Waiting in Line at American Inventor

Arne and I showed up at 7:30 AM at the Renaissance Parc 55 Hotel and the line went about half way around the block. Not really long enough to blow your mind, but long enough to make you feel kind of tired looking at it. The people in line seemed to me to be very diverse. This may just have been a Portland girl's reaction to San Francisco, but it was far more interesting than my expectation of a crowd of old white guys in lab coats with a smattering of hipster geeks (gipsters?). (The people from Make noted the crowd's diversity, and they're FROM San Francisco so they'd know.) The crowd included young and old people of many hues who seemed to represent diverse social backgrounds, although I guess I didn�t see anyone who looked like a millionaire or anything. Those standing in line right next to us included a rural mail carrier, an unlicensed contractor, and a community college literacy instructor, and us, a filmmaker (Arne) and a public historian (me). The guy pictured in line here who looks like he's from Men in Black had an actual "Inventor's Laboratory Notebook" under his arm -- that impressed me to no end -- he was the real deal!! Also in this picture on the far left you can see the woman who took a freaking half hour for her pitch (more about her shortly). She'll probably get on the show.

Life in line outside the building was not fast paced, but not without interest, either. The crowd wranglers looked far more San Francisco than LA to me and had cute tattoos and stuff. At one point a guy tried to pitch to the pitchers, walking down the line handing out his business card for manufacturing services, which I thought was a pretty good idea in itself. Why weren't there patent attorneys working the line? How many chances do they get to chase ambulences? And a couple of times a film crew came through and a line fluffer encouraged us all to yell and hop around and generally act lively for the camera, and we obliged.

Next ... Hey! Is that Simon Cowell over there?