Last Saturday I headed to Santa Monica Beach on a quest for not only answers about a lost little girl, but questions for Greg De Stefano of recent Brawl photos fame, here's his site and some of my favorite photos from his shoot.
Saturday started early as I got up around 5:00 am and headed to the beach. A recent tip said to be there at 6:11am. A Mr. Meltzer believed information about his lost little girl would be at one of the ten locations he posted. I headed with a friend to the coordinates from the Something in the sea website http://www.somethinginthesea.com/home.html . On google maps it became 2700 Nielson Way, Santa Monica, CA. I went to the hotel that was a the location, checked it out, found nothing and walked towards the beach. What I found there was a group of at least 100 people already looking and it was only 5:30 am. Waiting around I found out many of my colleagues in finding out about the lost little girl were from other game companies like Neversoft and SquareEnix. Other than waiting around and making jokes about what might come out of the ocean, there wasn't that much going on. A cute girl was handing out popcorn she brought. A person from the 2k forums held up a pirate flag to announce his identity to other forum members. The sun was rising it was almost time. That's when I got a call.
It was Greg De Stefano photographer extraordinaire. He called saying he could see me , but I couldn't see him. I freaked out and said. "Please don't hurt the children!" He laughed and I spotted him by the lifeguard booth. We shacked hands and I brought him up to speed. As we talked nothing out of the ordinary happened until my friend who had came with me said it was past 6:11am. A general sort of malaise and hate grew among the crowd that had swelled to about 200-230 people. The interview with Greg De Stefano would have to be a lovely sunrise walk on the beach to a different location.
Some of our peers in the crowd decided to head toward the Santa Monica Pier. After remembering a forum post saying to look near the pier from last night searching I asked Greg if he wanted to head towards the pier, he agreed and we were off. I asked my friend to stay behind if anything should happen, he was cool about that. Leaving the sad crowd of gamers, I wondered if our leaving was such a good idea. Our sunrise stroll started of slow as we caught up to two others also headed towards the pier. Note to anyone, walking on sand around 6:30 in the morning isn't that fun in shoes. Running isn't that fun either. About hallway to the pier a member of our quartet asked some cute beach joggers if they saw a event at the pier. They did, I called my friend to slink away and meet us near the pier as to not grab the attention of the huge angry group.
Then the running started. I hate the running! I yelled out some, "Yo Joe's!" and ran to that pier. My friend caught up with us as the other two guys kept on running and my quartet became 3 choosable characters from Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. Anyway as we slowed down. The giant group of angry gamers lumbered towards us. Greg yelled, they've figure it out. I dared not look back. We then ... still walked near the pier in front of us, because Hell it was gamers running, not the fastest bunch of people. The popcorn girl as many would say later on the forums of 2k hauled ass past us. I yelled a , " You go girl !" We were a few feet away now from the event which seemed to be bottles in the sand with some people hanging around.
Greg said lets go there getting closer. So we ran again. Running uphill on sand sucks! However , we got there and found that you could take only one of theses mysterious bottles. So I looked around and grabbed one as did Greg and my friend. Then we caught our breaths.
With in in a few seconds the bottle garden was almost gone. Until this tale of epic fail happened. A person missed picking up the last bottle, check it out from 20 seconds into the video.
It was so funny, oh man. I was cheering him on to pick it up, that high five ending priceless.
This is what we had woken up for early on a Saturday morning, ran along the beach, plotted on google maps, and spilled my monster energy drink. A bottle with some posters in it!
The following pics are from zachmonky, who's also a quite good, not as good as Greg though. 
You got this Arcadia Wine bottle with this propaganda and ad posters below trapped inside.
Zachmonky's flicker account
http://www.flickr.com/photos/36832987@N05/sets/72157621855800217/
Uh, 2k this event could been a little better if it had someone in Big Daddy or Big Sister costume greet us. My friend suggested a scuba diver warning us from the ocean, just bottles, eeh. The bottles aren't even glass there plastic. I've got to say the Santa Monica event should have had more bottles .Here's a short video of what your poor planning for Santa Monica caused 2k.
Strange however how much there going for on ebay, one's at $150.00 right now. There going for about $50.00 starting out. Just type bioshock wine bottle into ebay.
However the bottle is on my desk as I write this and it's pretty cool to be one of the few who have one and the crazy adventure I went on to get it. The event did happen all over the world on different beaches including Australia and Germany, apparently no one went to the one in in Germany. On the walk back and subsequent breakfast at Jinky's I really got to talk to Greg De Stefano and that will be the next post.
