Pitch Camp - Urban Camping in Times Square
“I was watching MTV2 when I got home last night, they did a few exterior shots where they focused on the tents before pulling out to show a wide shot of Times Square.
I remember thinking who are these crazy people camping in Times Square, now I know :)”
I guess we were on MTV2 last night!
(Update: A sampling of what people seem to be writing about us all over.)
A couple months ago, Zach and I were talking and thought that it’d be cool to gather a whole bunch of people to go camping together one night right here in Manhattan. We agreed do a test run in Times Square. On Saturday, June 11th at midnight, Zach, Paul, and I arrived to pitch camp.
Folks from all over the world stopped and talked to us to find out what we were doing. Some bought us supplies (we’d made a pact not to leave our traffic island until morning), others jumped in our tents to have their photos taken, and two even brought pizza. Many hung out for a while and signed our guestbook. A few are pictured below.
We spun stories about being there to be first in line for Jessica Simpson tickets (one group almost joined us) or claimed to be photographers for North Face taking product photos in the urban landscape (the cops seemed to buy that one.) But people just seemed to love the idea that someone was actually camping out in the middle of times square for the heck of it.
Over the course of the night 10 cops visited and talked to us, but most left us alone. One said that he wished that he could join us. The campsite was finally broken up by a pair of cops just at sunrise.
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