This City Can Leave You So Drained. Photo: Elizabeth Lippman for The New York Times
Zombiecon feature by RUTH LA FERLA
Published: October 26, 2006
“I just rolled out of the grave,” Liz Starin drawled, sounding fatigued. Shrouded in a white dress and matching silk piano shawl, Ms. Starin then rejoined her friends, several dozen pale revelers gnawing on fake limbs, dripping “blood” from blackened lips and looking every bit like extras in a George Romero flick.
But the ghoulish scene on the Upper East Side of Manhattan wasn’t an outtake from “Dawn of the Dead.” “We call this a form of participatory art,” said Jim Glaser, an organizer of the event, known as a Zombiecon. It was one in a series of monthly costume extravaganzas attended by artists, designers and business executives who meet in clubs or restaurants, then take to the streets to startle passers-by.
“Oh my God, what was that,” an onlooker on Fifth Avenue gasped before snapping a photo of Ms. Starin and her chalk-faced cohort. Mr. Glaser looked on smugly. “We try to make it Halloween all year round,” he said.
