Lords of the Board

On a gray September afternoon in 2009, a public plaza got turned into a giant chessboard and two teams of very committed weirdos played it out at human scale. On the white squares: fantasy-fair royalty — a crowned king, gold-trimmed tunics, fur capes, and at least two horned viking helmets no rulebook sanctioned. On the black: the goth gambit, all leather, dark robes and eyeliner, with a wrought-iron birdcage standing in for the cell where captured pieces went to brood. Spectators rubbernecked, dogs supervised from the benches, and nobody involved was getting paid. It’s cosplay, performance art, and a neighborhood block party fused into one beautifully nerdy ritual — exactly the kind of thing AntiPretty exists to point a camera at. No airbrushing, no apologies, no boring.