Player Appearance Recap / Signing : Howie Kendrick @ WSS Shoes On July 26th, 2014

The wife and I were heading out to Ontario to meet up with our friends and family and to take in a Quakes game later in the day. I obviously was in the autograph mode and was ready to acquire some more autographs at the Quake game. More on that on the next blog entry.

While I was looking at movie times ( saw Lucy which was a very good movie and not very long if your attention span is short ) a couple days earlier and I saw that Howie Kendrick was doing a public signing at a shoe store in Anaheim right off the 91 and 5 freeways which meant it wouldn't be that much out of the way on our trip to Ontario. I have seen from recent past signings with Howie that the lines haven't been overly long and that some people went back into line and got more than one autograph. With the signing scheduled to begin at 10 or so what I was told, I thought if we left at 10 and arrived around 10:30ish that the line would be short and I could hop in and out in about 15 minutes flat considering what I have heard. Ran it by the wife to see if she was OK with that and she said sure ( great wife, thank you again, plus I think it doesn't hurt when it's an Angel since she is fan of theirs ). Packed and ready to go we left at 10 on the dot.

We arrived a tad after 10:40 and as we drove by there was a crowd in front of the store. Would say at least 150 people but there was no real line. Wife and I both thought that it was just people milling around after the signing and we could still go there and get the autograph and leave. Parked and walked towards the store and we informed that no this was a "line" waiting for Howie who's signing was scheduled to start at 11. Uh... OK? I debated on leaving but an employee of the store said if you buy $20 worth of merchandise you can get into the VIP and pointed to the a line against a rail that had about 25 people in it. We both agreed why not and entered the store and ended up with 3 pairs of shoes. With shoes in hand we headed towards the VIP line.

Exited the store and went over to where the employee said the line was. It ended at the sidewalk and we ended up talking to a couple for about 5 minutes until a security guard approached us and asked were we there for an autograph. Responded yes and that we had bought merchandise so we were allowed into the VIP line. He agreed that we were allowed to stand in said line but that line was snaked around 5 more barriers that had no interconnecting sections to indicate that it was part of any line. So now instead of being 25th or so in line we were now at least 100th in line. Nice....not.

Howie arrived right at 11 and started to sign right away but what should have been a 15 or so minute wait now became a little over a hour wait. If I would have known how unorganized this event would be I would have skipped it and got Howie at a future event. I only expected to be there till 11 at most but now we were there till almost 12:15.

What I can say though is that Howie was engaging to everyone and was polite and cordial. I have heard he was this way but it was the first time I have experienced it myself as I have never been able to acquire his autograph before. I arrived at his station after about a hour in line and he signed a 8x10 photo that I brought which I think came out great. He also posed with me for a picture that was developed in a tent near by. A nice little bonus.

Event was highly disorganized with wrong information given out to people ( various start times given out were 9,10 and 11 ) and false promises were given to people that chose not to purchase anything and were regulated to a general signing area. When I left there was at least 100 more people behind me and Howie was only going to be there for another 30 minutes. Sorry to those people as I know they did not all receive an autograph. Thank you again to Howie for my autograph.