Tomato Battle PDX

So yesterday just like most days and nights I am off to photograph an event, but yesterday had to be the most epic event I have been to by far. It consisted of tons of tomatoes and people willing to get brutally destroyed by them! It was the Tomato Battle PDX edition. I traveled all the way out to McTanahan's Brewery Co. where hundreds of people gathered in the heat to drink, listen to music, compete in a costume contest and then pelt each other with tomatoes. The rivers ran red that day, with the juice of tomatoes.

Here is how the creators describe it:

"he Tomato Battle unifies as many as 5,000 fruit-chucking fanatics for an afternoon of dancing to music, sipping libations, and flinging 300,000 pounds of roma tomatoes at one another. Mosh in a ketchup-covered fray that marries the traditions of Spain’s La Tomatina tomato-throwing festival and Germany’s Oktoberfest. Festivities commence at noon with registration and opening, followed by live entertainment and a costume contest. At 4:00 p.m., soldiers donning bathing suits, safety goggles, and well-treaded shoes converge on piles of past-ripe tomatoes and set about pelting people with fruits like sentient apple trees avenging the initial-carving of amorous teenagers. Beats and beer flow until past 7 p.m., when ruddy troops lay down their arms and rinse themselves clean of pulp and juice. An extra set of clothes is highly recommended.
All of the tomatoes used during the exhibition will have been previously marked for disposal, making the Tomato Battle an efficient and entertaining use of nonedible waste."

300,000 pounds dammit! So much damn fruit being flug in the air and each other. I saw a few people that had been crying and tons who had welts all over their bodies. It was a good day!