iBook Insanity

[Note: Con­sid­er this a rolling post, as news items will keep com­ing all day, I’m sure. Par­tic­u­lar­ly as the media out­side of Rich­mond gets a hold of this.]

Huddled Masses

The iBook hun­gry masses.

We went down to the RIR at about 6:30 this morn­ing to get in line for one of those $50 iBooks. We weren’t real­ly even sure we were going to go until late last night, but we decid­ed it would be fun to take the morn­ing off togeth­er and hang out. I now wish I’d just gone run­ning and come to work like any oth­er Tues­day. The thing that describes the whole scene down there was chaos; chaos with peri­ods of calm caused by being baked in the hot Rich­mond sun.

My Story

[How things hap­pened (or did­n’t hap­pen) from my point of view.]

We left the house around dawn and head­ed to get some break­fast, stop­ping by the ATM on the way. We drove down Labur­num, Angela com­ment­ing that all the oth­er cars on the street might be head­ed to where we were going. I did­n’t think much about it then, but it turns out she was right. We came to a dead stop about a mile from the RIR. I noticed peo­ple park­ing at one of the apart­ment com­plex­es near­by and walk­ing the rest of the way. It looked like some sort of huge sport­ing event was about to go on, which pret­ty sums up what hap­pened right there.

We agreed I’d drop Angela off and then go park the vehi­cle, as peo­ple were already park­ing near­ly a mile away and walk­ing. We final­ly got through the inter­sec­tion at Labur­num and Mead­ow­bridge, which had three traf­fic cops. She walked up to the front gate (still locked at this point) and I drove on. As I was still look­ing for a spot, she called me to tell me they had unlocked the gates and peo­ple were just rush­ing in on foot and in cars. That’s nev­er a good mix. Angela said she was­n’t plan­ning on dash­ing off like a fool, and I told her that sound­ed smart. I could hear loads of shout­ing over the phone, so I told her I’d get there as soon as I could.

By the time I got up to the gate, it had cooled off some­what. Angela had got­ten in before the tram­pling, and I got there short­ly after it had hap­pened. The line was ridicu­lous already, and peo­ple were still lin­ing up. I found Angela, who had secured a rea­son­ably good spot. Of course, the line was more of a long, nar­row mob; about 8–10 peo­ple wide. It was pret­ty obvi­ous that there were sev­er­al thou­sand peo­ple there already. Short­ly after 8:00 (over an hour after the pan­ic at the gates) fire, res­cue, and some more police start­ed show­ing up. They began by just shout­ing into a bull­horn at the front of the line. We could­n’t real­ly hear them, and I’m pret­ty sure the peo­ple about 2,000 back in the line were com­plete­ly obliv­i­ous. Next, the police start­ed dri­ving a cruis­er along side the line telling peo­ple to back-up. Back up? Where? I’m crowd­ed like this was the pit at a 80’s met­al con­cert. We could­n’t go anywhere.

Even­tu­al­ly, about 6 or so offi­cers on foot began walk­ing along the line, mov­ing them back­ward one small seg­ment at a time. We even­tu­al­ly walked about a quar­ter mile back­wards before the police seemed sat­is­fied the line was thin enough. What we did­n’t know was that they had sim­ply changed tac­tics. They had erect­ed a sort three-part sys­tem to get the crowd into two lines. First, they sim­ply bar­ri­cad­ed off the line. They would let through a siz­able sec­tion of peo­ple at one time through this bar­ri­cade, only to be stopped at anoth­er in what was sort of a make-shift cor­ral. Then, they had put-togeth­er a Z‑type maze (like at a theme park, but one that you’d find in hell) to fun­nel the peo­ple to the doors. Now, all of this is going on in the hot Rich­mond sun on the tar­mac at the race­way park­ing lot. “Hot and humid” real­ly does­n’t do it jus­tice. Some of the race­way staff (well, we guessed they were staff) start­ed sell­ing Pep­si prod­ucts and bot­tled water for $2 each. That kind of added to the Dis­ney World feel­ing, what with the lines and heat.

I began walk­ing around as Angela kept her spot in line (we were only plan­ning on get­ting one any­way, since she was the Hen­ri­co res­i­dent). I spoke to the fel­low from NBC12, who thought they had at that point sold around 500 or so lap­tops. I tried to report some of this back to Angela (and all the oth­ers who looked so pathet­i­cal­ly anx­ious when I returned to my spot). Sun­burnt, exhaust­ed, and angry, we decid­ed to call it quits. In the four hours we spent, we could have com­bined bought a far nicer iBook off of eBay from the com­fort of our home. Les­son learned.

On our way out, we noticed what looked like about 1/2 of the Hen­ri­co police depart­ment lined up where the lucky few iBook pur­chasers where leav­ing the build­ing. This includ­ed the SWAT team. Hours too late, and then in overkill force, they had final­ly arrived to make sure a scene that had already got­ten way out of con­trol did­n’t do it again.

Conclusion

I imag­ine some­one’s going to pay hell for this mess. The coun­ty board thought they must have had a sure fire win in their pock­ets when they decid­ed to lim­it this to res­i­dents only. We’ll see how they feel when what hap­pened hits the news. The coun­ty real­ly bum­bled this one up and is very lucky no one was seri­ous­ly injured today.

