Brains and Beer

By William Block
Contributing Writer

If you find yourself at a bar downtown this Saturday with bits of brain in your drink, you can blame Crystal Aakre and Trevor Hirst. If you slip on a trail of blood while walking down the street, you can blame Crystal and Trevor. If you’re looking to have an intelligent conversation and your pub mate only answers back with “brains?”, you can blame Crystal and Trevor. If you have an unnatural fear of the undead and have to be hospitalized this weekend, you can blame Crystal and Trevor.

If you love zombies and have the best time of your life this weekend, you can thank Crystal and Trevor.

Starting with the great zombie revival that happened with the release of Danny Boyle’s “28 Days Later” and followed with numerous other movies, video games, and comics, zombies seem to be all the rage these days. So the obvious conclusion to this new-found reemergence was to make it into a bar crawl.

Yes, come this Saturday the streets of downtown will be consumed by zombies in the second annual Zombie Pub Crawl. Having first experienced the event in Minneapolis, Trevor had to share the experience with Crystal. It was love at first brain. The two quickly hatched a plan to import the event to downtown Fargo. Not knowing what to expect, they thought they might have maybe fifty other fellow zombies stumbling along with them for a night of intestines, blood and beer. Instead they were greeted with a full on zombie epidemic.

An estimated 200 to 250 zombies roamed the streets in what Crystal described as “euphoria.” Gone were the normal social constructs that dominate local nightlife. There were no jocks, hipsters, scene kids, ass kids or drama queens; all there was was the undead. In Crystal’s mind what makes The Zombie Crawl such a great event is that it’s the great equalizer. Everyone is on the same playing field when they’re dead. So what do you do when you have such a massive success of a pub crawl? Do it again.

So, if you want to be part of the zombie infestation of downtown Fargo this Saturday, head to Island park—where the crawl begins—at 3 p.m. But before you show, you have some choices to make. What type of zombie will you be? Straight up old school by way of “Night of Living Dead?” The 21st century zombie that can run and jump faster than an Olympic athlete via Zach Synder’s “Dawn of Dead.” Or perhaps you want to mix it up a bit and be a zombie from the popular video game Resident Evil, shouting “Las Plagos” at everyone you see?

Now, let’s move on to what type of character you want to zombify. A cheerleader, a nun, a mayor, or perhaps Cobra Commander? You can be whoever or whatever you want but you know, you really like to eat other peoples brains. To simplify things, take whatever silly costume you were going to wear for Halloween and add blood. Except I don’t think you can be a ghost, because ghost are already dead. I mean you could, but you’re just going to get made fun of.

Next, start to think of a prop for your zombie. As Crystal says, “Props really help you to stay in character.” If you’re a zombie office worker, have a pen shoved into your head. If you’re a zombie teacher, have a pencil shoved in your head. You know, get creative, get out there, get crazy. Also of note is the type of blood you’ll have splattered all over you. How fresh of a zombie are you? Has your blood coagulated yet? How far into rigor-mortus are you?

These are all important questions to ask before you roam the streets in search of beer and brains. For more information head to the website [zombiefargo.com] where you can find helpful hints for everything from blood-making formulas to zombie etiquette while participating in the crawl. Zombies may want your brains, but they have class as well.

But the one rule you have to follow while crawling through the streets in guts and blood is when someone shouts, “What do you want?” you shout “Brains!” and when they come back at you with “When do we want them?” you shout back “Brains!” If you want to be rad this Saturday, be rad and be a zombie.