Reason number 387 why I love Boston.

Yesterday my Video Field group was filming our third and final project of the semester, a 6-8 minute short about a hipster vampire falling in love with a zombie. We were in the Common by the mauseoleum that's falling apart, the one behind the tennis courts, and had three girls with zombie outfits and makeup on and one hipster kid. A little strange, but not anything unusual for Emerson. A bunch of black men were in the gazebo, standing in a circle and swaying back and forth. Then they started shouting. They were all facing inwards and would lean back and yell a phrase, but we had no idea what they were saying. They'd only yell every five minutes or so, so we'd have to get scenes done as quickly as possible so the shouting men wouldn't be in our audio track. At the same time, there was a giant scavenger hunt going on, and the people partcipating kept thinking that the mausoleum was a monument. We'd see people with backpacks and red shirts (which I think said "The Great American Race" or something similar; we asked one team about it and they said it was for charity) and tell them that the mausoleum was of no importance before they could even ask. I think Jeannie, our main zombie, chased a few of them away.

The best, part, though, was that while we were shooting, THE FETISH MARATHON RAN BY. Tomorrow is marathon Monday, so the city is packed with tourists and people are all excited that it's marathon weekend. I'm used to that. But I've never seen the fetish marathon. It's a group of people dressed in different fetish gear that run around the city. We saw them turn onto Boylston from S. Charles and then they ran through the Common, following a guy in a green kilt with a whistle. People were mainly dressed in bondage gear, but there was someone with a Frank the Bunny head, a few kilts, and some random other things. Jeannie ran down and high fived a few of them as they passed us. Jenn made a comment about them looking strange (I couldn't hear exactly what she said) and one of the guys in the parade answered "we're saying the same thing about you!"

I love Boston. As we were filming our last segment, someone started playing bagpipes. Ah, Beantown. How I will miss you.