You blog about it! Hoo hoo ha hoo.

Many of us signed up for the Street Fighter Club. Many of those people live in LA. And some of us... were called back.

I spent most of my Friday at work, but able to get out of there at 5, I dashed to the car and immediately headed to the 91 Freeway. On a Friday, right around rush hour, I would take no chances. Traffic is one heck of a thing.

I exited the 10 freeway and got on Alameda Street around 5:50 or so. Immediately I noticed: this was not a good part of town. Downtown LA? I guess this was... technically. I made a left onto 15th street. A lot of steel processing buildings, and what seemed to be junkyards. Looking for the street number now. Wait, did it just jump from 2055 to 2101? Crap crap crap crap. I parked the car and started walking on the sidewalk. It had to be here somewhere... right?

I eventually found a reddish, decrepit building with the right address. I walked into its parking lot, only to find that there were at least 8 different apartments. Nothing looked like it could be related to Street Fighter. This was bad.

I was leaving the parking lot when I noticed someone carrying a load of shrink-wrapped T-Shirts.

"Are you with Capcom?" I asked. "Yes," he said.

"So... you're really doing it here?" Indeed they were. I went back to my car and got my things (PSP and Xbox 360 Hori Stick), and began the waiting process. As I sat against a fence, playing, of all things, Mega Man Powered Up, I hear some people. "Let's get a picture!"

It turns out I was the first person there, and the Capcom representatives wanted a picture for the blog. I then asked if we needed to bring our own joysticks, or whether they'd be provided, for HD Remix.

"Sorry, HD Remix isn't here. The build wasn't good enough."

$@*#. Put the stick back in my car.  Man, I was really hoping to rock the Hawk.

Soon enough, others started showing up. A camera crew from G4 was there, taking a few interviews. Time passed, and more and more people showed up. I even saw a van driven by some Capcom guy carrying what had to be 150 pizzas or so, which was great! Until I realized:

• It was about 6:30 at that time.
• Doors don't open until 8.
• Pizza gets cold.

So when those doors finally opened at 8, and our names were taken down... while everyone ran to the Street Fighter 4 machines, I got me some pizza. By 8:30 or so, that stuff was tepid.

Soon enough, I got to a SF 4 machine, and picked Honda. I think his D-U+K buttslam has a higher range, which confused me briefly. Next time up, I picked Vega. Vega's old tricks all seem to work, and I still can't over that his EX Wall Dive hits on the way up.

I felt bad for the DJ, spinning in the other room where almost no one was. There was a sweet setup with 9 TV's showing tourney vids (the 9 TV's acted as one display, but not all the time... it was cool).

I got interviewed for G4 at some point. Hope I didn't embarass myself, but I think they'll just take a few bytes. What was confusing was the lead interviewer said "Hey, I heard you were a big fan of Street Fighter," when he introduced himself to me, which is odd, because homeboy had never heard of me in my life. But press is press, as it were.

Anyway, the night proceeded, and I got to see some of the greats like Alex Valle and James Chen play. Zangief was pretty popular, so were the shotos. Saw some Guile play. Abel was really popular, with Viper close behind. Rufus got some play near the end of the night, too. I thunk Rufus could give Vega a lot of trouble.

I want to thank Capcom for putting on the event, and all of the representatives who were ploite, courteous, and available for chatting. They did a great job turning the venue into something really special. I want to thank some of the people I met, especially UltraDavid and BigMex. May we all meet again under such circumstances.