Cleveland Bunnies
Created | Updated Sep 22, 2003
The fine city of Cleveland, Ohio lies on the shore of Lake Erie, slap bang in the middle of the industrial Midwest. I've been there before, and I was delighted to discover that it wasn't a dirty industrial hell-hole, but in fact a fun, vibrant city with a lot going for it and friendly locals. Cleveland seems to revolve around two things - beer and rock music, which is fine, as that's two of my very favourite things.
Chatting to one of the guys I'm working with over here (who was also part of the Singapore party team coincidentally enough) revealed that he in fact lives in Cleveland, and so the idea of a solid drinking weekend in Cleveland was born. As the evening wore on, and the bar tab got longer, it emerged that there was a fine tradition in Doug's shared house - at Halloween (or at least the nearest weekend) everyone goes out on the town dressed up.
As pink bunnies.
Now, I consider it my mission when I travel to seek out new experiences, and to sample the local culture of wherever I am. Having sampled rather a lot of local culture in the bar, it seemed like a great idea, so I signed up, and soon the organisers back in Ohio had to find another 6'2" bunny costume.
We flew to Cleveland on Friday and after a brief warm-up session on the Friday night, Saturday afternoon was spent watching a very long and boring football game in a little local establishment where the beer was crap but at least it kept coming. The one advantage of American beer is that you can drink it all day long and not be completely s**tfaced at 4
o'clock. Well, you need something to do during the 90% of the game everyone's standing around waiting for the ref to do something (usually wait for the adverts to finish actually). We grabbed some dinner and headed back to the house to get ready.
The dinner having sobered everybody up somewhat, we were in need of some fresh Dutch courage, so we indulged in a little drinking game, known simply as 'quarters'. The game revolves around flicking coins into a cup. Consistent failure to do so results in having to down a beer. Having never flicked a quarter into a cup in my life, playing with a bunch of Americans who it appeared had misspent their college years doing just that, I lost. Badly. Which was probably just as well, otherwise I might have chickened out when I saw the costumes.....
The costumes consisted of pink jogging suits with fluffy tails sown on to the arses; velcro bow ties, blonde wigs, and big floppy ears, which were almost certainly designed for people with smaller heads than mine. The jogging suits were a slightly odd shape, which was apparently because the men's department didn't have them in pink. No s**t. Only in America can you get a woman's jogging suit that fits a 6'2" far-from-slim man generously.
After about 20 minutes of running around we had nine grown men dressed as bunnies (some with beards and/or visible tattoos) and one woman who, whilst prohibited from being a pink bunny on the grounds that she was a girl, entered into the spirit by dressing as a carrot. Two witches and a rather half hearted devil completed the happy Halloween bunch.
Transport to the bars downtown was a by a mini-bus (which we immediately dubbed 'The Bunny Bus') which arrived about 10:30pm. On the way out to the bus a car screeched to a halt outside, and a woman emerged. She'd seen a few of us nipping out to cars and down to the shops for more beer, and wanted to take a video of the bunnies.
So we all stood as she videoed us, and we all explained what we were doing and why we were doing it (somehow it all made sense). She seemed particularly impressed that they had managed to bully some stupid British bloke into it by getting him drunk in a bar 500 miles away in Chicago. Then we all declared that we were wasting valuable drinking time and abruptly left her videoing the trees in the garden.
We all piled on board the bunny bus, and hit the club, which was absolutely chock full of people in fancy dress. This was mainly due to their well advertised $1000 prize for the best costume. We decided to enter as a group, but looking around at the competition it seemed
that for some people, the grand would just about cover the cost of the costumes. We were out there on the dance floor though, having fun and generally winning over the public by shaking our tails and wiggling our ears. Chants of 'Go Bunnies!', and 'The Bunnies are in the House' were keeping us going (along with a constant supply of Beck's), and nine 6 foot pink bunnies doing the whole dance routine to 'Thriller' out of sequence, rhythm and time was certainly a sight to behold...... Needless to say we didn't win the contest, but the cheers we got when we took to the stage indicated that we had won some hearts at least. The Bunnies were the people's favourite!
By the end of the night I had actually lost half my costume - I'd dumped the top of the jogging suit thing because it was just too damn hot, and some woman had stolen my wig (she'd also stolen my ears, but I negotiated them back on the grounds that she could keep the wig). The other bunnies had suffered similar fates, with one having had at least two beers spilled down the front of his suit, and another who looked like someone had trampled his wig on the ground while his head was still in it. One of the witches was looking like she'd just escaped
burning at the stake, and the other seemed to have re-formed completely; the devil was no-where to be seen and we were at least one bunny down. He apparently showed up incoherent at a downtown hotel without a shirt or shoes with his ears hanging around his neck at 3am before being escorted home and passing out in the kitchen.
After closing time, the Cleveland delicacy for the discerning drunkard is known as the Pannini sandwich. Largely because the chain which sells them is called Pannini's. Basically it's an oversized sandwich with turkey, salad, coleslaw and chips (in the British sense of the word) on really thick bread. It's fabulous - but being about four inches thick, a real bugger to eat. I struggled manfully obviously....
So - Halloween American style. These guys pull out all the stops that's for sure. I'd love a copy of that woman's video, but since no-one had the slightest idea who she was it seems unlikely unless she pops round to drop a copy off out of the goodness of her heart.
I have a sneaky suspicion we'll end up on the American equivalent of You've Been Framed someday....
ta-ta for now... 
Bunny #9
