Location: Buckingham Fountain
Date: Friday, September 6, 2013; 6:00-9:30 pm
I had heard about this event from
many One Brick volunteers, who had flagged it as one of the must-attend
projects. That was because it was a two
day event and by working one of those shifts, one could gain entry and sample
most of the 250 wines that were on offer, from all around the world. This meant that by doing the project on
Friday, I could return back on Saturday and go around the festival. Now, One Brick projects are usually to
benefit some cause and I was wondering what we were enabling, till I saw on the
One Brick website that it was for benefiting ‘The Grant Park Conservancy’, a non-profit dedicated to maintaining
and enhancing Grant Park. The
description said, “The Grant Park
Conservancy's mission is to provide a permanent body that enables Grant Park to
respond and adapt to the changing needs of its users, as the park passes from
generation to generation. Some of these needs relate to landscaping,
infrastructure, design, cultural activities, and environmental issues.” Well, they had me at wine anyways.
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| Wine by the fountain at twilight |
It was a nice summer’s evening as
I walked over to Grant Park from work and upon arrival saw a long queue to get
in. I saw Wilson who was sent near the
entrance to be on the lookout for volunteers and he told me go check-in with
Laura and Michelle, who were on the event leadership team, and also pick-up my
t-shirt. That done I came back to join
Wilson and he said that I should go and check with the people in the queue if
they knew that there were separate lines for pre-paid tickets, cash and credit
cards. This simple announcement worked
wonders and soon we were down to manageable numbers. Our shift was about to commence and Michelle
called us all together to allocate duties, which were Wrist banding, Handling
tickets and Allocating glasses. They
also needed someone at the VIP tent to check people coming into that area and I
offered to do that duty. Michelle walked
me over there and I got to see the festival, with multiple booths from
different vineyards, as well as other entertainment activities. As the twilight began to set in, the festival
looked primed for a successful evening.
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| The "VIP" corporate area |
Along with me was another
volunteer Anne, and she and I did not exchange a single word while we were
there. The task was very simple and did
not require much from us. Corporate
sponsors had been allocated VIP tents where they could host their private
tastings and parties for invited guests.
These people had been given a white wristband as opposed to the
colored ones for General Admission visitors.
Our job was to check if the people entering the tent were wearing said
wristbands, politely turn away the other riffraff, and if we could do it
subtly, so much the better. While this
sounded like something volunteers would be required for, we also had a security
guard posted next to us who was doing the same thing, as were two women from
the sponsors at the entrance to the tent.
I really did not see the point to this triple check point since it
wasn’t as if we were protecting the ‘Hope
Diamond’ were we? Furthermore, I saw
a couple come with only one wearing a wristband and as I tried to stop them, I
was told by the corporate ladies that +1 was allowed. Well, now there wasn’t really a point to so
many people being there for 3 hours and when Michelle came to give us water, I
told her so. She agreed and so we left
Anne – who was settled comfortably – with the guard and I went with Michelle
for my new assignment.
I came back to the entrance to help put on the
wristbands on people coming in, which were ‘Yellow’
for visitors and ‘Orange’ for “Designated Drivers”, who were people
without drink tickets. As I have
mentioned before, putting wristbands on is a high-pressure task for me and I
have to concentrate hard in order to not do a terrible job. Fortunately for me, there were plenty of
other people doing this task, so I was not as busy as otherwise. Perhaps sensing that, Michelle dispatched me
to distribute water to some of our volunteers that were spread out in the
festival area. I picked up some bottles
and walked about seeing if anyone wanted water. I saw a volunteer whom I had met during a Chicago Cares project and we
chatted briefly. I was handing out water
to whoever was wearing the red volunteer t-shirt, whether they were with One
Brick or not. Some of the guests
attending the event saw me walking about with bottles and asked if they could have
one. I obliged of course, much to the chagrin
of Laura who said that the water bottles were limited in number and thus only for the
One Brick volunteers. I have learned not
to argue during some of these projects and so shrugged and moved on to hand
water to one of our volunteers who was lucky enough to have been recruited to
pour.
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| Stuffing tickets inside the wine glass |
I was then dispatched to another
tent where people coming in picked up their wine glass and tickets. Everyone got 12 wine tickets - entitling them
to 12 pours – and one beer ticket which they could redeem in the beer garden. My job was to remove the wine glasses from
the box, stuff them with the tickets and place them on the table for our other
volunteers to hand out. The crowd was
growing, so they soon asked me to join the distributors up front to hand out
the glasses. It seemed like today had
been all about me working my way up through the ranks and being finally
promoted to this duty – though it was still one level lower than be at the
booth pouring!
It seemed like a relatively easy
job, though I could not believe the number of people who were complaining about
the wine glass. Earlier in the evening
we were handing out Stemmed glasses, but when we ran out, we moved to Stemless
ones. Many people complained about this
during the pick-up saying that the previous year that had got one type and now
they wanted the other. These were made of plastic, not crystal glass, so them being a collectors item was a stretch! Others who had come earlier had seen new
people walking with the other type and so came over asking for an exchange. Now, it is the same wine and while Oenophiles
might argue the merits of one type of glass versus the other, the people coming
to this festival had only one thing on their mind – get as much wine as
possible in least amount of time. Thus,
whenever I encountered people who were looking to change, I would just direct
them to one of the organizers Mary Beth, and she either turned them away, or
granted them a new glass. One of my
other tasks was to make sure that people did stop and picked up their glass and
tickets since some were walking away and realizing later that they needed these
things. This meant that if they came
later and asked for tickets, we had no way of telling if they had picked up
some before. We also located some
additional boxes of Stemmed glasses which we displayed next to the Stemless
ones. Now, all bets were off. People would come and we would ask them which
ones they preferred. The amount of time
they spent debating this question with an agonized look on their faces would
make one think that we had presented them with ‘Sophie’s Choice’! Once
again, it’s the same wine people. I told
my fellow volunteers to just hand them a glass and not give them a choice. It is true that people get spoilt when
presented with choices and those for whom decisions are made, are sometimes
more content.
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| A wine glass by any other name... |
Some folks were coming back
saying they had lost their tickets or forgotten their glass at one of the
booths. These people were in various stages of sobriety
and as before, I was sending them straight to Mary Beth. It is funny how people manage to lose tickets
at events like these when they never lose tickets to a movie or a show or even
their boarding pass on airlines or their phone.
All in all, Mary Beth knew how to deal with these drunken people and we
were pleased to have her by our side.
Even with dealing with these interesting folks, I had fun handing
glasses and saying “Have fun”,
because I knew that they would. This was
a popular event and people were coming in even with just 30 minutes to closing,
hoping for a few shots of wine before hitting the pubs. Our shift was at an end and some of us
stopped at the enclosed beer garden for a drink before it shut down for the
night. Unlike the wine glasses, these
were real glass chalices that many were sneaking home inside their bags. Armed with my set of tickets and wristband, I
walked home intending to come back the next day for exploring the festival.
Epilogue
I did return the next day around
closing time for One Brick’s next shift.
I waited till they were done and even managed to get into their group
photograph! Then a few of us walked
about the festival sampling wine and over the next couple of hours, I was able
to sample quite a few wines and also enjoyed chatting with my fellow
volunteers. And I
could have cared less if I was using a Stemmed or a Stemless glass!
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