The evening started a bit early for me. I had skipped out of work a half hour early, and my commute was blessed by lady luck herself. My bus came just as I got to the bus stop and my BART train pulled up just as I was coming down the stairs. In all I had made it to San Francisco in record time. This good fortune had the unfortunate side affect of giving me an hour to kill. I quickly purchased a wonderful loaf of pumpkin bread with a surprising amount of fruits and nuts in it. I then procured myself a perch with in the ferry building and proceeded to people watch as I happily munched upon my bounty.

I had not expected to see any people walking around with pillows, as the additional rules of pillow fight club was to conceal your pillow with in a bad until the ferry tower struck six. I scrutinized every person that walked by, wondering what they had hidden away with in their bags confining walls. Lost in my imaginary world of concealed down filled weapons, I was surprised when Sarah called, snapping me back into this world. While exiting the building I saw my first confirmed glance of these elusive feathery objects, as a skinny lad in his late teens, hurried by me with a huge bulge under his shirt, and the edges of a pillow poking from beneath.

Still giggling from the lack of subtlety that the teen exhibited, I exited the building, hurried across the street to meet my love, and was struck dumb by the shear number of people that had accrued in the square. Quickly meeting up with Sarah, we took a seat and gawked at the people. The sheer variety of people was inspiring. I saw thirty something businessmen and women as well as a twelve year old girl in a long fancy white dress. I witnessed sever people who looked strait out of a gangster rap video, except that they all had huge grins on as they held their fluffed arsenals. I spied a mixed group of college kids all wearing pajamas and bathrobes, and a group of three wearing lab coats, construction helmets and carrying clipboards. There was a person dressed in a kissing both costume, and a guy who was dressed in jeans and a bra.

Still gawking I was taken a bit by surprise when I heard the clock tower chime six, and in a shouting mass, the tide of people rushed forward into the plaza. I quickly liberated my pillow from its concealment with in my backpack and waded into the crowd. With in a matter of moments I was accosted by several ladies and quickly discovered that because of the crowded conditions I was unable to use any raps for fear of punching someone. I quickly switched over to using an exaggerated arm motion with my number one, two, three and four strikes. This work very well, except for the lack of defense (have you every tried parrying with a pillow?). Deciding that my best defense was to keep moving, I started to carve a path through the crowd from one side to the other, then repeating. This worked great, but I still got hit a lot.

After a short time of fighting several pillows started to break and feathers started to fall. This gave it an almost surreal appearance. A mix between winter battle, and a artistic movie clip, the ones in which added sentiment is created by the liberal use of cherry blossoms of falling feathers.

The battle raged for half an hour then just as abruptly as it started, it ended as everybody suddenly laid down in a mass. It was declared nap time, which many people took as a photo opportunity. Once the cameras quieted, the crowd arose, but for many their blood was still hot, and packets of combat opened up again. I had found Sarah, or rather she had found me, as we were parted just as soon as we entered the fray, and watched several of the larger pockets of combatants slowly move towards the center. Sarah and I looked at each other and dove into the skirmish. As this conflict was mad up of the diehard college kids this fight was a bit more violent the mass melee. After a short time of this I beat my way to out of the fight in search of water to quench the thirst. Meat up with Sarah, after again being separated, and had out own private pillow fight on the side.

Finally deciding that we should stop, primarily because our heads hurt from the incessancy beating what we had received, retired to restaurant to finish out evening.