streetwars: a tale of life and death, once passionate but quickly apathetic (a dry recap)
18 October 2006
About a year and a half ago, I was watching CNN when an investigative report came on about an "assassins" game. The game worked like this: a person signs up, gets a "target" and information on this target (where he/she lives and works), and has to assassinate this target by shooting him/her with a water gun. Not only that, but just as a player has a target, that player is being hunted as well by someone else in the game. The report showed young people, mostly in their twenties, stalking their prey with water guns in tow, and the players spoke about the adrenaline rush of both hunting and being hunted. The game was called StreetWars.
This idea intrigued me. Not because I’ve ever fashioned myself an assassin, but because I like murder shows and I’m generally considered a creepy guy. Being able to legally stalk someone – even "kill" them – kinda turned me on (and I mean that in the most sexual way possible). As I am internet savvy, I went to the StreetWars website and signed up to be reminded when the game came to NYC (the CNN report showed people playing in Los Angeles). And then I completely forgot about it.
Fast forward to a little under two months ago and a reminder popped up in my email inbox telling me StreetWars was coming to NYC. My interest was repiqued, but then my laziness set in – hunting someone seemed like a lot of work. That night, I went out for my buddy Jeremy’s birthday and got drunk, as all my friends did. Since my group of friends spends so much time together we’re quickly and quietly morphing into the characters from friends (I’m Monica), during one of the many lulls in the conversation I brought up StreetWars. My friends were intrigued. Then we did some shots. And then next thing I knew, Brian, Corinne, Jeremy and I had signed up for StreetWars as a team. The hunt would soon be on. We were the Hashish Assassins. Don’t fuck with us.
[It should be more widely known that the words "hash" and "assassination" are related. Marco Polo wrote about a Muslim leader who used hash to dupe young men into joining his personal army. Basically this leader would throw a big party and get these young men fucked up on hash, then he'd throw all sorts of food and women at them and show them a grand old time. The young men would then pass out and when they awoke, the leader would say that he took them to heaven. If they wanted to get back to heaven to enjoy the women and food, they had to do his bidding, namely kill mother fuckers. So they became assassins. Because of hashish. I know I'm butchering this legend a little bit, but I can assure you it's at least 75% true. So there.]
I, like the rest of my friends, grew excited about StreetWars. I knew that there was something inherently nerdy about it, but hey – sometimes nerdiness isn’t all bad (I can’t believe…I just…wrote that). Besides – stalking! Fake shooting! Kinda murder! C’mon people – what’s not to love here!
In order to get the information about our target, our team, like all the other players, had to head to a random place in Queens to meet the organizers of the game. I could not attend, as I was getting bombed after watching an Eagles game. Nor could Corinne, so Jeremy and Brian made the trek out to Queens to pick up our shit. I wrote about this before, so I’ll just cut and paste:
[In Queens to pick up our target's dossier, Jeremy and Brian] were treated to a very lame scene: the head guys dressed up like pimps drinking cognac in a back of a rented U-Haul, complete with a "harem" and fake bodyguard (I know – I also had to swallow deeply to hold back my pity vomit). This thing is run by people who I have very little doubt were very into theatre in high school and routinely got wedgies. And, upon Jeremy’s estimation after seeing other people present to pick up dossiers, a solid 75% of the people playing in the game are probably virgins, many of whom were in disguise so as not to be seen my their fellow assassins. Yeah. So there’s that.
This is when we first realized that StreetWars might be even nerdier than we anticipated.
But at the time, we were still into it. Since the four of us were in a team, we all shared the same target, a guy who was a lawyer at the courts here in NYC. In a way, it was unfair, since all four of us were going after him.
But there was a negative to being part of a team. For whatever reason, Jeremy was chosen as leader of our team. This meant that if Jeremy were to be assassinated, the entire team would be eliminated (whereas if I were shot, I’d be the only one out). So while we could work as a team to go after our target, we also had to essentially act as bodyguards for Jeremy.
As the game started, I put the over/under for our survival at three days. I had seen the CNN report and knew that people got very into this – taking vacation days from work to sit outside a target’s home for hours and the like. And after Jeremy and Brian went to Queens and told Corinne and I about all the Star Wars-lovin’ geeks that were involved, I figured that slackers like us wouldn’t stand a chance.
And I was kinda right. But at least we made a kill.
On Monday night, the first night of the game, I actually picked up Jeremy from work, water pistol drawn, and escorted him to a bar next door to his apartment (StreetWars rules stipulate that you are safe inside bars, but not restaurants – this place was somewhere in the middle). There, we were eating wings with our friend Meredith when a guy walked up to Jeremy with his water pistol out and said, "Are you stalking me?" It turns out that this guy was in line with Jeremy and Brian picking up the dossiers in Queens. As he was one of the few normal people there, the three struck up a conversation. But now, he was standing in front of my leader with his gun in his side, looking threatening, as I, Jeremy’s protector, had wing sauce on my face, beard, hands, hair, and feet (don’t ask). Awesome fucking bodyguard, am I.
