(This is the 3rd Day of our “12 Days of the Ball 2008” series)

Since 2001, we’ve offered complimentary limousine service between the multiple venues that comprise The Ball in NYC.  We are frequently asked if this service really works and how we can chauffeur more than 4,000 people efficiently.

Truth be told, the first year we tried this, I had no idea if it was going to work as well as I hoped.  But it has worked (nearly) flawlessly and people usually do not have to wait more than five minutes for a limo to their destination.

Sit back and relax. Our shofars don't blow.

The main reason that the service works is that we don’t have to transport 4,000 people.  Rather, we just have to transport the number of people who want to party-hop at any given point on the space/time continuum.  And, except for the very peak of the event (maybe 12 am - 1 am), that usually isn’t that many people.  And since we have 8 limos running at any one time, each seating 20-24 people, we can normally handle the demand.

The other key is that we have the limos only travel prescribed routes i.e. Marquee to Hiro or The Park to Marquee.  We assign more limos to longer routes and less limos to shorter routes.  It’s really quite devious.

Of course, you may have noticed that I wrote above that our limo service has worked “nearly” flawlessly.  Can’t slip anything by you.  “Nearly” refers to what transpired at The Ball 2006.  Two of the venues that night -  Duvet & Slate - were located on W 21st St.  Duvet’s security personnel, citing their good relationship with the local police, asked me if I wanted them to ask the police to close off traffic on W 21st except for our limos.  A jolly good idea, I thought.

But, alas, an idea that bloody well backfired: the police, instead, closed off W 21st Street to our limos, asserting safety concerns because of the large number of people out on the street entering and exiting the limos.  This, as Fred Rogers was fond of saying, made “zero friggin’ sense.”  Because on W 21st St we had (as we always do) “dispatchers” to ensure that people entered and exited the limos in an orderly fashion and to make sure the limos were never overcrowded.  When the police closed W 21st St to the limos, the limos were forced to detour to much busier Sixth Avenue where people were running out into traffic, sans dispatchers, to catch a ride.  The situation, which had previously been very safe, was now perilously unsafe.

I spent almost off of The Ball 2006 on W 21st st trying to prevent people from running into traffic on Sixth Ave, trying to reroute our limos, and pleading for common sense from the police.  Batted .666 that day.

Incidentally, speaking of “re-routing”:  if you are planning to attend The Ball in NYC this Wednesday, you should know that, during the course of the night, we may occasionally stop sending limos to a particular club if that club is already at capacity.  When that situation arises, we will change the route of the limos to help distribute the party more evenly.  Of course, The Ball is an 8-hour party (8 pm - 4 am) so you’ll have plenty of time to visit all the venues and to leave with more stories from the road than Jack Kerouac.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008 at 3:08 am and is filed under , 12 Days of The Ball 2008, The Ball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.