Fredericton — Thursday’s flash-flood not only knocked out the power for several hundred NB Power customers last week, but it also put a damper on the city’s arts scene by forcing a local flash mob to call off their planned event.
“We’re really disappointed,” said flash-mob organizer Spencer Humble. “When you rigidly plan an event, and then something unexpected like this happens, it’s a real bummer.”
The plan was for a group of 40 obnoxious high school and university students to head down to Officers’ Square around 3 p.m., and try to act naturally. Then, at 3:30, they would stop in the middle of the park and start dancing in-sync to the 2009 hit song “I Gotta Feeling.”
“We all got to the park at the scheduled time,” said flash-mobber Lucy MacNeil. “I mean, a few folks thought it was weird that so many young people were going to the Square all at once, but still I think that they would have been totally shocked, if it had ended up happening.”
Suddenly, just before the team was about to spring into action, rain began to pour down on in the city. The storm quickly emptied the courtyard and severely damaged the flash mob’s sound and lighting equipment, causing an abrupt cancellation of the event.
“Dude, my speakers got faaaaaaaaacked,” said flash-mob sound guy Caleb Guriel, laughing at his own quirky pronunciation of the obscenity.
Humble explained that the group just quietly called off the whole thing with their secret “abort mission” signal — tugging on their left earlobe, stomping their feet and sticking 2 fingers up their nose.
“Everyone just went home,” he said, “except for Jimmy Kean, man, he just stayed there and rocked it by himself.”
But is this young group of dancers about to let a little bit of rain stop them from spreading their delight throughout New Brunswick’s capital city in the future? Humble answered this question with an emphatic “no.”
“Of course not! We just love surprising people and putting a little bit of joy into peoples lives,” he said. “Our re-do is planned for July 2nd at 1 o’clock.” After considering this for a moment, a worried expression came over his face.
“Oh, but don’t print that.”
That is dum.. They say Canada is were we are free…But it is not if u are trying to tell us what time we can smoke and what time we can’t smoke.. To me if the person doesn’t like smoke. Then they walk away from smoker like they have for years and years.. like they did before us started saying smoking was bad for ppl and why it is bad for use is because of the things that us put in to it…