Jeremy said "No" and asked the guy if he was stalking him, expecting to be shot. Instead, the guy said that he wasn’t stalking Jeremy either, but was in the bar watching the Monday Night Football game with his buddies. The two immediately relaxed and I breathed a sigh of relief and resumed eating wings (ok, I never stopped). Jeremy added, "We’re in a bar anyway", but the guy countered "This is more of a restaurant, isn’t it?" and the two went back and forth arguing whether or not this was a safe zone. The guy said that his target lived around the area but he was there, again, just to hang out with his buddies. They talked for a bit more and then the guy left to go to the bathroom.
After he left, Meredith was the first to say, "You know – he kinda looks like your target." Jeremy pulled out the picture of our target and wouldn’t you know it – the guy who was just speaking to Jeremy, who we will call Sam, was our fucking target. I could see why this wasn’t instantly recognized: Sam was thugged out in the picture we had of him, with a Knicks jersey and spiked hair, while the guy we were just talking to was very corporate and conservative. But the fact remained – he was our guy. All we had to do was shoot him.
But we didn’t, mostly because we were eating wings. By the time we decided to act, Sam had left the bar. This made us mad at ourselves, but also raised a few red flags. Why, if he was at the bar to watch the game with his friends, did he leave when it had just started? Was he onto us? Or was he really Jeremy’s assassin but unable to shoot him because he was in a safe zone? Hmm…
The result was four days of paranoia – including Jeremy staying over at my apartment for two nights – that ended only when Jeremy walked outside his place to find Sam, our target, his possible assassin, standing there. Playing it cool, Jeremy struck up a conversation with Sam, who allowed that his target lived only two doors away from Jeremy. As Jeremy tells it, he then said, "Oh yeah? Well how about this!" and then shot Sam, but I imagine he let out more of a "moo"-type sound and awkwardly sprayed Sam with his water gun, possibly dropping it and also prematurely ejaculating when doing so. Either way, we had our first kill. Victors.
The rules of StreetWars stipulate that once you "kill" someone, you take his or her target and hunt that person. Sam handed his target’s info to Jeremy and clued him in on some intelligence he had gathered: Sam’s target, our new target, was a lawyer at a big-time law firm in midtown and worked long and erratic hours. Sam, however, had a buddy on the inside of his target’s firm who checked the log book to see what time the target arrived at work each day. Armed with his information, Sam was convinced that his target was not staying at his place – possibly staying at his lover’s – because Sam had been outside his apartment for hours each morning, each time in the range that his target signed into work. Something was fishy…
And this is the point when we pretty much gave up. The thrill of our first kill proved fleeting and was replaced by apathy. No member of the team had any interest in staking out a guy who was clearly not staying at his apartment (a violation of the rules, by the way). And also, it was apparent that no one was coming after Jeremy. After a few first jitters on the first few days, Jeremy felt completely safe – he didn’t see any suspicious people, never felt like he was being followed – nothing. It appeared that the only people more lazy than us - killers by accident because our target was practically delivered to Jeremy – were the people hunting Jeremy.
(Brian and I had long resigned ourselves to the fact that no one was hunting us. I was pretty much the easiest target in the world, since I work regular hours, walk everywhere, and a simple google search would bring my assassin to this website, where he could learn all kinda shit about me. Corinne thought she was being targeted, but Brian and I chalked up her fears to being a crazy girl. She did not like that and went so far to point out that I’m more of a crazy girl than she is. And she’s right.)
So for the next few days after our kill, which took place on Day 4, we did nothing. We still carried around our water pistols, but I was no longer escorting Jeremy out of work, none of us were taking alternative routes home, we were barely talking about it. The thrill was gone and our emails turned from discussions about StreetWars to "Have you ever gotten high at work? Highly recommended."
Then, on Day 11, the end finally came. Jeremy was buzzed walking back to his apartment and someone approached him at his door, asked if he was Jeremy, then shot him. Elimination, at long last. Jeremy’s assassin turned out to be a cool guy who even bought Jeremy a drink at the bar next door and appeared extremely high. I pointed out that it would probably be more acceptable to be killed by the nerd who’s been plotting for days than the guy who gets high in his apartment all day long, but no one listened to me. They never do. Which they will regret one day.
(I hope.)
