Despite the fact that there's no shortage of things to do in Seattle, there is also no shortage of Seattleites to participate in these activities. Therefore, it's inevitable that every once in a while, there's going to be a line to wait in. And It seems from my observations that Seattleites are also some of the most skilled that I have ever seen when it comes to standing in lines.
Case in point: The REI Garage Sale. In case you don't know, REI (Recreational Equipment Inc.) is a major retailer of outdoor gear such as camping, biking, skiing and kayaking supplies, all activities which there's plenty of around here. Anyway, their "Garage sale" takes place out in their parking garage at the flagship store, where basically all the floor models, returns and other such stuff get put out at knockdown prices, and only 100 people are allowed in at a time. Given how well equipped the people who shop at REI can be for camping, one can expect to see a long line of tents, sleeping bags, and other expensive-looking camping gear stretching for a whole city block or more. This year, me and a few colleagues decided to attend this garage sale, leaving at 2 in the morning to get there and sit in the pouring rain for four hours. I think the guy in front of us in line said it best when he described the whole scene as looking like some sort of "highly affluent refugee camp." When we arrived around 3, we were lucky to get a spot nearly a block away from the front of the line. When it was all said and done and the tickets were handed out to get in, we ended up being about #700 or so in line, even though there was still plenty of stuff to grab. I guess in the city that thinks it invented espresso, people can stay awake through just about anything.
Anyway, Those of you who aren't some sort of Unix/Mac/OS2/whatever deviants may have noticed that little thing Microsoft put out last week called Windows98, It sure seems like they noticed it around here, as just about every major computer store in the area decided that much like they did when Windows95 came out, they were going to have some sort of "Open at midnight" event to cater to the crowd of technoheads who strive to have the latest and greatest of everything, by any means necessary, of course (well, every means short of warezing the thing, but that's beside the point. Anyway, I decided that mostly due to some rather incredible bargains, (see a pattern here, by any chance?) I was going to go hang out at CompUSA for 2 hours or so, and of course unless you've skipped down this far and have somehow managed to avoid thinking for the past 5 minutes or so, you'll probably guess that there was a nice long line waiting already. Drawn by the allure of $98 Celeron PCs (or nutritional suppliments, with a name like that, you can never be sure) and other such wonderful deals, people were already lined up at the door 2 hours in advanced, with about 70 people in front of me. Fortunately, I got what I went for, which was a brand new monitor for only $98... Not a whole PC (or health food,) but it's a lot better price than I would have got otherwise.
Still, it was interesting to see that line. It seemed that half the line was comprised of various MS employees, distinguishable by their weird jargon and the noticable psycholigical effects that indicate that one's been drinking way too much soda. There were also the technoheads standing in line with their notebooks, cellular modem connections, PCMCIA Ethernet, and basically enough stuff to set up a QuakeII/Unreal/whatever fragfest between their notebooks... All in all, it was only a few years ago that one could walk or drive by a scene like that and promptly call police to bring in the paddy wagon and an extra box of straitjackets to deal with the situation. Nowdays, you see this same scene, and not only do you have the media actually covering the thing (and not on the other side of a police line either,) but you get all the searchlights, radio station live broadcasts, and other media attention normally reserved for a traffic accident during rush hour. These days, one can turn just about anything into a media circus without even realizing it.
And where's Microsoft sitting in all this? Certainly, they didn't make the big deal out of this that they did when Win95 was originally released back in Auguat of 95. In fact, it seems that all that they did this time was let everyone else advertise it for them. Positive or negative, there was plenty of fanfare from the press to precede Win98, mostly with the whole antitrust bit coming down the pike. In fact, I have seen little or no formal advertising being done for Win98's release, yet it seems to be just as prominent, if not more, in the press. It seems that in this case, Microsoft is willing to take any publicity, be it bad or good, to use in promoting their products.
A surprisingly effective strategy, but it unfortunately requires taking over a rather large chunk of the market before it works effectively.