By Tom Rock
Just a quick Super Bowl story that I found amusing:
I’m sitting in the lobby of the hotel this afternoon doing some writing while the efficient staff is cleaning my room. There are a lot of autograph hounds hanging out, but they are quiet enough for me to still get some work done. Suddenly the fire alarm starts blaring. Now, the alarm went off earlier in the week – at 6:30 in the morning, in fact – so I wasn’t too concerned and no one else seemed to be either. But then hotel staffers started running around, closing doors, sprinting up stairs, etc. Still, no one is telling me to move or leave, so I just remain seated.
After about 30 seconds, the alarm is turned off. But the staff is still buzzing around the place. They close the front door so that no one can come in and start directing people from the pool out back around the building instead of through it for their exit.
Five minutes later, sirens. In come four Miami Beach firemen in full equipment, hoses slung over their shoulders, fire extinguishers dangling from their belts. At the same time, who comes through the lobby but John Elway, fresh from a pool-side interview with “Best Damn Sports Show” that is being filmed on premises. So Elway and the throng of security and signature-seekers that surround him are headed one way, and the firemen are headed the other. Crash! Quite an exciting time in the lobby!
As it turned out, the soda machine on the third floor caught fire, but it was quickly extinguished before the firemen even reached the hotel. I just knocked on his third-floor door and found out that Glauber had no idea there had been a fire a few hundred feet away from his room.