**********
In the end, StreetWars was another typical chapter of my life: a lot of promise and enthusiasm at the start, but ending with a whimper and an awkward goodbye. This can be said for pretty much every endeavor, job, and relationship I’ve ever had in my life. But at least I’m consistent. I kinda smell pretty good, too. But that’s about it.
(Let’s just end this before I get too depressed. And yes, I am getting some ice cream tonight – thank you for asking.)
This idea intrigued me. Not because I’ve ever fashioned myself an assassin, but because I like murder shows and I’m generally considered a creepy guy. Being able to legally stalk someone – even "kill" them – kinda turned me on (and I mean that in the most sexual way possible). As I am internet savvy, I went to the StreetWars website and signed up to be reminded when the game came to NYC (the CNN report showed people playing in Los Angeles). And then I completely forgot about it.
Fast forward to a little under two months ago and a reminder popped up in my email inbox telling me StreetWars was coming to NYC. My interest was repiqued, but then my laziness set in – hunting someone seemed like a lot of work. That night, I went out for my buddy Jeremy’s birthday and got drunk, as all my friends did. Since my group of friends spends so much time together we’re quickly and quietly morphing into the characters from friends (I’m Monica), during one of the many lulls in the conversation I brought up StreetWars. My friends were intrigued. Then we did some shots. And then next thing I knew, Brian, Corinne, Jeremy and I had signed up for StreetWars as a team. The hunt would soon be on. We were the Hashish Assassins. Don’t fuck with us.
[It should be more widely known that the words "hash" and "assassination" are related. Marco Polo wrote about a Muslim leader who used hash to dupe young men into joining his personal army. Basically this leader would throw a big party and get these young men fucked up on hash, then he'd throw all sorts of food and women at them and show them a grand old time. The young men would then pass out and when they awoke, the leader would say that he took them to heaven. If they wanted to get back to heaven to enjoy the women and food, they had to do his bidding, namely kill mother fuckers. So they became assassins. Because of hashish. I know I'm butchering this legend a little bit, but I can assure you it's at least 75% true. So there.]
I, like the rest of my friends, grew excited about StreetWars. I knew that there was something inherently nerdy about it, but hey – sometimes nerdiness isn’t all bad (I can’t believe…I just…wrote that). Besides – stalking! Fake shooting! Kinda murder! C’mon people – what’s not to love here!
In order to get the information about our target, our team, like all the other players, had to head to a random place in Queens to meet the organizers of the game. I could not attend, as I was getting bombed after watching an Eagles game. Nor could Corinne, so Jeremy and Brian made the trek out to Queens to pick up our shit. I wrote about this before, so I’ll just cut and paste:
[In Queens to pick up our target's dossier, Jeremy and Brian] were treated to a very lame scene: the head guys dressed up like pimps drinking cognac in a back of a rented U-Haul, complete with a "harem" and fake bodyguard (I know – I also had to swallow deeply to hold back my pity vomit). This thing is run by people who I have very little doubt were very into theatre in high school and routinely got wedgies. And, upon Jeremy’s estimation after seeing other people present to pick up dossiers, a solid 75% of the people playing in the game are probably virgins, many of whom were in disguise so as not to be seen my their fellow assassins. Yeah. So there’s that.
This is when we first realized that StreetWars might be even nerdier than we anticipated.
But at the time, we were still into it. Since the four of us were in a team, we all shared the same target, a guy who was a lawyer at the courts here in NYC. In a way, it was unfair, since all four of us were going after him.
But there was a negative to being part of a team. For whatever reason, Jeremy was chosen as leader of our team. This meant that if Jeremy were to be assassinated, the entire team would be eliminated (whereas if I were shot, I’d be the only one out). So while we could work as a team to go after our target, we also had to essentially act as bodyguards for Jeremy.
As the game started, I put the over/under for our survival at three days. I had seen the CNN report and knew that people got very into this – taking vacation days from work to sit outside a target’s home for hours and the like. And after Jeremy and Brian went to Queens and told Corinne and I about all the Star Wars-lovin’ geeks that were involved, I figured that slackers like us wouldn’t stand a chance.
And I was kinda right. But at least we made a kill.
On Monday night, the first night of the game, I actually picked up Jeremy from work, water pistol drawn, and escorted him to a bar next door to his apartment (StreetWars rules stipulate that you are safe inside bars, but not restaurants – this place was somewhere in the middle). There, we were eating wings with our friend Meredith when a guy walked up to Jeremy with his water pistol out and said, "Are you stalking me?" It turns out that this guy was in line with Jeremy and Brian picking up the dossiers in Queens. As he was one of the few normal people there, the three struck up a conversation. But now, he was standing in front of my leader with his gun in his side, looking threatening, as I, Jeremy’s protector, had wing sauce on my face, beard, hands, hair, and feet (don’t ask). Awesome fucking bodyguard, am I.
