15 years and counting: Wild Rumpus Parade returns, and expands, to downtown Athens
With the annual costumed marching of The Wild Rumpus set for this Saturday, Timi Conley admitted he never dreamed there would be a second such event, much less 15 of them.
“I had no thought of that,” said the Athens-based musician and artist, who founded The Wild Rumpus in 2009. “In fact, the first year I thought it was going to flop. I was convinced it was going to be just nothing.
“I was shocked at how many people showed up for that very first one because it was cold and raining, and still there were hundreds of people. There were so many people that I ended up getting a traffic citation because of paraders blocking intersections. So I said, ‘Well, we’ve got to do that again.’”
Conley, who has lived in Athens for three decades, said he knew he was onto something in the second year of the Halloween-centric parade and celebration, although it’s likely he didn’t know he’d established what has become an Athens institution.
“The second year, we ended the parade at Little Kings for the afterparty and Little Kings ran out of wristbands after giving out a thousand of them,” he said. “We just crushed that second year and after that point I was, ‘OK, we’ve definitely got a thing on our hands.’ And now it’s like swallowed me whole – I’m way down in that belly of the beast.”
The 15th edition of The Wild Rumpus takes place this weekend, with the FreakFest ’23 Wild Rumpus Creature Kickoff Party scheduled for 5 p.m. Friday at Creature Comforts Brewery and the main event – which includes The Wild Rumpus Parade and The Royal Rumpus Ball – set to commence 8 p.m. Saturday.
The event has grown from a group of a few hundred celebrating the season to a full-on street(s) party enjoyed by thousands. And while most of the Rumpus revelers are from the Athens area, Conley said he’s spoken to folks who have come from as far away as Italy to witness the spectacle.
“I had friends last year telling me it looked like (Widespread) Panic in the Streets, which people say was 50,000 people,” he said. “I don’t think we had 50,000, but I think it was 20,000 last year.
“And this year I expect it to be way bigger because last year, I talked to people in the crowd and tons of them were from Atlanta and tons of people were from other places in the country and even international visitors. So the word is out on the Rumpus, and it’s spread by word of mouth.”
In order to contain a crowd in the thousands, Conley said The Wild Rumpus will include an open-container drinking zone where partygoers may buy wristbands for $5 and walk the streets with their chosen libations. The open-container zone stretches from Pulaski Street to Lumpkin Street on West Washington and from West Hancock Avenue to Clayton Street on Hull.
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“I always try to expand it in some way,” he said. “My mindset is to make things bigger and add more show and make it more spectacular. I’ve tried adding things, and a lot of those things have stuck. Last year, the sheer size of the parade couldn’t fit on the one block of where we had our festival zone with the main stage and the performances.
“So this year I’m adding another two city blocks of performances, light show, staging more music features. When we get those big crowds this year, there will be multiple places for people to explore. And not everybody will feel like they can’t get into the festival zone.”
Along the parade route, there will be a host of musical artists performing, including Nightshade Family featuring Dado & Ellwin, BlackNerdNinja & Friends featuring LG, Evergreen, Gerald & The Dragon, White Rabbit Collective, Way Past Cool, Curbside Pickups, Wyld Staleyz, and DJ JiiG with BobFish featuring b2b from Kxng Blanco, Ant Da Ripper, Wix Patton, Simba the Ripper and Like Totally!
Artists at the Friday night kickoff party include Trvy & The Enemy, Motorhead2x, Izzy, Telemarket and Molly Tu Hott, and entertainment at the Saturday afterparty will be provided by The Asymptomatics and Classic City Jukebox.
“We’ve got a great spread this year,” said Conley, who has often provided arresting visual accompaniment during his musical performances. “It’s really diverse, which is what I like, and we feature a lot of Athens underground weird stuff.”
Conley, who gets the parade moving by blowing into a conch shell and has been known to march in his “Max” costume, complete with scepter and crown, said that after all these years he still gets a major kick out of the event he conceived so many Halloweens ago.
“Being at the event itself is so incredibly joyful and exciting,” he said. “It’s a year-round occupation for me and I’m an artist-type more than an administrator and there’s a lot of work to it. But every year when it hits and the parade gets going, it’s such an incredible payoff for me. The best part for me is seeing how much people enjoy themselves – that makes all the work worthwhile, 100 times over.”
For comprehensive information about The Wild Rumpus Parade and Spectacle XV, visit www.wildrumpus.org.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Wild Rumpus parade in Athens celebrates 15 years of the wild and zany
