Last weekend, Bob Terry circled Washington Square Park with a stack of flyers in hand, eagerly inviting the people he passed to his upcoming event. However, the 75-year-old was seeking one demographic in particular.
“You look like smokers—come to my event on Friday,” he said to a group of young people lounging on the grass. They responded enthusiastically.
His event? An open invite to join him for a cigarette on Friday, Nov. 21 at the northeastern corner of the park, at 2 p.m. sharp. The event would conclude at 2:05 p.m., just enough time to finish a cigarette. His flyer included a picture of him, dressed to the nines, and a QR code to RSVP.
The flyer quickly found its way to social media, where it caught fire. Soon, the event invite had received over 2,500 RSVPs. I learned about the cigarette session from a friend in Tacoma, Washington, who urged me to attend. So, on Friday, I grabbed my camera and rushed to Washington Square Park.
I arrived at the northeast corner three minutes late, by which point a hazy cloud of smoke hung above a crowd that had spilled into the street.
The attention of the crowd—which the New York Post estimated at over 1,500—was fixated on the center. Bob was there somewhere, but I couldn’t see him. Nearly everyone had their arm outstretched to capture Bob on camera, catch one of the cigarettes and custom lighters he was tossing out, or hold their lit cigarette in solidarity. Others had mounted trees, light posts, or their friends’ shoulders to see Bob for themselves.
I pushed through the crowd alongside three college students who were just as eager to lay eyes on Bob as I. One of them, Kapil, had seen a post about the event on Instagram earlier in the week and knew he had to come. He had met two other college students at a UN tour earlier in the day, and brought them along.
I eventually spotted Bob. The Brooklyn-born actor and comedian—wearing round yellow frames, a plaid scarf, and a red-and-white striped shirt with a bright blue tie and vest—stood out instantly among a sea of Gen Zers and millennials.
2:05 p.m. came and went, but enthusiasm showed no signs of fading. A chant of “one more cig!” caught on, and Bob obliged.
“Let’s keep smoking,” Bob said to the crowd, holding a microphone in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
As the event wrapped up, Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” played over a portable speaker, and the crowd joined in. As Bob waved goodbye to his new fans over chants of “Bob! Bob! Bob!” you could have mistaken him for a popular candidate on the campaign trail—if not for the sea of cigarettes sending him off.
“Thanks everyone for coming, shabbat shalom,” he said as he departed.
He was led through the park by a team of handlers, and followed by a throng of fans determined to get their cigarette pack, loose cigarette, or skateboard signed. Bob dutifully fulfilled each request, and greeted everyone that approached him.
“Excuse me, who are you? Are you famous?” asked one man. A member of Bob’s fan posse responded for him: “Yeah, that’s Bob.”
Jogging to get ahead of the moving mob, I asked Bob how it felt to have so many come out to share this moment with him.
“I’m astounded,” he responded, a kind smile on his face. “It’s wonderful. New Yorkers are terrific people—I’m so flattered.”
The turnout far surpassed his expectations, he told me. Willie Zabar, a comedian who served as one of Bob’s handlers, echoed this.
“I absolutely did not expect it to blow up as big as it did,” said Willie, who met Bob through the comedy troupe Old Jewish Men.
Those familiar with viral popup events in New York City may have predicted this, however. Last October, a Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest, brought thousands—and Chalamet himself—to Washington Square Park. A few months earlier, thousands gathered in Union Square to watch a man in an orange mask, calling himself Cheeseball Man, devour a full jar of cheesepuffs.
Preparing for a potential mob and the fire risk posed by thousands of cigarettes, Willie brought a fire extinguisher to protect Bob.
“I said, what’s the most likely bad thing that could happen? Fire. And so I was like okay, I can’t let Bob burn,” he said. He ended up joining a “ragtag” security force that found itself working hard to manage the crowd of fans.
“I stayed on Bob like shmear on a bagel,” he said. “There were some tight spots, there were some sketchy moments, but Bob remained unsinged so from my perspective, that’s success. We delivered the package, we got Bob from A to B, and he lives to smoke another day.”
Willie was recently a successful participant on Bob’s show, in which guests have 60 seconds to make him laugh. The show, along with Bob’s Instagram account BreakinggBob, launched in September. Bob, the self-proclaimed “cigarette maestro,” first went viral in October, when over 9.5 million people watched him ace a blind cigarette taste test. His video about the event has over 2.8 million views already.
In one popular video, Bob was asked if he’s ever considered quitting smoking.
“Hell no, the stress would kill me,” he responded. “When I first started smoking it was 23 cents a pack. I used to say ‘I’m going to quit when [cigarettes] hit a dollar.’ I’m still smoking at $23 a pack.”
But he did add a final message: “Don’t smoke.”
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