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Edgeman

Refugee
Joined
Jun 15, 2000
Messages
1,324
Location
Edmonton
Okay...this is a little long, but I wanted to share my experience with you.

This weekend is Juno weekend in the great city of Edmonton, and the largest mall in the world was the setting for a rather large autograph signing session. In order to be at the front of the line for this exciting event, a group of "sane" people...myself included...set up camp in line the night before. We camped out for over 15 hours to become second in line.....but it didn't matter.

Over the course of the early morning, we were informed that we would not be seeing the artist we wanted when the days events started. There were two large tables on opposite sides of the ice palace (skating rink) with one line going to each table. There was three one hour autograph sessions with 3 different groups of artists/bands for each table. We couldn't go back into the line after we finished with our table, but by that time we didn't care.

I (and 4 of the 5 other people...1 got sperated) was front of the line for the left table. We were photographed and interviewed by multiple media personal. Each asked how long we had been waiting and how we felt that we could not see the artist we wanted. Most of the media focused on my friend Misty who had saved our spot early in the afternoon. She had been waiting for nearly 24 hours to see her favorite band (Doc Walker) and she knew that they were not going to be on the first table. The media taunted her with promises of a media pass to go see them, as long as they could follow her around for the afternoon...which they did for the next hour until the media relations lady told us that nothing was going to happen...and that she was sorry. Mad and hurt, the group broke up into two groups...one went shopping away from the mall, and the other made their way to the V.I.P. entrance to the mall.

I was part of the group that went to the V.I.P. entrance. There Misty had a chance encounter with the lead singer of Doc Walker, she informed him of what happened and how long she had waited. He has taken back with her story (he actually knows her, so he was pissed that this happened to a huge fan) and promised to come back and talk after their time inside....which they did. This basically made her day better. I, however, was still mad that I hadn't met Sam Roberts...he was at the right table while I was at the left....so close, yet so far. After a few minutes of waiting, out came a few bands (including Sam Roberts) one by one over the course of the afternoon. They took their time to sign autographs for each person that wanted one. We had a little gimmick going on this day...Amber brought a 6 foot cardboard Juno stand for everyone to sign. We called it the Juno Board...and it got a lot of "action" that day. Almost every artist on the bill for the day signed it....almost because two bands snubbed the fans.

So Basically we waited on the cold hard mall floor for over 15 hours when we could have slept in and did the exact same thing we did anyway. But I had fun camping out with a few buddies from work that night, so it was all worth it in the end. I'd do it again with just a few changes...mainly knowing what was going to happen and bringing a mat to sleep on instead of the floor. I can't wait for the next time an event comes to town where I can camp out with these crazy people again......good times!
 
Aww! Its great you guys ended up having a good day anyway.
I've heard about this mall of yours. I looked it up once even to see just how big it really is.
:crack:
 
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