Get Ready for a Flash Mob!

The article describes the trend in which flash mobs, groups of strangers recruited by anonymous organizers through e-mails and Web sites, congregate in a public place, act wacky and then disperse. Part performance art and part prank, the fad, which began in Manhattan, New York, is all about having fun and confusing bewildered onlookers. n Dortmund, Germany, a mob gathered by a washing-machine display in a department store, ate bananas, then left. In New York City a crowd assembled in Central Park and chirped like birds.