Photo Gallery
At Wednesday’s zombie crawl in downtown San Jose, the Dead Che, the Sleep Apnea zombie and the zombie Captain America would have taken the three-way prize if I were handing it out, if it weren’t for my total favorite, Helado-zomb.
As in the case of other costume parties, there are always those who use the opportunity to show a little skin: sexy nurse zombie being a costume of choice for a few, as well as roller disco zombie. For some, the mangled Playboy bunny just meant ears and cottontail (and gore) as opposed to something more revealing.
There were a couple of Shauns of the Dead. Easy costume, merely requiring white shirt and nametag, but then you have to haul the cricket bat around all night.
Right at sunset on the kind of summer night they put on postcards, the zombies arrived in full force in the SoFA District: a stage-blood covered march converging around Gore Park for the free screening of Zombieland. There were booths—a Zombie Shakespeare T-shirt being the most tempting: “Alas, poor Yorick, I ate his brains.”
Since the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies thing has gone from book to graphic novel to proposed major motion, one wonders which Shakespeare play would be best adapted for zombation?
KING HENRY V:
“The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,
And the flesh’d soldier, rough and hard of heart,
In liberty of bloody hand shall range
With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
Your undead wretches, leaking gore and seeking brains …”
As dusk approached, the participants were spread all over downtown San Jose. I saw a taco truck, but sadly no special on extra-mushy sensos burritos (the way most people in the San Jose area get their brains). At McDonald’s, a few detoured, local vagabonds stared at the stage-gore covered diners and wondered if this was some kind of PETA protest.
Zombies went without extra regard at Cinebar, where regulars were more obsessed with Christian Bale playing one very unconvincing vato loco in Harsh Times on DVD than they were with a bloody clown zombie.
What was a pleasure, really, was seeing the children’s reactions, because zombie-day is all about ’em: a scandalized but delighted matinee crowd of children came out of MACLA, dazzled by daylight, and piled right into the middle of the crowd. Some children in makeup were led by the hand by their painted-up parents. And there was at least one zombaby with makeup, lolling on the curb for a quick rest next to her stroller.
Conventioneers were walking by, not knowing about Zombie-o-Rama: “What’s going on?” “It’s an outbreak!” The crowd was boisterous but no threat; when they came at you (“Rarrrrr!”), they kept their distanceThe line stretched out of Slave Labor Graphics, which buzzed with dozens of wanna-be zombies waiting for the makeup (prices began $5 for a makeover). There was some more milling around, looking over the books and the zombie art show; a box of donuts with a donut pink brain seeming the most cheerful somehow. After posing for pictures, the zombies stopped for water at a zombies-only cooling station and then cued up for the chairs in front of the portable drive-in screen. The movie wrapped up downtown San Jose’s outdoor-movie season. It was sad to see it end, but posters suggest that a Santa Mob is in the making for later this year; no doubt there’ll be a genre-bending zombie-Santa in that crowd.
