Robert Pattinson at Stonestown Galleria

A failure to plan is a plan to fail.  This underscores the events of the morning of 2008-11-10.  Robert Pattinson was scheduled to sign autographs and meet fans at the Hot Topic in Stonestown Galleria.  My wife is a HUGE fan of Twilight.  I mean, HUGE!  So I decided to brave the storm and line up super early.  I've never really done this for anything in the past...  iPod, game console, nothing.  I was looking forward to the experience.  Throughout the week, we've been trying to get as much information as we could about the event.  Three things were certain:

• We needed to line up outside of the doors at 7am (we are not allowed on the premises until 7am).
• T-shirts and wristbands would go on sale at 8am.  First come, first serve.
• Our wristbands are numbered, so we would need to return at 6pm and lineup according to our number.

Of course, this leaves many questions unanswered, perhaps the most important of them being "so what do we do before 7am?"  Apparently, there was no official plan for organization before 7am.

So after making the 9 hour drive from Vegas, we went to Hot Topic the night before.  Basically, people were going to be lining up off premises beforehand and I shit you not, one of the representatives actually said "wear your running shoes".

I arrived at Stonestown at 4am.  There were already a couple hundred people lined up along 19th St.  There was an unofficial attempt to order people accordingly to a list.  The lady spearheading this "list" apparently came from Hawaii.  So she really did not want to be SOL.  Unfortunately, there were several people, myself included, that were well aware that this list was not going to matter and that there was going to be a "mad dash" to the front doors at 7am.  As much as we appreciated her efforts, this list was not official.  So we basically had two separating hordes beginning to go to war with each other.  I was standing with a group of teenage girls in the non-listers group.  A man in his forties actually threatened us with physical violence if we did not abide by the "unofficial" list.  Of course, one of the girls ran off crying to the security guard.

Around 5am, people started inching their way towards the entrance.  We were up to about 1000+ at that point.  List-people were still arguing with non-list people.  There was a prominent non-lister that was encouraging other girls to kick and scream their way up to the front.

SFPD showed up.  To my surprise, this did little to calm the crowd.  We were nearing around 2000 at this point.  Around 5:30ish, a few small groups started to make a run for the entrance.  A few seconds later, everyone was in full sprint.  Teenage girls were falling flat on their hands and faces, left and right.  I felt like a running fool - like Forest Gump when his platoon was ambushed in Vietnam.  I had a considerable advantage in my Asics Gels over the teeny boppers in their Uggs.

By around 5:45 everybody was pushed up against the entrance.  We were like sardines for the next hour.  The security guard told us to line up to the left.  We all pushed left.  Then he told us to line up to the right.  We all pushed right.  Then he brought us back to the left.  Security obviously had no clue how to control a crowd.  The whole time, he was trying to get the line to move back and give the people up front some air.  People were fainting around this time.  One girl actually broke her nose against the glass door.  But plain and simple, Hot Topic said first come, first serve.  Nobody was going to voluntarily move back to the end of the line.  And the only natural tendency in this type of uncontrolled environment was to push forward.  The cops could NOT control the crowd.  It was just too big.  There were too little of them.  And there was NO organization before 7am.  The firetrucks and paramedics arrived to help control the crowd and tend to the injured.  Not sure why it crossed my mind, but for a moment I thought that we were gonna be hosed down.

Eventually, the cops announced that the event was cancelled at around 6:45am.  Most of us thought this was bullshit so about 75% of us stuck around.  For the next half hour, SFPD was eagerly trying to convince us that the event really had been cancelled.  A Hot Topic representative finally came out and informed us that the cancellation was true.  However we could still purchase the "souvenir" tees when the store opens, which was at 10am.

After about 30 minutes, the news started to sink in.  On came the waterworks and about half of the crowd left.  As far as I was concerned, I already made the drive here so I'm gonna get SOMETHING.  At around 9:30am they finally let us in the damn mall.  Naturally, the horde arrived upon the scene of Hot Topic.  The manager yelled out, "single file".  Ummm, yeah.  Yelling "single file" in front of a horde of people is pointless.  Keep in mind, this is just for a freakin' t-shirt at this point.  Security finally managed to wrap us around the mall and create some type of line at around 9:40am.  Stores were set to open at 10am.  But of course, the store wasn't ready to sell these tees by 10am.  How the hell were they supposed to sell them by 8am if they weren't even ready by 10am?  Again, a failure to plan.  It was almost 11am by the time the store opened.  Freakin' ridiculous.  I got my tees and got the hell outta there.

This is really an unfortunate circumstance for the Stonestown Galleria Hot Topic.  Not only have they damaged their own reputation but they have damaged the image of the Twilight brand.  There are some celebrities that will actually fight for their fans.  Apparently, Robert Pattinson or his manager(s) is not one of those celebrities.  He's a relatively new celebrity, so I'll cut him some slack.  I was just sad to see the fans get shit on.  Especially those that came from far distances.  I really hope Hot Topic does something to reach out to all the disappointed fans.

Followup: Robert Pattinson DOES care about his fans.  Either Hot Topic or SFPD are to blame for falsely advertising the cancellation.  At this point, I don't care.  I'm too tired and worn out to care.  I mean, who could believe that bullshit.  Cancelled!?  I couldn't believe it.  And why the hell would you confuse the fans like that?  Okay, I'm over the complaining.  It's just painful though.  To wait in line for several hours, for what could possibly be "just a t-shirt".  I finally heard on a local talk show that the event had not been cancelled.  I made another mad dash to the mall, this time with company.  So we had to wait in another line for, I'd say about a mere 3.5 hours this time.  It was nowhere near as crazy as the morning's "mad dash".  We finally got to see him and it was all good.  All in all, I would definitely say it was worth the trip.  It was quite the experience and a rollercoaster of emotions for a person who I would normally not give a second thought.  But it was fun to play the role of the crazed fan!  ...and exhaustive.  I don't know if I would go as far as to say I'd do it again, but I saw a ton of fathers out there in the morning supporting their tween daughters.  So I might be on the hook for more crazed fan experiences in the future.  I'm almost done with the second book, New Moon, and I'll admit that I'm finding the series entertaining.  My list of books in the fiction department is severely lacking and I'll only read what comes highly recommended.