Site Presented By
Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
Bouncers, actors, bankers, immigrants and preteens all agree: The former president rocks!
Jun 23, 2004 | "We are the biggest, blackest things here, let's be honest," said Calvin, a 26-year-old, 6-foot-4-inch bouncer at the Manhattan club Bar None. Calvin and his fellow bouncer Benjamin, who was 6 feet 6 inches and 300-odd pounds, had arrived at the Rockefeller Center Barnes & Noble at 4:30 a.m. to get in line to have copies of Bill Clinton's book "My Life" signed by the former president. They were about 200 people from the front of the line, but they were cheerful. "I think it's an honor to meet someone who led us so greatly for eight years," said Benjamin, who remembered a campaigning Clinton coming to his neighborhood in Queens and talking to an elderly woman in a diner about the importance of healthcare. "He was in touch with the people's needs," said Benjamin, who was wearing a T-shirt that said "God is a DJ." When asked how they felt about Clinton's personal indiscretions, Benjamin said, "We got people losing heads, and they were worried about someone getting head? Come on!"
While they were in fact the biggest people immediately visible in a line that stretched for more than six blocks of Manhattan sidewalk, Benjamin and Calvin were not the blackest, or the youngest, or the oldest people present. There was no making sense of the crowd of people who had been waiting patiently since the middle of the night in a clammy rain for a president who had yet to show up, even though his signing was supposed to have started 10 minutes earlier.
They stood placidly as security yelled at them to open their bags, dispose of their cameras, keep their copies of "My Life" opened to the title page, where Clinton would -- at some point -- be signing them. They answered questions from an international press corps that was feeding on the line like a brunch buffet. "We've talked to so many reporters that we're already famous in Eastern Europe," said Richard, a 54-year-old collector of signed books who was standing about 250 people from the front of the line. "And Mexico," sighed Jean Paul, the 34-year-old manager next to him.
Over walkie-talkies, the Barnes & Noble staff were getting tense. It was pouring outside, all over a grumpy press pen and the snaking line of people who had just shelled out $35 for a book that they weren't eager to see drenched. As the crowds pressed cold, wet noses against the outside glass, employees had been steadily emptying the store of regular customers for about 90 minutes preceding Clinton's scheduled arrival time. The velvet ropes protecting the tiny niche where the former president would sit and sign and sign and sign were multiplying like rabbits, pushing curious "shoppers" into an ever-shrinking space at the front of the store.
Two brightly dressed young women, 25 and 29, eyed a nook that was swarming with Secret Service. But no sooner had the women been spotted than a guard pulled two bookcases together, cutting off their view, and the women were asked to clear out of the aisle in which they were standing. "It's all the inconveniences of shopping at a Barnes & Noble, with none of the conveniences," said one of the women, who both declined to be named since they work for an event-planning firm that did not plan this event. Neither had bought Clinton's book. They just wanted to catch a glimpse of the gadabout in chief. "Yes, I thought he was sexy," said the 29-year-old, before anyone had asked her any such thing.
