Talk about your reg­u­lar Sat­ur­day morn­ing… I went to the city to hang out with some peeps and roll to the H&M Grand Open­ing (150 Pow­ell St.). I got to Pow­ell St. ter­mi­nal via BART around 9:45am. As you walk up the hill, you can already see the chaos. Hun­dreds were already lined up antic­i­pat­ing the store’s rib­bons to be cut.

The cops, heli­copters and secu­ri­ty guards were out in force to keep an eye on things, and keep order. It was no sur­prise that this thing was a great Grand Open­ing. H&M did a won­der­ful job spread­ing the word about their first instal­la­tions on the west coast.

They kept the crowd (lined up around the block, lit­er­al­ly) in order by hav­ing secu­ri­ty guards act as “line mon­i­tors” perse. This gave cut­ters the wrong idea, and kept things fair for every­one who have been wait­ing there for a long time. I over­heard peo­ple say­ing that the aver­age wait was 1–2 hours dur­ing the morn­ing. That’s just too crazy.

So, I skipped that morn­ing fias­co and head­ed over to grab some brunch at King of Thai (aka. King Thai, or Pur­ple Thai between my cowork­ers and I). After get­ting some chick­en satay, hop­ing over to the dif­fer­ent stores in the area and some refresh­ments, we head­ed over to the H&M line.

The time is now 2:30pm. It was­n’t as bad as the secu­ri­ty guard said it was about a 10 minute wait now. But low and behold, we got in the store in less than 5 min­utes. The inside, well… that’s anoth­er sto­ry.

It was just com­plete pan­de­mo­ni­um. Imag­ine shop­ping dur­ing Christ­mas Eve, only in Novem­ber. It was freak­ing hot, humid and stuffy. It felt like Sum­mer time all over again.

Mean­while, after an hour of brows­ing the men’s sec­tion, I came up emp­ty hand­ed. Noth­ing real­ly caught my eye, except for some nice suits that were just not jus­ti­fi­able for me to get at the moment. I haven’t even worn one since Liz & Joel’s Wed­ding two weeks ago, and dur­ing my inter­views back in Feb­ru­ary-March.

Any­ways, I fig­ured that every­one who shopped today at H&M would prob­a­bly be wear­ing the same clothes this week. That’s just gonna be hilar­i­ous. So for those who work and live in/near the city, be on a look out for peo­ple wear­ing the same H&M cloth­ing next to each oth­er. Take a pho­to if you can. HA!