LaMarcus comes in late just to avoid any pregame media attention and is thinking right now, well..y'know..maybe the times have changed. Hope that dog doesn't pee on my tires
Back from Sizzle Pie and the place cards were... placed? Anyway, I was only 7 seats off, lol. I'm sitting between David MacKay of the Rip City Project and Mike Acker of Willamette Week. We'll see how Tier SPD blends in with the Tier 1s and 2s up here. I did walk by the press room. Now I understand why I was given Tier SPD. I found out it's tradition for press to dress up for opening night. While I am wearing a sports coat and dress shirt I am wearing jeans. Major fail on my part. I wouldn't let me in there either. There's about 40 guys and 2 women in there all dressed up. It looks like a chess club prom. Second great news of the night... the girl at Sizzle Pie saw my special Tier SPD access pass and gave me the Blazer employee discount. I told her that she didn't have to but she said she would. This leads me to my 2nd breaking news, Tier SPD exclusive.... Blazer employees get a 25% discount on food in the Moda.
Awesome stuff! Love the backstage experience! I once did press row for a Ducks game, and it was pretty awesome.
Seriously Sly, this is great and I appreciate these behind the scene posts. Great job! Chess club prom? Guys on one side staring at their cell phones and girls on the other side reading Searching for Bobby Fischer?
They have two minutes to ask the girl to dance and if they forget to hit the timer, they lose their turn
I'm sitting next to the gentleman from the Portland Mercury newspaper. It's a little loud here so I didn't catch his name but he is a Tier 1 and will be live blogging. When he posts his first blog of the night I will try post a link to it.
So it seems that if you have an actual publication (On Paper) you get tier 1? Still a little confused about that but i guess we will see what happens in the long run. The guy from the mercury might be Rob Simonsen?
I've got TV here, LOL! There are these monitors here that show stats but the guy from the Portland Mercury showed me that they also get TV. Comcast business class! There are 5 of them here on press row. I turned mine from the stats to the Blazer's pregame show. The other guys that are here have them turned to the World Series.
Rip City Project has also been placed on Tier SPD. Apparently all of the blogs have either been denied press access or given Tier SPD access. The Tier 2 access that Blazer's Edge was offered is looking pretty good now. They should have accepted.
Soooooo.... I'm all alone here on press row. All of my pressmates have left. I'm not sure what to do. Last year there was a person who would walk up here at the end of each quarter and bring us stat sheets for the quarter and game. That hasn't happened tonight so I don't think anyone is going to bring me the game stats or the quotes from Stotts' press conference. Also I just realized that I don't get the press room beer tonight. There is someone here taking the TV monitors. No worries, he works for the Blazers. But now I don't even have TV. The Blazer employee picking up the TV monitors just asked me if I was mark Mason's brother. Compliment?
