I Live in Gotham

Last Friday, San Francisco was remade as Gotham for the BatKid.

Last Friday, I participated in a mass delusion of the best kind. I joined the thousands of San Franciscans who pretended they were residents of Gotham City, besieged by a crime spree. It was a collective make-belief to give Miles Scott, a 5-year-old recovering from Leukemia, the chance to act out his fantasy as BatKid, a junior caped crusader.

When Miles showed up in the morning, he probably didn't expect much beyond a fancy bat suit and a few skits around town. Instead, he was met by Batman in Batmobile (an acrobat in costume driving a decal-decorated Lamborghini) requesting his help. The boy's elaborately crime-fighting day, scripted by Make-A-Wish Foundation, involves:

• rescuing a damsel in distress, tried to the cablecar track around Unison Square;
• confronting The Riddler in a bank robbery in progress;
• rescuing the San Francisco Giants mascot Lou Seal from The Penguin; and
• collecting the city's key from a grateful Mayor.

San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr took on the role normally reserved for Commissioner Gordon in the comics. He issued a public plea calling for the superheroes. Local reporter Ama Daetz lent credibility to the plot by broadcasting Chief Suhr's call as "Breaking News."

The foundation's volunteer signup page registered roughly 15,000 willing "extras" to swell the assembly at Gotham City Hall, but if you count everyone who cheered on Miles, I'm betting the number was closer to 20,000. None of the participants, of course, were truly in danger of the criminal masterminds; however,  as BatKid's adventure went viral on social media, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook were briefly in jeopardy from the flood of photo uploads and tweets.

As I stood before City Hall, waiting for BatKid and Batman to arrive, I noticed my Twitter feed for #SFBatKid was reeling in roughly 20-25 new tweets a second. Around 3 PM, Make-A-Wish Foundation's page for Miles crashed, most likely from overwhelming server activities, but who knows? It could have been The Riddler and The Penguin's sinister revenge scheme.

According to Mashable, the #SFBatKid hashtag popped up in more than 200,000 tweets, hailing from 117 countries. On any given day, snarky comments and cynical remarks are a regular feature of online exchanges, but on Friday, the internet turned emotional. Below is a small sampling of teary tweets, some from as far away as Indonesia:

Thx for san frans people for #SFBatKid. You makes us crying and realize there's always we can do For miles.
— wawan darmawan (@wawannih) November 18, 2013

Writing up my story about #SFBatkid and crying openly at Oakland airport. It's nice to believe in humanity for a moment.
— JennaBusch (@JennaBusch) November 16, 2013

we've stopped our mtg to watch video livestream (& 2 of us are crying): #SFBatKid http://t.co/TdKn3Ecz04
— Liz Philips (@iizLiz) November 15, 2013

Crying in a coffee shop at #SFBatkid. God job today, human race. http://t.co/WoDh7VzKoT
— Lindsay Gibbs (@linzsports) November 15, 2013

The San Francisco Chronicle printed a special section dubbed Gotham City Chronicle, bylined by Clark Kent and Lois Lane. For a print paper threatened by the specter of declining readership (as most newspapers are nowadays), BatKid's superpower was evident in the dramatic boost in newsstand sales.

Even the Justice Department temporarily abandoned its reticence to issue an indictment of the villainous duo. The press release says, "Assistant U.S. Attorneys all want to prosecute this case, and are currently drawing straws to see who will have the honor."
 
The most powerful touch of realism came from the White House itself. In a video message, the Commander in Chief Obama said, "Way to go, Miles! Way to save Gotham!"

On Monday, when we wake up, we'll no longer be in Gotham. We'll be back in our own San Francisco, blanketed not in pixie dust but November fog. We'll once again face the looming threat of a transit strike. Around Civic Center, a few blocks away from the podium where BatKid received a hero's welcome, some of us must negotiate the sidewalk dotted with small homeless encampments. And the grim headlines in the papers will tell us that in Syria, heroes and villains look remarkably similar. The body count of the civil war's youngest victims continues to grow at an alarming rate, but not enough to make Twitter weep or crash. 

Everyday, the firehose of apocalyptic news threatens to drown our faith in humanity. Our souls are wounded by senseless school shootings, and our regular heartbeats interrupted by bomb blasts in Iraq. I'll admit that some days I don't have enough conviction to get through. But I pretend, because that's one way to borrow strength. BatKid taught me that when we're willing to embrace a boy's innocent world view, we can pull off large-scale miracles that each of us might never attempt.

Once in a while, we should try to live in Gotham.