker sent me this as a news item but check this out!
Anxious Japanese buy these and wear them on the street so that they won't get mugged,
even though the crime rate is low! Slugbug
Have a look/link:
It's actually in the New York Times today
Ken: "That is the one country I don't think we could emigrate too, at our age .. it would just be too much culture shock." "They are the platypus duckbills of humans."
added by Kayakbiker (25 Oct 2007)
Purchase your adult vending machine costume here (shirt and pants not included):
.
This place I've walked by on one trip, and gone by in a bus on another. I was told it's an "art squat" and it didn't appear to be open so I could look around. I saw a reference to times it was open to the public, to view the art inside, but then I lost it. So, when I got home, I consulted an old issue of Metropole magazine and found a little more detail.
I find that beginning artists are sometimes self-taught and they can't always support themselves until they "make it" but how can they "make it" when they can't support themselves yet. It's a double bind, and why I quit art school. It turns out art school is a good place to make contacts, but not essential.
How to survive? Rents can be high in Paris. It turns out that art and artists are highly regarded enough there, that well-heeled customers actually consider the working situations of self-financed artists. There are still "art colonies" - somehow.
France's Ministry of Culture is supportive but does not have bottomless pockets, given the monuments and museums that have to be maintained (more than 60 just in Paris!) So some of the rich telephone companies, banks etc. like to buy up old buildings, with the hopes that they will be turned into boutiques, phone shops etc. And in the meantime .. they sometimes leave the building empty!
People are getting tired of TV so it's possible "art" will stage a comeback. These "squats" are technically illegal but this one is still used as an atelier and has been for quite some time. It's not the only one but it's the most famous one. It has five or six crazy floors and there are not too many rules. It's not a gallery or a museum but a collection of work spaces. They are rent free. Music from different radio stations is playing simultaneously in the building. Guitarists tune up. Visitors tramp through and avoid fresh paint.
I guess once in awhile someone from the Ministry of Culture comes over to count heads. That's about all, for this unsanctioned "art squat" that no one has done anything about for a number of years. It's still illegal in France to evict tenants, legal or not, in the winter (any time before March 15th). It's unlikely these artists will be evicted, because they fill a culture void in that sector of the city - for free!
HERE is an article on MORE "art squats" and cool stuff, some of which I missed because of not finding this article til now, but Palais de Tokyo is definitely recommended, and this photo is from along Canal St. Martin.
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