Live from the Keynote Line

Many thanks to Ryan Hatch, who just let me borrow his wireless 3G card to post this. The walk here was really eerie, mostly because it’s San Francisco and there’s no one around. I got here around 3:42 am (all times 3 hours behind the east coast). I realized at around 4:00 am that they have a special line for the platinum and super pass holders right from the start. They used to separate everyone inside.

At 4:11, I met TJ Ferreira, the person who won the super pass from the same contest. He seemed like a nice guy. I’m also sitting in line with some Asian guy named Edwin Tan, who seems pretty cool. There’s also a gay guy from Minnesota.

At 5:00, I just took a walk around the Moscone West building, and there is media EVERYWHERE (and I’ve been trying to get on the news). The keynote line is pretty much wrapped halfway around the building. It’s hard to capture this in pictures.

By 5:07, I had been trying to get on the network, but although there are a lot of networks, none of them had any internet. I was able to get an internet connection for about 3 seconds, but it cut out.

The platinum/super pass line had pretty much spanned one side of Moscone West at around 5:17, which makes me really glad I got here early. I’m basically 20th in line.

Here’s my spot…

At 5:21, one of the coordinators of the event explained that “we let you in when Apple tells us we can. That’s usually the drill.” She told us, “We’re going to keep this much more organized this year.” We’ll see. A bunch of people had to leave this line and go to the extremely long line at the other side of the building, because they don’t have the right pass. We have to keep telling people that this line is only for platinum and super pass holders.

Here are some shots of the building and the famed escalators…