With having the Playstation 3 launch on Friday November 17, 2006, Mike Langford and I decided to buy one of these devices to sell on eBay. As soon as we got to our destination in Costa Mesa and Irvine, we were met with long lines of geeks, thugs, and very avid entrepreneurs in each location. Here is the story of our adventure:
8:30pm
Our first place to check out was the Costa Mesa Best Buy about 45 minutes off USC near the 405 freeway. The line was seriously about 50 people strong and had two lines for the same store. The estimated unit arrival for this store alone was near 15. The odds Mike and I were going to get it required finesse and a bit of luck to get, so we decided to screw this and head for Irvine Fashion Island.
11:00pm
We arrived to the Circuit City in Fashion Island and we were greeted with security guards and a very desperate looking mob outside waiting for the PS3. The lines for this store didn’t start up until 3am and everyone was just circling around the store entrance waiting until the 3am deadline.
12:00am
This was the closing time for Fashion Island and I felt this was the time to make my move. As the security guards at Fashion Island (about 5 guards) decided to clear the parking lot, there were plenty of bystanders who were causing a scene of anger and confusion. While Mike and Karim decided to go get gas and food, I was left alone to make my master plan. I decided to stay in the parking lot and risk getting a ticket and getting arrested for trespassing. The circuit city store had no line, and they had 15 PS3’s at this time. I was pretty enthusiastic about my chances right now and hid behind some columns and some trash cans to make my quick lineup until 3am.
1:30am
By this time Karim, Will, and Mike arrived back with my food but I was already feeling the effects of the pressure trying to hide from the police. They had guards searching through the parking lot and on the property near circuit city and I felt like I was running away from Alcatraz. After waiting for a few minutes, my body was feeling fatigued and I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle this for another hour so I gave up. This was my big master plan but failed. As I was walking down the steps and into the parking lot into the hands of the police, I thought of something else more genius that would get me and all my friends inside the store.
2:00am
As I was walking down into the hands of the Newport Police now, I thought up of a story that I was a circuit city employee and just came off the late shift here at 11:00pm. The officer named P. Miner was present and he questioned me about who, what, where, and how PS3’s were going to get released. I told him about 15-20 units were there and the release was going to happen at 5am with vouchers from the store itself and I also showed him the OFFICIAL line for the PS3 launch. After I showed him and said that this was the line blah blah blah, he believed me and said to wait here so he can discuss with his partners on what to do next. At this time I was feeling confident that I would be the one in line and securing my own spot but then a bombshell dropped on me. They asked for my manager’s phone number with my name and my personal contact information too. At this time I was like “shit, cats out of the bag, they’re going to arrest me for fraud” but in reality I was very cool and gave him my number including Will. After I gave the numbers, I fled into the parking lot with the mob of about 300 people and talked to will about the incident. At first he freaked out and said he wasn’t a manager at Circuit City and can’t impersonate another person but we made up a name and did a story to convince the officers in line to put me in charge of the whole distribution thing with the line. After calling and having Will (aka Peter Assistant Manager) yelling at the officers for waking him up (pretending he just got off his shift and was sleeping to work the next day), he sounded damn convincing and the officer was very apologetic about the whole verification and calling in the wee hours of the night.
After that was clear, I was given access to the line and was told to bring 15 people out of the crowd to stand in line. I picked 6 of Jon’s friends including him with, 4 of my own friends, 5 other USC buddies of mine and we proceeded to the line. When the crowd saw that we were getting in line, a riot started to ensure and the police had a hard time letting my group go. The mob was yelling “WTF, WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE”, “why are they getting in line and not us?” “HE DOESN’T WORK FOR CIRCUIT CITY”, etc. Pushing and shoving started to occur and my group got lost in the mob while I managed to get around 5-6 people in line with me. We had police protection and backup did arrive bringing the security to about 8, and police to around 20. When the sergeant of the Newport police came up to me asking who the 15 people in line was, he wanted me to point them out of the mob and soon after the crowd started begging and started yelling for my attention “PICK ME PICK ME”. As soon as the crowd got more desperate, I saw that this was not going to work out since there was an immense pressure from the crowd trying to prevent me from picking anyone from my group. Everyone started yelling and throwing stuff so the police said to me “Fuck this, get your fucking group out of here”, and I had to leave with my only chance of standing in line at this point. I was so close but had no cigar, everyone dispersed and everyone followed me thinking I was some circuit city employee while people were coming up to me wondering how the fuck we got in line. When some components of the crowd didn’t participate with the evacuation of Newport, they started bringing out the tear gas and bean bag shotguns so everyone started running and hiding behind cars just incase they started to use those weapons against us. When I saw those weapons being displayed, I got an image in my head like this
Everyone hiding and running away from the police over some stupid PS3’s, my god what has this world turned into? The behavior of hundreds of people was predicated over supply and demand and the chance that they too can make thousands of dollars on ebay.
I gave up at 4:30am and went to sleep. Its not worth selling over my soul even though I tricked the officers to have me and everyone I know stand in line out of the whole crowd. Create your own opportunities, that’s what I did.
At the time of this post, the average selling price for Playstation 3’s were at $2,500 each with the price buying it at retail was $600.
