Michigan Avenue hosts…a giant pillow fight?

If you were walking down Michigan Avenue on Saturday March 22, you may have seen a few passers-by carrying pillows. “That’s odd,” you may have thought, then gone about your business. But at 2 P.M. on the corner of Monroe and Michigan Avenue, pillows collided and feathers flew in the celebration of National Pillow Fight Day.

This isn’t just a Chicago phenomenon - celebrations were held in Copenhagen, London, Paris, Boston, Los Angeles, New York, and the list goes on.

Every few minutes a coordinator would blow a whistle and the group would move further south down Michigan Avenue. Then someone would call out “Pillow Fight!” and the pandemonium started up again.

Some wore regular clothes, while others dressed for the occasion in WWF wrestling masks and bio-hazard suits to armor themselves against their pillow-wielding enemies.
You could see the early “casualties” falling back.

Others would take a rest and then jump back into the fray. This went on for about 45 minutes, culminating in a flurry of flying feathers and pieces of fiberfill all over. The extra fluff added another edge as people breathed in the feathers and walked away spitting and coughing, only to go back in for another round.

The event ended in a showdown between the best-decorated ‘weapons’ and an intense competition between the fiercest fighters.

This is the stuff middle-school sleepover dreams are made of.