“I get catcalled, ‘Timmy! Timmy! Timmy!’ I respond to it. I call to it. This is fate.”

That’s what 18-year-old Dempsey Bobbitt tells us as we’re power walking alongside a hoard of hormonal Timothée Chalamet fans to Mercer Playground, where a look-alike competition for the actor is underway. Bobbitt is one of several curly-haired, high-cheekboned Chalamet wannabees hoping to be crowned Chalamet’s doppelgänger and take home a $50 cash prize. He’s pretty serious about winning, considering that he’s dressed as Willy Wonka, who Chalamet plays in the 2023 eponymous film “Wonka.” Bobbitt also traveled to the Big Apple from Pennsylvania (“I go to school in Pennsylvania,” he says).

Following the initial brouhaha of Halloween weekend (dubbed “Halloweekend”), New York City is bustling Sunday afternoon as crowds of Gen-Z spectators trek to Washington Square Park to attend the event. The contest, organized by 23-year-old YouTuber Anthony “Gilbert” Po (a.k.a. AnthPo), went viral across social media in September after fliers for the event were seen scattered across Lower Manhattan. An online invite, made on Partiful, boasted nearly 3,000 RSVPs.

A Timothée Chalamet look-alike is presented at the competition (Photo by Joy Saha)Underneath the Washington Square Arch, the crowd is multiplying by the minute and the crispness of the October air tempers the surrounding adrenaline. It’s fitting that a park known for its man-on-the-street ambush-type interviews and random impromptu performances is a breeding ground for this disheveled competition.

Hand in hand, we parcel through the countless thousands congested under the archway. Sprinkled through the crowd like “Where’s Waldo” are the Chalamet look-alikes, reporters clambering to grab interviews and eventgoers enraptured with the allure of the Timmy variants. Unbeknownst to us though, the real Chalamet, incognito in a mask and baseball hat, slithers through the crowd like an undetected chosen one, or like his character, Lisan al Gaib in “Dune.”

“Hey man, what’s up?” he says to one of the awestruck look-alikes.

Fans hold up signs in hopes of catching the attention of a Timothée Chalamet look-alike (Photo by Joy Saha)Excitement soon turns into panic when a line of New York City Police........

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