What happens when you put 200+ bald people in Washington Square Park?
Turns out, a pretty damn good time.
This summer, NUDEMELON teamed up with Justin Bradford to bring the bald community together in New York City. And it got way bigger than we expected.
How It Started
We'd already been kicking around the idea of hosting a bald meetup when we came across Justin. He was days away from hosting his first bald meetup in Seattle and we thought... let's join forces and make the next one bigger.
New York felt like the perfect place to do it, so we picked Washington Square Park and started putting the word out.
Then 200+ People Showed Up
On meetup day, Washington Square Park slowly started filling up with bald heads. Then more bald heads. Then... a lot more bald heads.
More than 200 people came through over the course of the event to hang out, meet other people from the community and embrace being bald without making the whole thing overly serious.
That was probably our favourite part.
Being bald is usually talked about as something you need to fix. Hair-growth treatments. Transplants. Cover-ups.
This was the complete opposite.
Nobody was trying to hide it. We were celebrating it.
People Were Literally Shaving Their Heads
Some people came bald.
Some people became bald at the meetup.
People were shaving their heads right there in Washington Square Park while a crowd of bald strangers cheered them on, chanting “ONE OF US! ONE OF US! ONE OF US!”
There was something pretty awesome about watching someone finally say screw it and shave their head surrounded by hundreds of people who had already done the same thing.
And Then We Made Bald People Eat Watermelons
We lined up a bunch of bald people, handed them each a watermelon and put $250 cash on the line for the winner.
It got messy pretty fast. Watermelon everywhere. People yelling. Everyone crowded around watching them absolutely destroy some melons.
It was ridiculous. It was hilarious. And the whole crowd was into it.
Definitely one of the highlights of the day.
The Bald Meetup Got Some Attention
The meetup even caught the attention of some major media. The New York Times came out to Washington Square Park and published a story about the event, and our Melon Eating Contest was featured in The Guardian.
That was surreal. But the coolest part wasn't seeing the meetup covered by major media.
It was seeing how many people actually wanted something like this.
More Than a Meetup
We started NUDEMELON because we thought bald heads deserved products actually made for them. But the more time we've spent around the bald community, the more obvious something else has become:
There's an entire culture here.
The NYC Bald Meetup wasn't about skincare. It was about getting a bunch of people together who had something in common and turning it into something worth celebrating.
Huge shoutout to Justin Bradford (@justinbradferd) for bringing us together and building Bald Meetup (@baldmeetup).
New York was a vibe.
Overall, a solid day to be bald.
