Sunday, March 20, 2011

Suites

Unfortunately there hasn't been another home game since last week so I don't have any new stories to tell. The next game will be Thursday night against Atlanta so thing should be back to normal for at least a little while after that. It's weird to think that in 3 weeks the season will be over.

Last week I started talking about what working in the different areas of the Coliseum was like. I covered the High Five area. Tonight I'll be talking about the suites. Just like at any other arena, the suites at Nassau Coliseum are a place for companies or other groups, like families, to come to all watch the game together. The people in the suites are given their own private area with both a lounge kind of area as well as seats to watch the game. Food and drinks are brought up and constantly being refilled. Personally I've never actually watched a game in the suites at the Coliseum, but I have gone to one game in a suite at CitiField and it was a really fun experience.

There are also different style suites for different amounts of people (and budgets). There are a couple pretty good sized ones, some double suites, and then others that are on the smaller size. Each suite belongs to a different organization or company, like Newsday or Rexcorp for example. During the game, the Ice Girls come up to the suites and offer raffle tickets, and the Fan Photo crew (aka me) go around asking if the people would want pictures for the website. As far as my job is concerned, I have to make sure I look at which suite I'm at before I go in.

The suites in the Coliseum are organized by numbers (1-14) and letters (A-Z). There are certain suites that we aren't allowed to go in because there is either someone (usually famous) inside that we aren't supposed to bother, people within the Islander organization (like the GM or owner), or the families of the players. The general rule is if the suite has the 'New York Islanders' label next to the door, then you don't go in there. Unfortuantely for me, the last time I was assigned suites I didn't check the doors ahead of time. I walked into a suite just like I would for any other and asked the two people inside for a picture. They said no, so I walked out. As I was walking out, I realized that I had just walked into the Islanders' suite and asked injured defensemen Mark Streit and his girlfriend for a picture. That was embarassing. I haven't been back since then since I was sick last Friday, so hopefully that isn't something I'll get in trouble for.

I'm still having some issues uploading my pictures to the blog for some reason. Hopefully this week I'll have that sorted out and I will be able to post the pictures I wanted for last week as well as show you some from the suites for this week.

No comments:

Post a Comment