About an hour before dusk tomorrow, Jennifer Griffith will join dozens of her undead companions searching for human brains and flesh while lurching through downtown San Diego, blood oozing from her ashen face.
But only for an hour. Then the organizer of San Diego's second zombie walk has to hustle back to her home office in La Mesa and finish her day as a content manager for Rabble.com, a social-networking company.
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A lively bunch gathered for San Diego's first zombie walk
last month in Balboa Park.
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“Yeah, I'm missing an hour out of my shift,” Griffith said. “But I'm sure some people are going to Denny's or Del Taco afterward to freak out the normal people.”
Just four years after a handful of horror-film enthusiasts staged the first organized zombie walk in Toronto, the fad has arrived in San Diego. From Amsterdam to Atlanta, thousands of costumed zombie enthusiasts use social-networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook to organize crawls of the undead.
Toronto expects 1,000 zombies for its next soiree in October.
San Diego experienced its first zombie walk last month in Balboa Park. Griffith, who also organized that one, figured 60 people might show up. Nearly twice that many came. Some donned blood-splattered wedding outfits and gnawed on rubber heads while others performed the famous zombie shuffle from Michael Jackson's 1983 hit video, “Thriller.”
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Details
San Diego zombie walk
When: 6 p.m. tomorrow. Organizers suggest arriving at 5.
Where: Walk begins in Marina Park next to Seaport Village.
Online: For a video and photo gallery from the zombie walk in Balboa Park, go to uniontrib.com/more/zombies
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“It's really spreading to the far corners of the world,” said Roger Barr, a 30-year-old resident of Burbank who runs zombiewalk.com.
On occasion, the walks raise money or awareness for charities, such as the American Red Cross or local food banks. Some coincide with Halloween, full moons or local film festivals; others serve as political statements. Some see zombies as a metaphor for people who are victims of blind consumerism and political apathy.
A year ago, 200 zombies converged on downtown San Francisco while their Canadian brothers and sisters simultaneously hit a Vancouver beach. Now, a typical turnout can include more than 400 soulless walkers dragging themselves through city streets.
Last October, 894 zombies filled the Monroeville Mall near Pittsburgh to set a Guinness World Record for the largest zombie walk – a fitting tribute to the 1978 cult-classic zombie film “Dawn of the Dead,” which was filmed there.
“People are into horror in Pittsburgh, especially zombie stuff,” said Mark Menold, 47, a walk organizer there who found Clownhouse Productions, which produces a local weekly horror television show.
Menold anticipates 3,000 of the undead for a three-day Zombie Weekend in October that will include a zombie ball, convention and walk to break the city's record. Corporate sponsors, including a Nissan dealership, are joining the undead.
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Zombie enthusiasts such as Pani Muzquiz (left) invaded Balboa Park last month, four years after the first organized zombie walk was staged in Toronto.
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San Diego police say they aren't worried about the walks. Tomorrow's route will meander through downtown before ending at the San Diego Convention Center, which is hosting the Comic-Con International.
“Based upon what we've been told and seen on the Internet, it's not a big issue,” said Detective Gary Hassen of the San Diego Police Department. “They are just people having fun.”
Some psychologists attribute the interest in zombies to the resurgence of off-the-wall humor reflected in programs such as “The Daily Show.”
“There is a stronger element of camp in our culture than there ever was,” said psychologist Robert Erard, clinical director of the Psychological Institutes of Michigan, who follows popular culture.
Event organizers say that zombie walks also tap into a wider “flashmob” movement in which groups of people with similar interests quickly assemble and just as quickly disband after engaging in everything from pillow fights to water fights.
“Just because they are using mobile phone technology to interconnect in a totally frivolous way doesn't mean they can't adopt it for something more serious,” said Howard Rheingold, a Stanford University professor who wrote “Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution.”
“If you are smart enough to use these tools to organize a zombie walk, when the occasion arises, you can use the same tools for economic, political or cultural organization.”
San Diego zombie walker Kirsten Perrin offers another take.
“It seems to me that everyone in the world right now is so stressed,” said the 26-year-old make-up artist, who plans to walk tomorrow with her 5-year-old son. “We grow up so fast, mentally and physically. Getting together like this is good for your mind, body and soul, which is funny since that's the part zombies don't have.”
Jenna Colley is a Union-Tribune intern.
