Flash Mobs Catch On

Why would 500 people gather in the lobby of a Hyatt in downtown Manhattan to clap in unison? Perhaps it’s the need for community. Or a desire to belong.

Whatever the reason, flash mobs are catching on. A flash mob, by definition, is a large group of people who gather in a usually predetermined location, perform some brief, innocent actionclap or yelland then quickly disperse. Mobbers have gathered in big cities around the world, including London, New York City, Tokyo and San Francisco. The website Cheesebikini.com is the online meeting place of global flash mobbers. Here, on the site’s message boards, is where the mob planning begins.

Reports of one recent flash mob event tell of 300 participants converging on the Toys “R” Us in Manhattan’s Times Square. The mob trotted up to the second floor and knelt in front of an animatronic T-rex dinosaur (after staring at it for three minutes). When Dino roared, the crowed moaned and cowered in fear. According to a mob site, “Toys ‘R’ Us staffers were so panicked, they shut down the dinosaur and called the police.”

In New York City several flash mobs have occurred without incident, and the city’s finest seem undaunted by the fad. New York City detective Walter Burnes says, “Two months ago, I had no idea what flash mobs were, then I asked around. They haven’t been an issue. But if people block traffic or impede pedestrians, we’ll handle them the same way we handle any large crowd: We’ll disperse them, or we’ll arrest them. We get large crowd calls all the time. Sometimes we get there and they’re gone. Could those have been flash mobs? Sure. But we’re not doing anything differently than we’ve been doing for the last couple of years.”