The Actual Day |
| Since it was Simon Gregory, who initiated this meeting, I thought it would be a great idea to have him tell about the actual day, what all happened, if his perceptions in the meeting have been fulfilled and all. Thank you Si for cooperating! |
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On the morning of the meeting, Steve and I were actually half an hour late after having spent Friday night out with Annie, Heaven and about 10 other people in Soho. So, we grabbed some breakfast at what was then the best place we could find for food that time in the morning, that close to the hotel - 'Stars On Sixth'. It was about 9:30am when we arrived at the Rockefeller Centre, and to our amazement, amongst all the other people around at that time in the morning, there were two people sitting by a sort of monument. One of them had his official fan meeting t-shirt on.... So we kinda sauntered up to them, and to my astonishment, they were actually there for the meeting! It turned out that the first two people we met were Rasmus Lovestad (from Denmark but living in New Rochelle, NY) and Diane (CAN'T REMEMBER HER NAME!) from Maryland. We didn't have to wait long until the remainder of the people turned up to meet us. The very first thing we did was to hurry over to where they film the NBC Today show (West-coast edition I think) just by the Rockafeller Centre. Those of us that were there didn’t really say much (except for Rasmus who we couldn’t keep quiet ;) but we did do our bit for fandom and hold up our official meeting t-shirts for the entire West-coast of America to see.., and also got a mention from the female presenter….which was kinda cool. From the Rockafeller Centre we decided the best thing to do first would be go hunting for rare Mariah CD's, so it was off on the relatively long trip from the Avenue of the America's down to HMV on Broadway, The Virgin Megastore on Times Sqaure and then on to the subway up to Tower Records on Columbus Circle (where Mariah had only been just days before signing her new CD at the time 'Butterfly'!). After pretty much cleaning out the stores of Mariah merchandise, we crossed the street and went into the IMAX theatre to see 'whatever' was showing...., it turned out to be 'Across The Sea Of Time' - nothing whatsoever Mariah related here then, but a good laugh nonetheless. |
| We had already walked what seem like miles when we thought it would probably be a good idea to stop for something to eat and drink...., which we promptly did at a Deli and took the food into Central Park, which is where some of the photo's you see are taken. |  |
| click here for more pics |
| Its worth mentioning at this point that we
were missing one very important person from our group. Heaven who we'd been out with the
night before wasn't answering her phone in the hotel and we assumed she was trying to find
us, so we spent much of the day wondering where she was! (It turned out she was looking
for us, but Rasmus, Annie, Steve and myself made up for it the following day by taking her
out to dinner). After lunch we crossed the island (toward the Hudson River) and managed to find Sony's recording studios. So, being the intrepid Mariah fanatics we were, we just steamed on in and pretty much 'demanded' a tour :), which was funny to say the least. |
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The look on the receptionist's
face was real funny, a mixture of total disbelief and bewilderment that 8 people could
just wander in off the street and ask for a tour of the facility. Needless to say we failed in our attempt to gatecrash the studio, the excuse given was ‘I’m sorry but you need a supervisor to take you around’…..hmmmm. |
| click here for more pics |
Fresh from our failure (LOL), we went back
downtown to see if we could find MTV’s studios, we had a vague idea they were on
Times Square but we couldn’t quite figure out where, since all the buildings looked
like shop fronts. But undeterred, Rasmus lead the way and we ended up waltzing into
MTV’s parent company’s building (Viacom). I’m pretty sure everyone but
Rasmus thought is was a bad idea, but it didn’t seem to bother him and we boarded the
escalator. I don’t remember much about it now, needless to say we were promptly
ejected from the building….LOL
The time was now getting on for early evening and it was decided that we oughta be thinking about getting something else to eat. Annie had heard that Sean ‘Puffy’ Combs had just opened a restaurant but she wasn’t too sure where it was, so what followed was a massive search of one side of downtown Manhattan :) We eventually had to conceed defeat at about 8 or 9pm and we entered a local Police station to ask for directions. Luckily they new where it was and we found it soon after. |
| Unfortunately though, we had to be content with just seeing the place as there was a private party on there. So we took some photo’s outside and then left (although Rasmus actually made some reservations for the following night and Annie, myself Steve and Ras all ate there, but that’s a whole different story altogether!). |  |
| click here for more pics |
| Because everyone had walked many many miles,
we thought it best to go somewhere where we knew would be open and have tables available
for dinner. So we all dived into ‘Planet Hollywood’, again, there are some
photo’s of us all ‘chowing-down’ :) When I originally thought of the idea for a meeting, I had no idea that people would actually turn up for it, it started off for me as a pet project. Since I was coming to New York City for a holiday I thought it would be fun to meet with some other Mariah fans, and I have to say that on that trip I met some phenomenal people, some of which have become VERY good friends of mine. (Annie – You gotta get a bigger belt girl, you gotta be so cold in that one!). (Heaven – OK, so we missed you on the meeting day but you were with us is spirit, or at least Marguaritas!) (Rasmus – You still wearing that T-Shirt man?) Although the meeting was back in 1997, i’d like to thank those people who made the effort and turned up, cos without you folks, the thing would have been dead in the water! I can’t actually remember all your names now, but I’m sure if your reading this, you know who you are! |
| If you have any questions,comments or requests don't hesitate to send me an email |
