All hell and feathers broke loose on the Cambridge Common as hordes of people gathered to pummel each other with pillows for the annual Boston Pillow Fight on Saturday.
The annual Pillow Fight was part of the larger International Pillow Fight Day, and was hosted by Banditos Misteriosos, an organization with a mission to “get people out and experiencing Boston,” according to Bandito J, a member of the planning board for the pillow fight.
“Why a pillow fight?” J said. “It’s a celebration of spring. It gets people out and meeting new people, which is great.”
Several hundred Bostonians, college students and a few grown men dressed up as giant horses gathered at the Common with pillows ready to impromptu attack.
“It’s vicious in there, and only a few will survive,” said Kyle Rowe, a resident from Groveland.
The annual Pillow Fight has become one of Banditos Misteriosos’ more popular events since they first started hosting it in 2007.
Laura Pond, a student from Northeastern University, started a team with two of her friends. For the Pillow Fight, they wore identical pink shirts with the words “Tuff Fluff” across the chest.
“We’ve been a team for four years—there are four others with us right now, I think they’re fighting children,” Pond said. “We started as a group of three and every year we recruit more and more members. It’s our greatest day of the year, better than Christmas.”
Her teammate Brent Sylvester, who was visiting from Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, said he wondered if the tiny flecks of blood on his pillowcase were his.
“You’d think it doesn’t hurt, but if you get hit that many times on the head, it hurts,” Sylvester said.
The children were the most vicious and hard-hitting participants, he said.
“There was one that keeps hitting us for 15 minutes, wouldn’t go away. We had to recruit her to our team. It’s the only way to stop her,” Syldester said, fully embracing the “if you can’t beat them, join them” philosophy.
“You have to watch out for them, they’re the worst. Do not protect them, they can protect themselves!” said Rebecca Thompson a resident of Beverly, as a group of children chased a man in a leopard costume past her.
“Especially for guys—the little ones, their natural strike zone is right around waist level, so you got to watch out for them,” said Andrew Miner, from Cambridge.
All the participants seemed to agree that hitting another person with a pillow was immensely satisfying.
“Oh my god, it is one of the best feelings in the world,” said Charlie Debiasi, who lives in Wisconsin.
“Your immediate reaction to getting hit by a pillow is, ‘Oh no you didn’t, I’m going to hit you back right now,’” said Boston resident Gina Sultin.
The pillow fight lasted over an hour before the crowd slowly thinned out, with some participants already looked forward to next year’s brawl.
“This is controlled, joyful mayhem,” J said.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