Jeremy said "No" and asked the guy if he was stalking him, expecting to be shot. Instead, the guy said that he wasn’t stalking Jeremy either, but was in the bar watching the Monday Night Football game with his buddies. The two immediately relaxed and I breathed a sigh of relief and resumed eating wings (ok, I never stopped). Jeremy added, "We’re in a bar anyway", but the guy countered "This is more of a restaurant, isn’t it?" and the two went back and forth arguing whether or not this was a safe zone. The guy said that his target lived around the area but he was there, again, just to hang out with his buddies. They talked for a bit more and then the guy left to go to the bathroom.
After he left, Meredith was the first to say, "You know – he kinda looks like your target." Jeremy pulled out the picture of our target and wouldn’t you know it – the guy who was just speaking to Jeremy, who we will call Sam, was our fucking target. I could see why this wasn’t instantly recognized: Sam was thugged out in the picture we had of him, with a Knicks jersey and spiked hair, while the guy we were just talking to was very corporate and conservative. But the fact remained – he was our guy. All we had to do was shoot him.
But we didn’t, mostly because we were eating wings. By the time we decided to act, Sam had left the bar. This made us mad at ourselves, but also raised a few red flags. Why, if he was at the bar to watch the game with his friends, did he leave when it had just started? Was he onto us? Or was he really Jeremy’s assassin but unable to shoot him because he was in a safe zone? Hmm…
The result was four days of paranoia – including Jeremy staying over at my apartment for two nights – that ended only when Jeremy walked outside his place to find Sam, our target, his possible assassin, standing there. Playing it cool, Jeremy struck up a conversation with Sam, who allowed that his target lived only two doors away from Jeremy. As Jeremy tells it, he then said, "Oh yeah? Well how about this!" and then shot Sam, but I imagine he let out more of a "moo"-type sound and awkwardly sprayed Sam with his water gun, possibly dropping it and also prematurely ejaculating when doing so. Either way, we had our first kill. Victors.
The rules of StreetWars stipulate that once you "kill" someone, you take his or her target and hunt that person. Sam handed his target’s info to Jeremy and clued him in on some intelligence he had gathered: Sam’s target, our new target, was a lawyer at a big-time law firm in midtown and worked long and erratic hours. Sam, however, had a buddy on the inside of his target’s firm who checked the log book to see what time the target arrived at work each day. Armed with his information, Sam was convinced that his target was not staying at his place – possibly staying at his lover’s – because Sam had been outside his apartment for hours each morning, each time in the range that his target signed into work. Something was fishy…
And this is the point when we pretty much gave up. The thrill of our first kill proved fleeting and was replaced by apathy. No member of the team had any interest in staking out a guy who was clearly not staying at his apartment (a violation of the rules, by the way). And also, it was apparent that no one was coming after Jeremy. After a few first jitters on the first few days, Jeremy felt completely safe – he didn’t see any suspicious people, never felt like he was being followed – nothing. It appeared that the only people more lazy than us - killers by accident because our target was practically delivered to Jeremy – were the people hunting Jeremy.
(Brian and I had long resigned ourselves to the fact that no one was hunting us. I was pretty much the easiest target in the world, since I work regular hours, walk everywhere, and a simple google search would bring my assassin to this website, where he could learn all kinda shit about me. Corinne thought she was being targeted, but Brian and I chalked up her fears to being a crazy girl. She did not like that and went so far to point out that I’m more of a crazy girl than she is. And she’s right.)
So for the next few days after our kill, which took place on Day 4, we did nothing. We still carried around our water pistols, but I was no longer escorting Jeremy out of work, none of us were taking alternative routes home, we were barely talking about it. The thrill was gone and our emails turned from discussions about StreetWars to "Have you ever gotten high at work? Highly recommended."
Then, on Day 11, the end finally came. Jeremy was buzzed walking back to his apartment and someone approached him at his door, asked if he was Jeremy, then shot him. Elimination, at long last. Jeremy’s assassin turned out to be a cool guy who even bought Jeremy a drink at the bar next door and appeared extremely high. I pointed out that it would probably be more acceptable to be killed by the nerd who’s been plotting for days than the guy who gets high in his apartment all day long, but no one listened to me. They never do. Which they will regret one day.
(I hope.)
**********
In the end, StreetWars was another typical chapter of my life: a lot of promise and enthusiasm at the start, but ending with a whimper and an awkward goodbye. This can be said for pretty much every endeavor, job, and relationship I’ve ever had in my life. But at least I’m consistent. I kinda smell pretty good, too. But that’s about it.
(Let’s just end this before I get too depressed. And yes, I am getting some ice cream tonight – thank you for asking.)
