A few weeks ago our friend Jay and his hula troop crashed various spots throughout the city (san francisco) and broke into hula. This hula-by-surprise was part of an organized effort called Hit and Run Hula (
www.hitandrunhula.com). My favorite was when we crammed into the Apple store (
http://sfist.com/2009/08/15/hit_and_run_hula_ambushes_apple_sto.php). While the unsuspecting customers browsed the computers, Dee and I put the Hit and Run Hula website up on the Safari web browsers on the display machines. That way they'd know what hit 'em. The best thing about the dances was that the dancers were all in plain clothes. More and more of them would join the dance as the song went on. As a bystander you couldn't tell who was a dancer and who wasn't. The reactions on peoples' faces were very memorable. The funniest was when the Apple store's security guard first noticed somethin was afoot. He lunged into the sea of people but his pace quickly slowed to a stunned run as he began to realize the store was being ambushed by a rare act of kindness and beauty.
Dee and I had lunch with the Hula troop that day and were talking about social disturbance. Someone mentioned another example where on Valentine's Day, singles get together in Justin Herman Plaza and have a pillow fight (
http://www.pillowfight.info/). From what I've heard they're protesting those in love...and hoping to get lucky themselves perhaps in a fun and unusual social setting.
One last example of social disturbance with a positive tone came up as I've been reading SOMA (
http://www.somalit.com/SoMa-The-Novel.html). It's a great work of fiction-based-on-fact. But anyway, in the book it talks about all kinds of ways people in my town have innovated to connect with each other. One is called the Cocktail Club. I can't find any mention of it online anymore, but apparently this used to be a crowd that would suddenly get a text message one night with the location of a bar typically unfrequented. The idea was everyone would suddenly show up at that bar as if out of the blue causing a bit of fun social disturbance for the regulars.