Lot’s of media cov­er­age using the word “riot.” I saw noth­ing that resem­bled a riot this morn­ing. The surge of peo­ple that result­ed in some folks get­ting tram­pled was in the first few moments of the gates being opened. While hor­ri­ble, that was the real­ly bad behav­ior of the day. After­wards it was rel­a­tive­ly calm, although tem­pers were cer­tain­ly flar­ing at times. Lot’s of shout­ing at the police for not know­ing what was going on (hell, no one knew what was going on) and for not let­ting peo­ple move ahead when they thought they should.

I Survived The Henrico

Be the first to sport this flashy item.

There is also a sto­ry about some­one get­ting beat­en with a fold­ing chair. I nev­er saw or heard any­thing about this. If it was a beat­ing like the descrip­tion I read online, then the per­son would have been tak­en away in hand­cuffs. The peo­ple were get­ting the police to even pre­vent line-jumpers, who believes they’d just let a beat­ing go on? I imag­ine this was some guy whack­ing a line-jumper with his can­vas sports-chair , but not some sort of wrestling cage-match move. I doubt any­one was hurt, oth­er than their pride. Most­ly just some­one brag­ging about cool they were in line and not let­ting any­one get in front of them.

Media

The good Apple-lovin’ peo­ple over at The Unof­fi­cial Apple Weblog linked to my site after e‑mailing them about them may­hem. They’ve done a real­ly good job of report­ing on the sto­ry since day one and keep­ing every­one informed of the local devel­op­ments. Thanks TUAW!

NBC 12 has some video of the event, and you can see the guy (Aaron Gilchrist) I talked to around 10:30 this morning.

2:30 — It’s already made it’s way to the L.A. Times and fur­ther, via the A.P., with a crowd esti­mate of 5,500 now.

You have to watch the Rich­mond Times Dis­patch slideshow of the gates open­ing. You can just see the momen­tum build­ing to the cli­max of peo­ple just get­ting mowed down. Thank God Angela was no where near all this, although we both wish we weren’t even there at all today. Cred­it goes to Times Dis­patch pho­tog­ra­ph­er Dean Hoffmey­er for these excel­lent photos.

Wired News has the A.P. sto­ry as well, now.

Engad­get has a post about the sto­ry, as well as some of the most offen­sive com­ments I’ve ever read there. I guess it was becuase I was there, but these guys (the read­ers, not Engad­get staff) make me sick blam­ing this on the fact that they think it was most­ly African-Amer­i­cans to blame for the inci­dent. Of course, the posters who were there only drove by. The crowd was a rel­a­tive­ly good cross-sec­tion of Hen­ri­co Coun­ty, minus the well-to-do West-Enders (who prob­a­bly don’t send their kids to pub­lic school, any­way): blacks, whites, Indi­ans, asians, col­lege stu­dents, retired peo­ple, and so on. Is that a suprise, that the peo­ple com­ing to buy lap­tops from the coun­ty would reflect the coun­ty make-up? Fur­ther, these folks were there for the lap­tops to keep, not for try­ing to make a fast buck.

This sto­ry is on Won­kette. Why is Won­kette even talk­ing about this? Oh, appar­ent­ly some­one wet them­selves in line. All I had to put up with was peo­ple smok­ing around me. How bad is your day when the best part is no one pissed near you?

Some oth­er pho­tos on Flickr.

And we have at least one on eBay already! Per­haps I’ll just buy this one…

Wow, the sto­ry has now even land­ed in the online comics sec­tion.

Published
Categorized as Geek, Life

By Jason Coleman

Structural engineer and technical content manager Bentley Systems by day. Geeky father and husband all the rest of time.

5 comments

  1. Wow, Jason. Why would you do that to your, what sounds like, won­der­ful wife? I bet she slaves dur­ing the week at her job. You pig-men are all the same. 

    Love, :)
    Non-Jason Fan 

  2. Well, she is in fact a won­der­ful wife. She’s in the run­ning for the wife-of-the-year award, 2005 (it’s a nation-wide con­test, by the way).

    Let’s just say that it seemed like a good idea to me, and she was agree­able at the time. Fur­ther, when she decid­ed it was time to go, I did­n’t object at all. We both knew that was a good idea.

    For what it’s worth, I have thanked her sev­er­al times for going with me and apol­o­gized for how mis­er­able we were. We pig-men are pret­ty good at that, I guess.

  3. I saw the pho­tos in the paper. Wow, I know that I‑books have a good rep­u­ta­tion, but heh these are 4 year old jobs. What must the peo­ple in the front of the line run­ning through the gate think now? 

    Just two ques­tions: How is it that Angela is a Hen­ri­co res­i­dent and you are not? And I am still con­fused because don’t both of you live togeth­er in the Rich­mond city limits?

    Glad you two made it out unscathed.

  4. Travis: Well, Angela did live in Hen­ri­co for a few years, so she had prop­er Hen­ri­co ID (vot­er reg­is­tra­tion) which does not expire. I sup­pose there could be some great debate about jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for fraud, but since we did­n’t do any­thing oth­er shade some pave­ment for about 4 hours, I don’t real­ly think it’s worth get­ting into.

    As far as liv­ing inside the City of Rich­mond, yes, we live about 4 1/2 blocks from the coun­ty line. We cer­tain­ly weren’t alone in our wrong-doing, since a cou­ple of peo­ple who post­ed to my Flickr account are studnets, from Ten­nessee and Blacks­burg. Fun­ny, huh?

  5. It is tru­ely a small world. My inter­est in the loca­tion you pay tax­es to is I assure you pure­ly academic. 

    Next time put a “Media” badge on and you could have full access to front of the line. Hah. Hah.

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