A blizzard brought New York to a standstill on 23 February, with schools across the city closed. Restless young people without anywhere to go began to gather in Washington Square Park, summoned by Instagram chatshow Sidetalk, which wanted to stage an almighty snowball fight. A sea of young men in ski goggles gathered, armed with phones in one hand and balls of ice in the other. Cannonballs of snow flew across the sky. Others backflipped off snowmen or wrestled on the snow. The scene was of good-natured pandemonium.
“But it started getting chaotic once people were throwing gigantic blocks of ice. That’s when I left,” says Gabriella Yankovich who stopped by on her lunchbreak. “Boys being boys.”
