Close Encounters of the Barbra Kind No. 18

I'm calling this post Close Encounters of the Barbra Kind because I've had "physical contact" with Barbra a number of times. By contact, I mean I've been in the same space with her- either at a concert or some other event.

As I'm going through my boxes of Barbra memorabilia, I came across this info sheet given out to the ushers at the Bank Atlantic Center in Fort Lauderdale, (actually Sunrise) Florida. This concert was the 18th time I had contact with her.

For a number of years I worked part-time as an usher at the Bank Atlantic Center. I signed up to work both concerts. Imagine that, I got paid to attend a Barbra concert!

You'll notice some interesting tid-bits from the info sheet.

While the doors were suppose to open at 6:00 p.m. to let the crowd in, it was closer to 6:40. Barbra was still doing sound and wardrobe checks. Normally sound checks are done before we're assigned our positions, but once in a while we may get to hear an artist perform it. As far as wardrobe checks are concerned, I had never worked a concert that was being filmed so I never got to witness one. We (the ushers) had already been assigned our spots before 6:00 so we got to see a lot. I'll save the details for another post.

Parking for the event, you will notice, was $30! which was a record for the venue- and a number of patrons did complain about it (all I could do was direct them to customer service- which I doubt could do anything about it).

Michael Yormark was the chief operating officer of the Florida Panthers at the time (now president)in case you are wondering. Needless to say, I didn't have an invitation to the party.

I talked with some of the seat fillers to find out how did they get to be one. They were season ticket holders for the Florida Panthers.