Zombies = World Peace
I tried to think of something clever to say, like, “The Dead will rise and overtake the blabbity blah blah”. I don’t know if I am too tired to think or if in fact the New Jersey Zombie Walk has simply grown beyond a cutesy little tag line. It is still in its infancy and yet, in all my time here in Asbury Park, nothing, no other single event has been so completely embraced and anticipated as this one.
I think I understand why, on an innate level. It is simply, extremely cool. Not “hip” or “artsy” or any other socially predictable or deeper reason. A thousand people showing up, dipping themselves in blood and dragging their carcasses through the city is simply, cool. It just is. And fun. Let us not forget that it is okay to have fun.
Part of what makes it so cool is that Christina and Jason Meehan, the wife and husband team that have created this phenomena have done such an amazing job that no matter how hard we look, we can not see the strings. These two are talented in so many ways, but maybe the most impressive is their attention to detail.
They have seamlessly woven so many people and things and ideas together that it hardly seems possible that this is a grass roots event, but check out their face book pages and see the boxes of zombie swag they have created piled high in their living room and you get it. They love this and they want to share it. They are doing as much as they possibly can to make the illusion complete. They prove that passion and dedication go a long way. They do not judge their event by the $ they get, but by the number of people they share their event with.
I have heard many complaints since I have been in Asbury Park, most of them born of the frustration one feels when they see missed opportunities or failures that could be averted. I admit it, I am probably more guilty of these musings than many others. One of the biggest complaints is that we can not find a way to “Bridge the Gap between the the Downtown and the Boardwalk”. It is, it seems, a veritable Gregorian Knot. I suppose, then, it is fitting that two brain eating reanimated corpses have succeeded where all others have failed. The Zombie Walk covers both territories and rather thank trying to “Bridge the Gap”, they fill it, granted, with the walking dead, but they fill it nonetheless.
There is a lesson in all that. Probably many. They don’t choose sides. The lesson I see is that two residents from our fair city found something they love and they brought to a place they love and they gave it to all of us. And that, to me, is cool.
Go Zombies
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