Now this is an interesting event and a good chance for some outreach:

The Chicago Zombie Pub Crawl will return for its fourth consecutive year on Saturday, April 30, 2011, and will once again take place in the neighborhood of Andersonville. The event is an annual fundraiser for pH Productions, the not-for-profit Chicago comedy theater company currently based in Lakeview’s Studio BE.

The Chicago Zombie Pub Crawl (CZPC) is one of Chicago’s most highly anticipated Spring events. Once again, the CZPC will bring droves of thirsty zombies as they plod through Andersonville’s best bars looking for two things—beer and brrrrrains! Regular pub crawl participants like Mary’s Attic, Simon’s Tavern and @mosphere (plus several others) are going to be part of the fun once again this year.

On the one hand it’s very nice to see commercial events catering to Zombies and, admittedly, people who want to dress up as Zombies. That’s a big step forward from the usual way that businesses exploit the Differently Animated for quick cash. On the other hand, of course, some of the language here isn’t Zombie Friendly, and even a slightly sarcastic reference to the “Braains” thing is a bit much. Must we always talk brains when we talk about Zombie outings?

We see a similar pattern of unfortunate miscommunications on the FAQ of the Pub Crawl itself:

6. Can I bring kids, is it a family event?
No. There is no such thing as zombie children, no matter how much you argue. Its just gross.

…

10. Do I have to dress up?
You will need to have some assemblance of zombification to participate, we will have expert makeup artists there that can add a little blood and flesh to your face if that’s all you want to do, but only zombies, and only zombies that register will get to take part in the crawl and more importantly the specials.

I get it, I really do. You don’t want people bringing children to an alcohol heavy event, and you need some way to identify Pub Crawl patrons. However, spreading misinformation about Zombie Children, who very much *do* exist and face many unique challenges of their own is not helpful. Grade school can be vicious and difficult enough for the new kid; now imagine if the new kid is a Zombie, and don’t even get me started on the troubles that middle school and high school Zombies face.

Likewise, having a way to identify paying pub-crawl goers and participants, ie, being Zombielike, is done for obvious reasons, but is this any way to conduct outreach? If Living people wish to participate, must they engage in greenface, even in a good natured way, to do it? I wonder. I’m not averse per se to dressing up as a Zombie, but I can see how it could well offend some of the ZRC’s clientele, and I try to be sensitive to that.

On the whole, this sounds like a pleasant outing and an uplifting event. Unfortunately, and this is happening so often I’m beginning to think it’s a conspiracy this spring, the ZRC has a previously scheduled engagement that evening at 8 here in Madison that we can’t avoid. I’m considering attending but we could only stick around for the first 2 hours or so of the Crawl before booking it back to Madison. I will talk it over with the art director and if we are attending as an official ZRC function of course it will go up on the blog.

For now, I suppose, miscommunication or not, we should be thankful once again that Chicago has made itself the Zombie Friendliest City I know. I don’t think even New Orleans embraces its Zombie heritage and populace as thoroughly as Chicago, and that’s a truly commendable attitude in this pervasively Anti-Zombie age.

Tags: Public Appearance, Zombie Public Event

This entry was posted by John Sears on Monday, March 21st, 2011 at 3:39 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.