SHERLOCKED: Official "Sherlock" Convention

[J.P.]

Don't.

Ask.

 

 

Okay, probably cueing was an experience of itself. You meet people and chat with them...

[sittything]

Edited... seemed rude to ask in case you didn't want to answer...

 

But Gold?  Platinum?  Do they have separate lines for various ticket levels?  Or does a Gold or Platinum just bump you up further in the eternal line from hell?

 

[J.P.]

VIP. Still feeling a bit awkward about it. Outed as a snob.
 

[sittything]

Not at all, J.P.!  Sorry, didnt meant to out you if you didn't want to be outed!   I edited my original post; you can always tell me to bugger off.  ;)

 

I'm jealous, I'd love to be able to plunk down that kind of cash to go just for the sake of not standing in that line of horror. 

[Sarina_Goldfish]

VIP. Still feeling a bit awkward about it. Outed as a snob.

 

If I would have the money (which I don't, stupid university...) I would have bought it too!

 

And ps. @sittything: it not just standing in the line. You got to do everything!! I got to do almost nothing, sadly

[J.P.]

Sittything, I actually outed myself before the convention. So no reason for feeling sorry.  It's me who's just a little strange...  

[sfmpco]

If I'd had the means to do it, believe me, I would have gone for the biggest ticket possible.  I would not have slept the entire time... walking about one foot off the ground... 

[Arcadia]

You'd think waiting in those lines would be awful, but I've done it for other things and it can actually be quite fun if you strike up conversations with people around you ... and the event itself is worth it. My friend and I went to an Obama rally and took a pack of playing cards along to keep us entertained while we queued. Pretty soon we had half a dozen people playing rummy with us!

 

Try not to go alone, though, that can be tough. For one thing, no one to hold your place in line while you search for a restroom! :D

[J.P.]

Event impressions from Twitter

[J.P.]

Sherlocked Photoshoots Gallery.

You can see some guests really enjoyed the process. Rupert is a hoot! :D

[Sarina_Goldfish]

Could anybody be interessed in some of my pictures? Not sure what you guys have and haven't seen?!

[SherlockedCAMPer]

Always interested in convention pics Sarina. Duplicates are ok.

[sittything]

Yes, please!

[Sarina_Goldfish]

mark and steven

 

 

benedict

 

221b bakerstreet(not where the film it, as it turns out)

 

 

https://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/05/08/0fdb0efaffbdbbd8eadb1f20d66c1f91.jpg

 

https://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/05/08/127462d54b7672ad98d8179c58a151a2.jpg

 

https://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/05/08/8b305df9628dbc72f59c80e69c3b98e4.jpg

 

https://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/05/08/f2a0f02e904ed26c26278661ea8cd877.jpg yep, i'm on it too: but heck you can see the bus

 

https://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/05/08/12242a5d7b1c8659f8ab0d3d34ab7199.jpg

 

https://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/05/08/7e7a8cb2874e9f005090e3e26954fa0a.jpg my goodies and sherlock dress (low on money now)

 

https://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/05/08/6211c71d82d6cc90801c58c0ffc729ee.jpg they don't sell this one on the bbc shop online, so I wasn't sure if this was a one time thing or something. Nevertheless it is cool.

 

Enjoy my AMAZING(not) pictures.

[Arcadia]

Awesome, thanks for sharing!

[J.P.]

Sherlocked Magic Mystery Tour, Day 2

It's time to put on my more sociable substitute personality as I have an appointment with Sherlockandjohn at Speedy's. The weather gods are apparently still on my side. Sunny, blue sky, I feel there will be some nice pictures to share.
The ride takes some 40 minutes and it gives me an idea how huge London is - even without seeing it. There is black young preacher in the Underground next to me. Nobody seems to pay much attention, it seems quite normal. He is a good speaker. I can clearly understand every word - which is nice for a change, and won't happen that often for a while... 

I try to pass the time by reading people on the train. You certainly can do some of it paying attention, and notice a bunch of details, but still hardly know how to turn this information into something useful. So there is this woman dressed in a suit and formal blouse. But her shoes are in a desolate state, they are really badly worn up and the heels are clearly leaning backwards - So, does it mean much walking/standing? or just long-distance commuting for work? The suit has seen better days too, it has signs of rubbing on some spots... Clerk with some poorly paid job that requires her to look formal (and taller than she is)? Or maybe she's applying for a new job? Well, I am definitely not Sherlock...

Outside of Euston Square station I need a compass to adjust my inner map. Yes, I have a simple compass with me as I wasn't sure if I'd get my antic Symbian-run smartphone navigation to work abroad - and I didn't. The confusion is short. After all I was here before. With Google. :D 

Again, there is this sudden change in the surroundings - it's enough to walk around the corner and you are not on a frantically busy and noisy main street flanked with high modern buildings anymore, but in this quiet looking side-street we all know so good, a street where it would be quite hard see a taxi driving past.



A little group of people gathered outside of Speedy's. Some of the Con attendees planned a meeting, but the bunch is smaller than I expected. Looking for a person with red suitcase... So here she is: Sherlockanjohn. 

We shoot some photos with the door - the knocker is indeed askew! :D
The doorbells are nameless, but the second (John's) floor seems to be occupied, as one window is open and I can see a light inside. In the last floor the windows are covered with plywood from inside, and someone left a Spiderman figure watching out of the window.
 

Was it Mycroft who let Spiderman watch over his little brother?

There are some free tables inside of Speedy's and we decide to have a little something. 

Ok-kay...
We are sitting at a table at Speedy's. The real one. I have a coffee and a bagel. 
At Speedy's.
In London. 
Should it feel weird? It doesn't. 
That's weird. 

 

tbc

[J.P.]

