Eager Oprah fans struggle to push through checkpoints as the line advances down Michigan Avenue in anticipation of the taping of her 24th anniversary show. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
Finding the transcendent in the theatrically staged, hundreds of Oprah Winfrey fans and curiosity-seekers descended Tuesday morning on Chicago's Streeterville neighborhood. They gathered between metal barricades on Michigan Avenue, arriving in Chicago from Florida, California and Canada. They had their own reasons, but only one destination. Oprah was the only one who could make all the weirdness happen at once.
As many as 2,100 people have already gathered near a makeshift stage at the Michigan Avenue bridge this morning, about six hours before Oprah's 24th season kickoff celebration.
Lines began forming overnight, and crew members and private security started allowing people through checkpoints around 8:30 a.m. The main gates to the stage were not scheduled to open until noon.
The line of people waiting to see Oprah had grown from around 300 earlier Tuesday morning to over 1,000 by 9:45 a.m., according to security staff and independent counts of the crowd by the Tribune. Almost 2,100 people were in the first two corral areas nearest the stage by about 11:15 a.m., said Erin O'Shea, area supervisor with Medical and Safety Engineering of Chicago, a group helping to staff the event.
People were being staged on the northwest corner of Michigan and Ohio to get their hands stamped. Security teams were letting groups of 200 in roughly every 20 minutes. New arrivals to the crowd appeared steady and manageable.
Laveta Mitchell got to Ohio Street and Michigan Avenue at 11:30 p.m. Monday night. Alfonso Giles arrived around midnight. Ruth Lowe had come all the way from Florida to be the third or fourth in line. (The people in line couldn't agree -- but she was one of the early birds, they said.)
Sharen Hawkins, 47, packed a red apple, a chicken sandwich with American cheese, two frozen bottles of water and left Glenwood at 4 in the morning. She circled the River North staging area and got in line at 4:30 a.m. when she saw it starting to grow.
"It's fantastic. The people are nice. They're kind of pushy right now because they want to get up front. But what do you expect, it's Oprah," Hawkins said. She met a woman from Iowa, a man from Schaumburg, someone else from Indiana.
Then, at 10:45 a.m., the moment they'd been waiting for: They were being let in. Suddenly, the crowd moved forward and Hawkins could see metal detectors and security workers, a stage with Oprah's name on it. Dancers. A woman from the show explaining what to do.
"We're getting ready to go in now," Hawkins told a reporter she had called on her cell phone. "It's pretty exciting!"
Three women from Naperville were also among the early arrivals. They arranged day care for their kids. They packed Twizzler candy, granola bars and cards to play blackjack while they waited. They arrived at 9:30 a.m. -- later than many, but likely in time to get a good position.
"We're soul sisters," Stephanie Flatt, 43, said of the trio of friends. "It's our mini-Woodstock," she concluded light-heartedly, referring to the 1969 music festival held in New York. She wore a designer tie-dyed blue and green blouse.
"What a way to spend a day in Chicago. We love this city," said Laurie Kaiser, 44, one of the other friends.
The goal? To get a view of a show each said they watched regularly on television but had never seen recorded live.
Curiosity was a strong motivation, said Bob Moseley, 30, a construction worker from Hyde Park. Dressed in a black sweatshirt, black oversized sunglasses and looking every bit the antithesis of an Oprah viewer, he said he took the day off from his job to see the show.
"I've never really seen her in person. I just wanted to catch a glimpse of her," Moseley said.
Four-year-old Alexis Seed of Glenview was decked out in pink and was sitting as close as you could, 75 yards from the stage. She wanted to see the Black Eyed Peas. She sang the chorus to Boom Boom Pow through a mouthful of cheese and crackers. Her mother, Jenny Seed, 32, got the tickets by writing to Oprah Winfrey through the talk show host's Web site -- saying her daughter Alexis was the pop groups biggest fan. Or littlest fan, depending on how you looked at it. (More from Chicago blogger Wee Windy City on kids and Oprah here)
The play on words was good enough for a ticket.
Elsewhere, traffic had been piling up. The worst snarls were on Wabash Avenue between Grand Avenue and Ontario Street, where traffic was being rerouted, said Yellow Cab driver Emmanuel Okas, 26. Commutes on Wabash were twice what they would be on a normal busy morning commute. But east of Michigan Avenue, traffic seemed to be flowing normally.
Car traffic -- particularly on Lake Shore Drive -- was crawling around the site for hours. The special event already rerouted CTA buses for the busy morning commute, sending scores of buses on winding detours around the Chicago River and prompting mixed feelings among commuters. (Bloggers in Chicago voiced all kinds of opinions on the talk queen.)
Christine Napier, 45, and her 19-year-old niece, Veronica Moreno, both of Joliet, waited in line along lower Hubbard Street this morning with unshakeable enthusiasm for the talk show host they've watched and loved "forever."
"We got on the train. We were like, 'Oh my God! We're on our way! Were so excited!,' " said Napier. "We have a big family. Everyone's so jealous. It's really cool."
A die-hard Oprah fan who has been watching the show since its inception, Paris Pulford brought with her a half-dozen multicolored, tree-leaf-shaped placards with various cutout pictures of the talk show host from her magazine.
Some two dozen patrons standing in line swarmed people handing out black and green signs advertising the Black Eyed Peas, who would perform on the show later today. Among them were Northwestern University students Samuel Jang, from Glendale, Wis., and Tricia Wu, from Boulder, Colo., who arrived this morning to see the hip hop group.
While living in Glendale, Jang said he attended Nicolet High School, a school that Oprah briefly attended.
"We both skipped work [to be here]," Jang said.
Natha Benchitrit flew in from Toronto on a one-way ticket after establishing a love connection during extensive online chatting last week with a man from Chicago.
The man whom she described as possibly her "future husband" told Benchitrit -- an avid Oprah fan -- about the talk show host's premiere along Michigan.
"I'm a crazy nut," Benchitrit, 34, said of her journey that brought her to the premiere. It wasn't clear if she was talking about her dating habits, or her Oprah fandom, but the details didn't seem to matter Tuesday.
Linda Breslauer, 56, of Hollister, Calif., said she'd travelled to Chicago by boat from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., to participate in the festivities. Sixty-seven-year-old Dottie Zinn of Cleveland had "been trying to get on the show for years."
One member of the crowd was a repeat. Mozette Miller, 55 -- and her high-pitched voice -- were on an Oprah episode years ago, dedicated to people with distinctive voices. Though not onstage, the show staff seated her in one of the first few rows.
Her voice hadn't changed since grade school, she said, meriting a seat close to the stage. And Oprah even talked to her.
"She told me I had a cute hair-do," Miller breathed. She was so nervous, she didn't know how to respond.
-- James Janega, Jeremy Gorner, Dan Simmons, Dan P. Blake, and Deanese Williams
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