I worked as an event security guard at the Moscone Center in SF ~10 years ago. If you’re not familiar with the location, it was (at the time, may still be) the main convention center in San Francisco, a few blocks from Market Street downtown. It’s not a particularly rough area, but it’s close to some hot spots like the Tenderloin and Fulsom Street. The center is actually a complex of three buildings, the larger of the two connected via an underground pedestrian walkway, with adjoining staff-only underground tunnels and loading docks. The third building stands alone and isn’t connected to the others, but is on the same intersection across the street from one building and kitty-corner from the other one. Wondercon was held there, and Apple used to hold WWDC at the standalone building (though they brought their own event security, opting not to use the company I worked with).
The job was mostly consistent with this article, which was well-written and humanizing for the workers, if not necessarily endearing them to us.
I’m glad I had the experience. I got to see a lot of niche trade shows and conventions from setup to tear down which I never would have thought to attend otherwise, as well as see how lading workers made it all happen behind the scenes.
One time I arrived at what I thought was to be a normal shift at a women’s leadership conference to be pulled aside by my boss, who told me in unambiguous terms that the First Lady would be dropping by for a speech, and I would be working a door opposite an eminently large and in charge Secret Service agent, who I’ll charitably say didn’t need me but as I was one of a only a few of my company’s event security for that particular event, we essentially acted as liaisons between the event/house security and the public. Beyond that point was authorized access only, which did not include our staff, as we were not necessary.
Another notable incident involved a conference for the American Psychiatric Association, protesters from the Church of Scientology, and actual, literal, capital-A Anonymous counter-protesters in Guy Fawkes masks.
It was just the CoS at first, and then someone must have said something on Twitter or something, because suddenly there was a flash mob of CoS outnumbered by Anons roughly 2:1, with around 50-75 participants if I had to guess. All while we have a strait-laced normie psych con going on.
We had to lockdown the center, locking all exterior public entry doors, move badge checks outside temporarily, and threw up some barricades at the sidewalk to provide a buffer zone between the sidewalk and the center entrance. The whole thing probably lasted a couple hours or less, but it was probably the most San Francisco thing I experienced at that particular job.
I even asked Aubrey Cottle about it when he did a Reddit AMA, and he seemed to be a least familiar with the occurrence:
The job was mostly consistent with this article, which was well-written and humanizing for the workers, if not necessarily endearing them to us.
I’m glad I had the experience. I got to see a lot of niche trade shows and conventions from setup to tear down which I never would have thought to attend otherwise, as well as see how lading workers made it all happen behind the scenes.
One time I arrived at what I thought was to be a normal shift at a women’s leadership conference to be pulled aside by my boss, who told me in unambiguous terms that the First Lady would be dropping by for a speech, and I would be working a door opposite an eminently large and in charge Secret Service agent, who I’ll charitably say didn’t need me but as I was one of a only a few of my company’s event security for that particular event, we essentially acted as liaisons between the event/house security and the public. Beyond that point was authorized access only, which did not include our staff, as we were not necessary.
Another notable incident involved a conference for the American Psychiatric Association, protesters from the Church of Scientology, and actual, literal, capital-A Anonymous counter-protesters in Guy Fawkes masks.
It was just the CoS at first, and then someone must have said something on Twitter or something, because suddenly there was a flash mob of CoS outnumbered by Anons roughly 2:1, with around 50-75 participants if I had to guess. All while we have a strait-laced normie psych con going on.
We had to lockdown the center, locking all exterior public entry doors, move badge checks outside temporarily, and threw up some barricades at the sidewalk to provide a buffer zone between the sidewalk and the center entrance. The whole thing probably lasted a couple hours or less, but it was probably the most San Francisco thing I experienced at that particular job.
I even asked Aubrey Cottle about it when he did a Reddit AMA, and he seemed to be a least familiar with the occurrence:
https://old.reddit.com/r/anonymous/comments/iclxtc/comment/g...
Stay safe, HN.