I attended a Pokemon Go event, and things got kinda weird

Last week, I let you all climb down into the Pokemon Go rabbit hole with me, but as people all around the world are setting up gatherings for the augmented reality game, I found myself thinking back to the game’s original trailer, which made the game look social.






I live on the outskirts of Houston, and – don’t get me wrong – there are plenty of people out here, but I had yet to venture into the center of the city for one of the rumored Pokemon goldmines. Luckily for me, I got my chance last week, when Houston’s Pokemon Go community Facebook group decided they were going to get as many people as possible to gather in Hermann Park in downtown Houston on a Friday night for a Pokemon Go meetup.

I took my cousin with me. We were excited. We knew a lot of people were going to show up, and we didn’t know what to expect (except for a general lack of parking).

I’d never been to Hermann Park, and I’ve spent nearly my whole life in Houston – it’s a pretty far drive, and you can get pretty much everything you need without going into the center of the city. When we showed up and saw that the park was huge, filled with more Poke Stops than I’d ever seen in one area, my cousin and I knew it was going to be a good night.

We ended up finding a parking spot out of pure luck, but nothing could have prepared us for the scene that lay before us – or the delightfully weird occurrences that we would experience before the night was over.

1. Gyarados

Up until that point, I thought I’d had it pretty good – I live by a reasonably-sized park, where a good number of Pokemon are known to show up. The park also has plenty of Poke Stops, places where you can obtain types of Poke balls to catch the Pokemon, as well as healing supplies (for when your Pokemon take a beating when battling other Pokemon at gyms).

My cousin and I had planned to walk the entire park in the hopes of hatching strong Pokemon from our eggs, which hatch after a certain amount of walking (or cheating), but we ended up walking a few steps and stopping because there were just so many. We were in Poke paradise, and there wasn’t much else that could make our evening more pleasant (except for maybe some bug spray, because we were getting eaten alive by possible Zika virus-carrying mosquitoes).

That’s when the screaming started.

As me and my cousin watched in what could only be described as rapt confusion, people began to slowly gravitate in one direction, much like a zombie hoard.

“Should we follow them?” I asked him.

He shrugged.

That’s when we began to make out what people were yelling: “Gyarados! Gyarados!”

We ran (or walked quickly, because with that many people, we didn’t want to hurt anyone).

Here’s why we were so excited. Gyarados is generally a badass Pokemon, but it starts out as this little fish called Magikarp that can’t do anything. Really. The original Pokemon anime dedicated an entire episode to it. In the handheld games, Margikarp pretty much has one battle move. It’s called splash, and it doesn’t do anything.

Pokemon Go doesn’t exactly work the way the handheld games do, but it still takes more time to evolve a Magikarp than any other Pokemon. Suddenly, there was an already-evolved one in our midst.

As I moved, trying to get it to spawn on my phone, I was struck by how I’d never seen such teamwork – especially from strangers – in my life.

There were cries coming from everywhere: “Hey! Hey, it’s over here!” “It’s this way!” “Do you need some help?” People whooped with joy when they caught their Gyarados and moved out of the way so others could have their turn.

In the meantime, my friend who wasn’t as lucky as we were with parking was texting us frantically from the road, where she was stuck, unable to try catching the Pokemon. “I will leave my car in the street,” she declared. (Don’t worry, she didn’t really leave her car in the street.)

I ended up catching it right before it disappeared for everyone (my cousin wasn’t so lucky). If I wasn’t alone, it would have been a cool experience, but having so many other people around made it even better.

I found out later that more and better Pokemon spawn where there is the most cell phone traffic, meaning that your best best for catching a rare Pokemon might be going to a big meet up in your area – the game trailer alludes to this as well, as countless people gather in Times Square to attempt catching ultra-rare Pokemon Mewtwo.

2. Real animals

After we dispersed when the Gyarados disappeared, our three-person Pokemon trainer group (my friend finally found parking) decided to fan out into other parts of the park. Sure, it was very dark, and around us, the sprinklers were turning on at random intervals (a mixed bag – on one hand, it cooled us off in the balmy air; on the other, it made the mosquitoes worse), but there was something about wading through the damp air in a group that made it seem even more adventurous.

Especially when I saw something small and close to the ground moving in the dark.

“Yo, what kind of Pokemon is that?” I heard people asking as our group momentarily stopped using the app to take pictures of the beaver-like animal casually munching on grass. It looked a little confused in the light of a smartphone flashlight but must have been used to people. After a little bit of staring, it just kept chewing away.

Beaver Buddy wasn’t the first animal I’d seen since playing Pokemon Go. I’ve seen at least four deer, three frogs, and three turtles while playing, which was a cool reminder about the real wildlife that existed within my own city.

Imagine hanging out with a bunch of people dressed in either red, yellow, or blue. Pepper in some people who look like this. Multiply that by a lot and add in even more people in their street clothes with hair poofed up by humidity. That was this meetup. Photo credit: Montreal Comiccon 2014: Misty, Ash and Brock.

Even battling Pokemon in Pokemon Go is a team effort. If you’ve seen primary colored paraphernalia associated with the game on your social media feeds, it’s because players pick a team to gym battle with. At level five (the level when you can begin battling at gyms), you pick a team to represent – Valor (red), Instinct (yellow), or Mystic (blue). Your choice doesn’t affect your gameplay that much, but we know how much the internet loves to rep teams (think about the Hogwarts houses, Game of Thrones houses, or even sports teams).

People in the park were no different, and many were sporting their team colors in some form, while others approached their game from a more neutral Pokemon fan angle (there were a couple of guys dressed up as Ash Ketchum, the hero from the Pokemon anime, and I wanted to take pictures, but it was really dark).

We even came upon some guys who were giving out free tequila shots, provided you were on the same team as theirs (Valor). It just goes to show that if your usual Friday night involves hanging out at a bar, it only takes a little imagination to make that work with your Pokemon Go lifestyle.

Alright, so maybe this one’s a little more juvenile, but the park was crawling with the Pokemon that looks, well, a lot like the game makes it sound. Because the park was crawling with Pokemon, Lickitung tended to look a little hilarious when it spawned on our map. Depending on where it was standing, it just looked like it was licking everything.

5. Community

If you go to a large and crowded area, you’re probably not likely to talk to the people around you unless you knew them already (and maybe you hold on a little bit tighter to your belongings). It becomes a lot easier to talk to people when you realize you have a shared interest, and that interest may be something that you don’t even realize you share.

I struck up a ton of conversations with the people in the park, and that wasn’t the first time I’d chatted with strangers while Pokemon hunting. Playing the game seemed to create a safe space, where people of all ages felt comfortable hanging out and asking for advice. I wonder if this is one of the reasons that the game doesn’t have much of a tutorial: to force you to take to the internet and your friends to figure out how to play.

Another effect I noticed was just within my circle of friends. For example, a cousin who joined me on my park adventure has talked with me more in the past month than over the previous couple of years because we’ve bonded over a silly AR game where we catch computer-generated critters. The friend who joined me in the park lives on the other side of town, but we’ve seen each other so much in the past month because we’ve made the time to figure out logistics so we could play together.

Probably don’t go to the point of disregarding your safety (try go to hunting with friends in large public areas that are away from private property and roads), but if you want the full benefits of Pokemon Go, community meetups are a great way to go.