“If you have a Granny Smith, can I get a ‘woo’?” Jenny Mandl yelled into a megaphone. The crowd roared and pumped their fists in the air — forming a sea of apples above their heads. “If you have a Honeycrisp, can I get a ‘woo’?” Another cheer. “‘Boo’ for Red Delicious?” The group laughed and obliged with a prolonged boo.
It was a sticky August Saturday at Meridian Hill Park in Northwest Washington, and about 1,000 people — most, as far as I could tell, in their 20s and 30s — had gathered to collectively … eat apples.
Mandl, 29, and her boyfriend, Carl Endrulat, 30, had been planning this moment since June. Endrulat, a software engineer, is a few years into a quirky quest to document himself crunching on an apple in as many locations as possible, from the D.C. Cherry Blossom 5K to a lake in Ireland. Mandl, who is currently on a break from her career in tech, had the idea to invite strangers in on the fun. The duo created an open invite titled “eat an apple with me,” placed fliers all over the city, and convinced the event-planning app Partiful to promote the get-together on its “explore” page.