The big story in Philly the last few weeks is... flash mobs! The Times:
hundreds of teenagers have been converging downtown for a ritual that is part bullying, part running of the bulls: sprinting down the block, the teenagers sometimes pause to brawl with one another, assault pedestrians or vandalize propertyIf you remember flash mobs, they were a bizarre hipster/performance art phenomenon that briefly took place, in New York and elsewhere, around 2003-'04, sort of coinciding with the Howard Dean presidential bid and featuring a lot of the same people.
From what I remember it was more of a prank than anything else; hundreds of people would show up somewhere, do something wacky, and then immediately disperse. The Philadelphia version, as is often the case, is much more violent.
Posted by Stephen Silver at March 25, 2010 07:39 PM