Shortly after we had gotten tickets to &Juliet, JC announced the next afternoon he’d be doing a CD signing at Barnes and Noble in NYC. I managed to snag a ticket and hoped I could figure out details later and ended up getting a hotel across the street from the &Juliet theater for the night. The hotel gave us $10 credit due to them charging a $30 destination fee and when I stopped to pick up some water and a snack before getting a ride to Barnes & Noble, I got roped into coming back for some sort of timeshare presentation. (Tired, about to meet JC AND you trick me by offering me points – recipe for disaster right there).
I had no idea how many tickets were sold, but the line didn’t seem too bad when I got there around 10:30ish. I bumped into a friend who talked to the staff inside that said I didn’t need to stand in line and could sit inside and wait. I went inside and they told me to go up to the cafe and he would let the manager know I was there. I ended up getting a chai latte while I waited, but around 11:30 when I could see fans start coming upstairs to line up and other friends came by to say they had started wrist banding I started to panic and went down the elevator to make sure they still knew I was there.
The staff member at the bottom of the elevator told me that yes, she knew I was there, and I could continue to sit up there, but could I please step off to the side for a moment? Because JC needed to come through and use the elevator to get up to the signing. I must have looked star struck as anything but we managed to say “hi” to each other. She said once he went upstairs I could go back up and they’d have a staff member come by to give me my wristband and CD. And that they did.
The signing started a little bit early and a staff member came and got me and I was at the curtain to enter at 12:01. There was maybe 6 people in there before me? They were taking our phone and CD and holding purses and/or coats if we wanted. Our CD got handed to JC and our phone got handed to another staff member to take our photo with him!!!! It was all a blur, everyone was saying how nice it was to meet him, how they had been fans for MMC, etc etc. He seemed very grateful and kind and sweet and was obliging for anyone who was asking for hugs (I didn’t, not sure why) and was chatting with anyone who had started conversations with him about pretty much any topic it seemed.
After walking out, they cut off our wristband 🙁 I asked if I could keep it after it was cut and was told no, so I took a photo of it instead. As if it would not have been totally obvious if I found some tape and tried to go through the line again! But I get why they had to do it.
Everything seemed really smoothly run and when we got outside it was about 12:15 and there was still a decent set of lines outside. I still wasn’t sure how many tickets were sold, but they were not letting a lot of people inside at a time to make sure things didn’t get hectic and overcrowded.
I ended up on a 1:04 train and home at 3:30pm more exhausted than I was after doing 12 Hanson shows. Go figure.