Quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius

A bit insane in San Francisco:

This year's Valentine's Day pillow fight was, quite simply, a mess...San Francisco's pillow fight is part of an international fad, partly anarchistic, partly absurdist...

...It was the city's biggest and longest flash mob pillow fight yet: It drew an estimated 1,500 to 3,000 people and went on from about 6 p.m. until past midnight, according to officials.

As the crowd pounded each other with pillows, the cases split, releasing large volumes of feathers that the wind quickly spread. And it was wet. Intermittent rain plastered the feathers to everything they touched, forming a gray, feathery sludge that lined the lawn, the gutter, cars and buildings.

The soggy stuff clogged drains in nearby Four Embarcadero Center, flooding the Osha Thai Restaurant, said Norm Dito, a manager with Boston Properties, which owns the center. He estimated his firm's cleanup costs at more than $10,000. Feathers also filled the Vaillancourt Fountain and threatened to jam and burn out its pumps. Workers had to drain the cubist fountain's 12,000 gallons of water - it had only recently been filled - clean it out and refill it, said Dito.

The city had to dispatch two engineers to check the fountain along with a five-person crew that filled three pick-up trucks with feathers, all at a cost of more than $2,213, said Dennis Kern, director of operations for the Recreation and Park Department. "It was quite a mess, much more than we have experienced in previous years," said Mohammed Nuru, deputy director of the Department of Public Works. "Everywhere was feathers."

DPW assigned three extra cleanup shifts - a total of 69 employees and an extra street sweeper truck - costing about $19,000, Nuru said.