A late night visitor and a walk on the wild side

As Sunday afternoon turned into evening we started getting ourselves ready for a cold night. We took turns leaving to get dinner and take bathroom breaks or to just walk around and stretch. We changed our clothes in the back of the van. Sweats, thermals, thick socks, hats, gloves, scarves, the whole nine yards. We brought out sleeping bags and big heavy blankets. I did my one and only post from the front line during this time. It would have been great to stay online so I would have had something to do to pass the time but my laptop battery was good for an hour at best so I posted and then shut down.



Our security shift changed and we now had supervisor Ed Baker and his team, Matt, Andrew and Devon. We kept them supplied in snacks, coffee and hot chocolate just as we had the previous team.

People had been going by all day and night, asking the same question, "What are you waiting for?" Most of them thought we were crazy, some of them thought what we were doing was cool, all of them couldn't believe we were going to spend the night on the sidewalk. We had a lot of people coming from behind us in line, still wanting to know how we knew to start lining up where we did. They wanted to know who told us, if we were the "real" line. We would direct their questions to who ever was standing guard at the moment since you could tell some of them really didn't believe us.

Around 10pm we heard screaming from where the line turned the corner to go down the street. There were some girls that had a sign, Honk if you love Twilight, so every time a car would go by and honk, there would be some screaming involved but this was different. This was more of a, something is going on, type screaming. C ran down to the corner to see what was going on and found out that the director of the movie, Catherine Hardwicke, had driven by, honking and waving to the crowd. That was pretty exciting but we had no idea what was to come.

About an hour later we heard the buzz, Catherine Hardwicke had come back with a camera crew and was meeting the fans. I couldn't believe it. She was actually going down the line, shaking hands and talking with everyone in line. The bad news, she only had about 20 minutes and we were going to be last. We decided to change into our matching Twilight shirts that we had been saving for the premier just in case she made it to us. Not too long after that a woman with a video camera was telling us that Catherine was coming to see us. She had mentioned to her that they had actually started at the end of the line and that there were people at the head of the line, US, who had been waiting since early morning. The next thing we knew, there she was. Talking to us, asking questions, signing things and taking pictures.





We found out that the film crew she had with her was doing filming for the DVD extras. How cool would that be if we ended up being on the DVD?

After all the excitement was over we settled in for the evening. C was able to go to sleep right away, sitting up in a lawn chair. J tried sleeping on the sidewalk, wrapped up in a blanket. The girls were in the back of the van.


I just sat. With my back still hurting from the week before there was no way I could get comfortable enough to go to sleep sitting up. Most of the businesses around us were closing and not too many people were walking or driving by anymore. The only thing still open was a place across the street called Habibi Cafe. I couldn't believe how busy they were for a Sunday night. Loud music and hookas, into the wee hours. I later found out they are open until 4am.

J got up after about an hour of laying on the ground and we sat together. By this time, 2am, I think we were the only ones still awake. The big problem, we both had to go to the bathroom. We could have used the hotel room that belonged to our line neighbor but we decided it would be faster to walk through the alley, to a Chevron station we could see across the street from the In N Out burger. When we got there we found the store was close. Instead of walking back through the alley, we decided to walk up the street to the next corner. I knew there was a 24 hour Subway somewhere in the area and I was hoping it was on the next block over. When we turned the corner the only thing we found was a dark street. As we continued walking we noticed about halfway up the street there were four men, standing in a circle on the other side of the street. I became nervous right away. We kept walking and right about the time we were passing them I heard one of them call to us.

Hey, hey girls.

Oh, perfect. They were calling us. We didn't turn around but kept walking, picking up the pace. Nobody was on the street but us and them, still a half a block to go before being able to turn the corner and yell to Matt, the security guard, if we needed help. I don't know if they called us again or not, I don't remember. I do know they were still on their side of the street but were now walking in the same direction we were going. I told J that if they started coming after us to save herself because I was so tired there was no way I was going to be able to run. I mentioned to her that this was just like a chapter in Twilight, when Bella was in Port Angeles and was being chased but I didn't think there was going to be any silver Volvo that would be screeching around the corner to save us. We were on our own. We finally made it to the corner and could see Matt and the line of people off in the distance. When we turned the corner, the group of men turned in the other direction.

We were very foolish and very lucky.



to be cont...