Participate in a Massive Lightsaber Battle at Justin Herman Plaza
As momentum builds for this month’s release of the new Star Wars film, so too does the fan excitement level. On December 18, join a massive battle of Jedi vs. Sith in San Francisco along the Embarcadero to celebrate opening weekend of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens.
This unique event runs 8-11pm and costs $10 to reserve one lightsaber. Pick a side of the force and use the venerable, ancient, glowing tool in the ultimate nocturnal showdown. Each lightsaber changes up to six colors and is about three feet long.
Participants can pick up lightsabers at the event. Please note, half of the lightsabers have already been reserved so don’t delay! After all the sabers have been distributed, attendees will gather, split into Jedi and Sith, and the battle will begin.
Also on Friday, there will be an “Homage Montage”, an all day professional lightsaber demonstration with stage combat performances by LightsaberAcademy.com‘s local team, the Golden Gate Knights. Following the evening battle, there will be an afterparty called The Bass Awakens at Mighty. Attendees are encourages to dress as your favorite Star Wars character. Purchase tickets here.
The organizer’s first SF event was earlier this year: a 500-person bubble blowing party in Dolores Park. Organizers hope to make the lightsaber battle an annual event.
We spoke briefly with Kevin Bracken, co-founder of Newmindspace, who is coordinating the event.
How did you start organizing these events?
Newmindspace was founded in Toronto in 2005 to create massive, living installations out of thousands of people. We also do giant pillow fights, huge urban games, parties on subway cars and more.
We love to try anything where we can get a thousand people together to do something fun and free in public space. Our goals are to create beautiful social happenings, reclaim public space, and get people to rethink how they use public spaces.
Our modus operandi is always the same: take a favorite childhood activity and multiply the number of participants by 100. We actually started doing this event because we were inspired by how children like to sword fight with cardboard tubes after the Christmas presents are wrapped!
Who is your favorite Star Wars character and why?
Qui-Gon Jinn – he is super underrated but basically he is the only one who has the cojones to stand up to the Jedi council, who are kind of a bunch of conservative goody-goodies.
What are you most excited for the upcoming Star Wars film?
I echo a lot of peoples’ sentiments that the Kylo Ren mystery is super compelling. I don’t think he is Luke, though. I will be seeing it in San Francisco of course!
Related: Win Tickets to the Star Wars premier the day before its official release
is it still going on tonight? is it indoors? you know its going to be raining right?
michaelianni sfstation kevinbracken newmindspace YAY! You guys are awesome. Thank you so much
We are super pumped for the battle & the afterparty at Mighty, it’s gonna be unreal!