Celebrate the Halloween spirit by shuffling through Carytown in your best zombie costume at the 9th Annual Richmond Zombie Walk this Saturday at 2:30pm. The event is a benefit for the American Cancer Society.
Celebrate the Halloween spirit by shuffling through Carytown in your best zombie costume at the 9th Annual Richmond Zombie Walk this Saturday at 2:30pm. The event is a benefit for the American Cancer Society.
Roger Barr brought the first zombie walk to the city in 2005 after he saw a few zombie flash mobs in places like Toronto. After the first year, when Barr moved to Los Angeles, his friends Anthony Menez and Josh Bishop took over. At the time, Richmond had the Watermelon Festival and events for various holidays such as St. Patrick’s Day, but nothing associated with Halloween. “We kind of like to say Halloween is our Christmas,” Menez said. “We just enjoy Halloween. I mean Christmas is fun, but Halloween is better to us, so we had to continue the zombie walk.”
Wanting to make the zombie walk more of a legitimate event than just a collection of blood-crazed zombies shuffling about, Menez and Bishop decided to collect donations for the American Cancer Society after Menez’s father-in-law had been diagnosed with lung cancer. Originally, the zombie walk was a flash mob; however, the process of being secretive, organizing multiple meeting locations, and assuring no arrests would be made became a hassle. Therefore, Menez and Bishop decided to transform the event into a walk in Carytown. “People seem to like it,” Menez said. “They just wanna be a part of it. They don’t really care if we are the biggest or the best, it’s just about the experience. And because of that we haven’t changed since… We love Carytown, and they love us.”
Photo by Myk Menez
The two have not found planning the walk to be a challenge, but actually ensuring that 600-plus zombies make it from the Kroger parking lot at the top of Carytown all the way to The Byrd Theatre, where all of the zombies have to cross the street, has been more difficult. The zombies aren’t supposed to touch any stores or non-participants during the walk–but the fact that the event takes place on a Saturday afternoon in the city’s busiest shopping district brings its own challenges. In the past, zombie walk participants have expressed to Menez that they don’t like it when “zombie hunters” attempt to participate. However, Menez prefers to keep the organization as loose as possible, in order to increase the fun. “Every year we see zombie hunters who hang around the outskirts of our walk and pretend to shoot us. We aren’t expected to play dead for them. Everyone’s just doing their own thing!” Menez said.
Costumes are the most exciting part for Menez. Costumes have ranged in inspiration from the 1988 movie Beetlejuice to the current horror-drama series The Walking Dead. The Zombie Walk organizers judge a pre-walk costume contest each year, awarding prizes to their favorites in several categories. These categories include: Most Disgusting, Best Couple/Group Theme, Best Pop Culture Theme, Best Zombie Kid, and 2013 Zombie of the Year.
Come out this Saturday and join Menez and Bishop in zombie shuffling at the Richmond Zombie Walk. The pre-walk meetup will take place at the Landing at Fountain Lake (Byrd Park) at 1pm. At this meeting, participants will get together and go over rules, and organizers will collect donations and award prizes for the costume contests. The actual walk will begin at 2:30pm on the sidewalk in front of Kroger in Carytown located at 3507 W. Cary Street. Whether you’re fully costumed and participating in the zombie walk, or just hanging out in Carytown watching it all go down, it’s sure to be a fun time. For more information, go to richmondzombiewalk.com or check out the facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/511672955586344/
OFFICIALLY PART OF #HALLOWEEKRVA
