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Friday July 30, 2004 my first official week with Nintendo's Street Team and I learned a lot with my fellow street team members and found out just how much gamers both casual and hardcore enjoy playing videogames. First the team decided to return to the South Street Sea port to start the day off with a little bit of game playing and promotion before they hit the streets of New York City. Shortly after that we headed towards Union Square Park. The Nintendo Armada which is the vehicle that carries all the Nintendo Game Cube games inside ready to play opened up to the public. As the day went buy we wanted to end the day combing the streets of Time Square and hitting as many areas in which we thought that we would find gamers both hardcore or casual, and even people who were not into playing videogames. We went into Toys R' Us and found a lot of people playing videogames there so that kind of made our job a bit easier. So we took a couple of pictures down there and decided that we needed to be in the middle of Time Square where we could catch the most attention.
As we headed out the Toys R' Us and into the middle of Time Square, a whole bunch of weird stuff started to happen. First a Spiderman wanna be started to flip off a light post, which resulted into him taking pictures with us and a couple of ladies that passed by. The funniest thing happen as the ladies actually stopped us and asked if we were apart of the Nintendo Street Team as she had family in Atlanta that was on the Atlanta team competing against us; which is true, as each city is given weekly challenges to meet and people can vote for what city they felt did the best in terms in meeting the challenges. For more information you can vote here . After getting acquainted with the ladies, I was asked a bizarre question from one of them, and that was; "Did I like videogames more than females?" The question was very insulting and very stereotypical, but I understand in the age of man that we live in, most things are just that way. Besides, I was wearing a PowerGlove, so I can see as to why she would ask that question. I simply answered with a smile that not all stereotypes are true, and that Vin Disel is a gamer himself, but he is not the stereotype "Geek Gamer" that everyone looks at us to be. I think that she got the point.
Shortly after we was welcomed to a pleasant site of little girls dressed in Dalmation outfits. They were very eager to play the Game Boy Advance. Thus we let them have a go at it for quite a while. Then closing of the day was at hand and we had to bring the day to an end. Meeting back at headquarters we planned for the second day of this long weekend to come.
Saturday July 31, 2004. A new day was at hand with the same task in mind. This time our destination would be different however. Close to headquarters was a festival, and was just the perfect setting to bring the street team together to add a little gaming to what was already a interesting festival to begin with. The Armada pulled up as usual and set up the Smash Brothers game, which is easily the most played game since the street team was formed in New York City. Everyone played, everyone competed for prizes, like T-shirts, caps, visors, and towels. The funniest part was that people of all color, age, and gender had no problem participating in having fun with videogames. There even was a sign up post where someone could possibly win a Nintendo Game Boy Advance SP hand held system. Many people signed up, I wanted to but I wasn't too sure that members of the street team were allowed to participate in that.
We decided to comb the festival and introduce gaming to everyone there. It worked out for the most part as people who were just hanging out and relaxing in the park laying down on the grass, actually love the fact that they could play Game Boy and enjoy themselves while relaxing. We caught many people just browsing through the festival interesting in playing videogames, as well as enjoying what they were there to do. What I thought was going to be a long day actually came up to being a short day as the day came to a close. Mainly because the generator that they were using to power the Armada ran out of power and thus no more games for the day. A elderly lady was actually sadden because she wanted to play one of the games and try to win a t-shirt. However we told her that we would be back, and she was happy to here that.
Sunday August 1, 2004. Third and final day of the street team, as our last destination was the Columbus Ave Summer Fair. We had to get up pretty early in the morning for this one as we found out that the Armada was posted on 67th street and we got off 86th and had to walk back down to 67th, while it was drizzling mind you. So the day actually started off a bit soggy. We thought the day would end fast because we got reports that we were in for a hard thunder storm but luckily the rain cleared up and ended up being a sunny day. With that in mind we thought that it was only a matter of time before the clouds would regroup and come back to ruin the day so we knew that if we were going to make a move now was the time. So we split up from the Armada and decided to hit every and anything that did not look like gaming was not likely to happen there. The team that I was with was Joseph Blackwell and Jarrel Newsome ; two guys that I think are cool and down to earth gamers. We decided that we would hit the fire department, and see if there were any gamers in there. Surely enough a 52 year old Fire Captain was really hyped about playing Nintendo all over again. He made it sound like Nintendo was over 100 years old though. Wait a minute...they are. We got a picture of Jarrel coming down a fire pole playing Game Boy, while we took a group shot on the back of the fire truck. The Captain was more than happy to take picture of us.
Next stop, rock climbing. Yes you read it right. Rock climbing you ask well just look at it like this, there is always time for videogames...well except for just a few circumstance. Before we headed over to the rock climbing establishment, we ran into a little beautiful girl that was bursting with excitement to take a picture with us playing videogames. So excited that she jumped into my arms so that I could carry her over to a water spring to get our pictures taken. So you know we had to get a picture of that before we could go rock climbing. After we was done we headed directly over to the rock climbing establishment, and the first guy up for the job to climb that wall was Jarrel. Funny, though I wanted to climb the wall but I am not going to make excuses. Should of, would of, could of, but didn't. So we will leave it at that. Jarrel was the man for the job though as he took to the challenge of the wall and climbed up to the second highest platform and pulled out his GameBoy to take a break from climbing and started to play. Metro card to get back and forward to work for that day $4.00, utility belt to help climb the wall $9.00, taking a break in the middle of your climb to play Game Boy Advance, priceless.
Meanwhile as Jarrel was coming down from the wall, a small problem occurred outside of the rock climbing establishment as Eli Rawner was getting a ticket from NYPD's finest for roaming New York City with a Game Boy Advance without a license. Funniest thing I saw for that day. I didn't know whether to laugh at him or feel sorry. Just take a look at the picture and you would feel the same way too. After that incident we headed back to the Armada back on 67th and saw a whole bunch of people playing videogames. We had to pulling out our gear left and right to give to people who were standing around watching because there weren't enough games to go around. This went on for about 3 hours straight, and as time whined down and the day came to a close we all headed back to headquarters to set up a secret event that we had to do which was called "Make yourself famous." This required us to show up down town at Rockefeller Center 5am in the morning. However with all of that, we were able to complete the task at the XGames event. There we saw Dave Mirra live as he pulled off a couple of tricks for the crowd. We gave him a Nintendo T-shirt and hat to show him our support for him. Besides, he has his own game on the Game Boy Advance. Now we get ready for next week three day weekend, and what events we are going to have ready for New York City.
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