On November 18th (technically 19th), my 15-year-old brother Bradley and I spent nine hours outside of a Best Buy, waiting in line for the launch of the
Nintendo Wii. We had been planning this stake-out for months, and when we found out that three of our friends (Jared, JT and Erica B) were planning on doing the same thing, we drove up to Columbus, Ohio to join them.
None of the five of us had ever been a part of an event like this, and being the geeks that we are, we had even researched it. Our friends in Columbus had brought everything we needed: camp chairs, blankets, more blankets, and the Nintendo DS. Bradley and I brought everything they'd overlooked: kickballs, beef jerky, and another Nintendo DS.
Immediately, you could sense that a community was forming. As soon we got there and set up camp, people started buzzing.
"Any word on how many units this branch is getting?"
"Has the manager been out yet?"
"My cousin's friend works at a GameStop and said they're only getting 20 Wiis."
And so on. Talking about the possibility of scoring a Wii was the ice breaker-- it was the one thing you automatically had in common.
I noticed that some people in line were already asleep. We labeled them the weaklings, as the store didn't open until 9am and it wasn't even 1 yet. Later we would envy them their thermal sleeping bags, but we were young and carefree.
We met the people lounging on either side of us. Some had brought armchairs, others had resourcefully pulled the seats out of their cars. Whenever there was a lull in conversation, the topic would inevitably turn back to the Wii and how cool it was definitely going to be. We bantered about old favorite games and discussed why we hadn't made this same sacrifice for the
PlayStation 3, the $600+ system that had launched the night before.
But even geek talk can't fill nine hours. Soon we were pushing one another in shopping carts, which quickly turned into Cart Jousting. JT drove a quarter of a mile in a motorized shopping cart that he found abandoned in the Kroger parking lot during one of his bathroom runs. Some neighbors in line hooked up a Nintendo 64 to the battery of their car, playing hours of old-school
Worms as we looked on. Around 3am, another neighbor cheered us with fresh doughnuts, which I repaid around 5am when I picked up waffles for our end of the line. If you want to get along in a situation like this, it's best to turn Communist quickly.
I hit the wall around 6am. It was incredibly cold, and I had yet to sit down for fear of joining the "weaklings." My fingers were too frozen to write any more Mad Libs, much less fire up the DS to join in a round of Mario Kart. My friends started nodding off one by one, including my energetic brother, who had failed to pace himself. The few of my new friends who were still awake gathered together and talked, made up chants about the street sweepers and garbage trucks that passed, and constantly shuffled to keep warm.
Did I mention we were heckled? Apparently it is not unheard of for people to drive by at all hours of the night and taunt the people who are waiting in line. "Is it worth it, geeks? To be homeless for a night?" All of us "geeks" recognized the irony-- we deemed it much sadder to be the one driving around pestering the geeks than to actually be the geek. However, after the first couple rounds, Jared hooked up his industrial megaphone so we'd have a chance to heckle them back.
The sun finally started to rise. The parking lot lights blinked out all at once, which caused everyone to get antsy. The "how many units?" speculation started up again. People started folding their lawn chairs and taking their portable grills back to their cars. Around 7:30am, a Best Buy employee came out and sated our thirst for information-- they would be handing out tickets at 8am. These tickets did not guarantee us a Wii-- they guaranteed us a place in line.
At 8am we were arranged in a single-file line, most alliances already forgotten. New friends became potential enemies-- the person in front of you might very well snag the last one, your entire night shot for nothing. My group was far enough toward the front that we could relax a little, but the people in back looked like caged animals. (We had no sympathy, as by definition we had been out in the cold longer than they had.) We got our tickets ("84 units! Just like my sister's boyfriend said!") which was more than many stores received, but still not enough for everyone in line.
At 9am we were ushered into the store. The blast of warm air was reward in itself. The Best Buy employees had obviously been warned not to treat us like we were complete idiots for sitting outside all night-- they were all smiles and happy to help us find the games we were after. Even the cashier seemed to share our excitement.
When we got back outside, we took a last glance around our temporary home on the sidewalk. It was littered with Mountain Dew bottles and broken camp chairs. People we had met in line came out every couple of seconds-- some of them nodded in our direction, but most of them just darted to their cars with their new systems tucked under their coats. The moment had passed and we were just geeks again, destined to sleep through the rest of the day, hook up our systems by dinner time, and be on the Nintendo forums sharing our launch stories as soon as possible.
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