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.

We were in Poke paradise, and there wasn’t much else that could make our evening more pleasant.

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.

2. Real animals

3. Team spirit

4. Lickitung

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