 

Next station: St. Bart's. We walk past the Smithfield Market. The building is amazing and huge. Note to self: google it when back home. S&J mentions that William Wallace (known from Braveheart) was executed somewhere here. Few steps further we see a plaque on the wall. Indeed, that's the place.

Then we enter the Sherlock-universe again. The tree in front of the Bart's facade is gone and there are new bicycle stands just beside the phone booth. Maybe to make potential jumpers think twice before they copycat Sherlock. Landing on this thing would make a very unattractive corpse. 

The phone booth must have been cleaned recently, only the really well glued pieces of paper still hang to the glass. But there are plenty of messages written on the booth itself. The same is for the windows in the first floor of the building. There are words written in the dirt, and I can hardly imagine how people had managed to reach that high. The whole building looks somehow abandoned and/or ready for renovation. Maybe the planned overhaul from TRF finally arrived in the real life.

 

The emergency ward building is bigger than I thought. If you stand where John have stood, it covers a lot. You could hide several busses behind it. So from John's POV the Big Blue (or two of them) would work, even making a lot of noise. But it still wouldn't work for Jim on the roof or for the sniper hidden on the other side of the street in a place that was located pretty high.

tbc

[J.P.]

We decide to make a little tour around Bart's, walking by the side entrance which was often used to represent the location in the show. Turning left at the corner with a really weird architectonic solution… An old building clearly modfied to hide a new one behind...

 

 

I don't know what made me to look up. A glimpse of gold caught with the corner of my eye?… So I look up to the roof of a huge gray building only to see something familiar and unexpected again. The golden figure of Iustitia, we can see briefly before the court scenes in TRF. We turn back and explore the other side of the court building, I think John walked along this street while talking to Sherlock on the phone about the Moriarty's trial outcome.

 

 
Here it is again. The big stupid grin on my face.

tbc

[J.P.]

We still have plenty of time and decide to go for the third location: the fake house at Leinster Gardens.
 


The quarter looks great. Old and impressive buildings all painted in white. Hotels. A road sign telling the way to the Embassy of ... was it Vietnam? Anyway, it looks quite different from what I saw that far. Also because the architecture manage to stay congruent for several streets. Very... high society-ish and even mediterranean because of some palms planted in the garden… Still, a look into a backyard reveals a completely different world.
 


We march by the corner where Wiggings should have been killed by Mary as he carelessly grabbed her hand. The non existing house must be here somewhere… And we almost miss it! It is really hard to notice, even if you know what are you looking for. Painted windows, fake doors. Only big picture of Mary projected at the wall is missing. 
 


We walk further in this realm of white walls. A view of the houses at Queen's Gardens suddenly stops me in my tracks.
You know this quite popular picture of Irene Adler standing in front of her house in a perspective of white columns? This was what I was looking at.
 

 
I have a blurry memory of a YouTube film of two boys recording their Sherlock tour and mentioning that there is a great looking park in front of Irene's house location. There is a kind of narrow stripe of trees and greenery… Could it be here?
 
Queen's Gardens was the first thing I looked up after getting online, and - surprise, surprise - it WAS NOT the location. To my defense I have to add that the facades looked damn close, and only a direct comparison using StreetView shows that there are indeed slight differences. Two house rows at two different ends of the town, looking almost identical. Funny, that.

 

Eaton Square - the real location.

We make another little round and end at a Pizza Hut. This will be my last real meal for the next three days.
It's time to head for ExCeL. Sherlocked, we are coming!

[Arcadia]

Cool. I'm getting more jealous by the minute. :D

[Carol the Dabbler]

... there are plenty of messages written on the booth itself. The same is for the windows in the first floor of the building. There are words written in the dirt, and I can hardly imagine how people had managed to reach that high.

Are those heavy wooden benches still under the windows?

 

 

You just climb up onto the back of a bench!  :D

 

 

That's from May 2013 (i.e., it's between S2 and S3), and I'm writing, "We stand with John Watson."

[J.P.]

Damn, kill me, but I don't remember. :( I was too concentrated on the windows...
Here are enhanced pics of the writings, maybe you find your own there :D
   

The telephone booth. This could make a nice T-shirt too:

And playing with photoshop revealed the hardly visible pencil writing I didn't even notice: MOFFAT the destroyer... I wonder of what...

[J.P.]

Registration

ExCeL is a monster of a building. There are huge halls left and right of a gallery full of food selling little shops. (I believe I have seen a sign telling S12, so there must be 12 of those enormous rooms on each side) It feels like I was at an airport again.
I expected a crowd but we don't even have to wait. Now it's the time to part with S&J. We will bump into one another once (or was it twice?) later, which is a kind of wonder itself.

 

Actually I could spare myself this visit as I am told that I cannot pick my goodies right now. At 6 PM there will be a meeting with the VIP liaisons and they will take care of everything else. So I walk to the east entrance to take the bus to my hotel, passing by a room that looks like a construction site, as if a whole house was built inside. A week later this will be the location of the Adobe Summit.

 

Have some time to take a shower, change and get a little rest. Do I feel nervous? Excited? Hell, no. There is a bit of tension, like every time you are heading for the unknown, but it is nothing compared to the emotional roller coaster ride I went trough before and shortly after making my decision to make this trip. Oh, yes, my feet ache and my throat is sore - I was babbling the whole day, which doesn't happen that often. I hope my sociable alter-ego will hold for the weekend. I know there will be people, it will be noisy, and frantic, and I have to behave like a civilized human. So I hope I won't snap and get grumpy or nasty. Keep calm, take it as a new experience and don't kill anybody. And oh, yes - try to have some fun!

 

ExCeL from the bus to my hotel.

[Carol the Dabbler]

J.P. and/or S&J -- do you by any chance have a photo of yourselves together -- or separately?

 

[J.P.]

It's already posted! :D