Denver Zombie Crawl 2009

AaaaaAAAARrrrrgggggGGGGGHhhhhhhh!!!  BRAINS!!

That was the chant during Saturday Night’s 4th annual Denver Zombie Crawl.  I was right in the middle of it.

There were a couple, maybe a few, thousand zombies in all stages of decomposition.  There were the political messages zombies (health care is dead), and the humorous zombies.  But the most common was the pure gore it up shock value horror zombies.  They came in blue, green or grey and blood red all over.  There were Zombie dancing such as Thriller or an orchestrated Zombierana (Macarena, get it).

Now I’m someone who has already seen Zombieland, watched Night of the Living Dead as a kid, and read World War Z.  Yep, you guessed it… Nerd.

The event itself had “victims”.  Victims were people who marked themselves with a big X across their chest.  Once spotted the Zombie hordes would set out to feast on their brains.  This meant circling them and most likely spraying them with fake blood.  Lots of fake blood.  Innocent  bystanders were safe of course.  As were the diners in the various restaurants along the 16th street mall who gazed from their glass of Pinot Noir and dinner salad at the horde of zombies leering into the restaurant windows.  Note to the window washers out there, I feel SO BAD FOR YOU.  All those makeup and fake blood costumed hands and faces looked like they had been smeared across some of those windows.  Some windows were just plain gross.

I stuck around for the crawl and to take in all the creative costumes.  I did not take my camera and decided to simply participate in the event but you can check out the collection of photos on flickr at http://www.flickr.com/groups/zombiecrawl/pool/.  As with all large groups of people there is always someone who ruins the fun and when signs of malevolent Zombies started I decided to go change venues and take my zombie self to get an ale.  Walking home, surrounded by many other zombies I heard one couple comment “Geez, everyone’s wearing the same costume this year… they are all zombies”.  Maybe they will read the news the next day.

So the Zombie Crawl was a perfect excuse to dress up in costume and be creative.  It’s make believe.  That’s fun.  It didn’t involve anything other than letting yourself have fun and I highly recommend you add it to your calendar for next year… if there is any of that little kid inside of yoiu.