Photo(s) of the Day: T-Mobile Skydiving Stunt Drops Like A Bomb
Live SoMa | Aug 06, 2009 | Comments 2
I think it might’ve been all the pre-event hype, but I was completely underwhelmed by T-Mobile’s latest publicity stunt to promote their new ‘mytouch” phone. For one thing, the ‘hype’ made it seem like the sky would be full of costumed skydivers and airplane fly-bys.
Instead, what we got was what you see. Four jets and a handful of skydivers. Oh, and for some reason, a stunt bicyclist and three plain-clothed gymnasts. There were a couple of skateboarders as well, but they looked like they were even more bored than I was, so I didn’t get any good pics of them.
Don’t get me wrong, the people performing were great, I just expected more because of how much they promoted it. I guess it was a lot considering there were four different locations, but they probably should have had either less locations or more skydivers. That’s just my two cents.
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I suspect that you were underwhelmed because you were not aware that we were putting 100 skydivers into four separate landing areas: Justin Herman Plaza, Pier 39, Moscone Recreation Center and Marina Green. While you may have seen only a “handful” of skydivers at your vantage point, there were 95 other ones in the air at that same time, entertaining thousands of other people.
I hope you enjoyed the show.
Ron
Skydiving Innovations
Ron, Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t underwhelmed by the skydiving. I respect what you do, and the whole process. My comment about being underwhelmed was in reference to the event as a whole.
I don’t know anything about skydiving, and safety, and I imagine there are a lot of restrictions involved in jumping over a major city. If I’d been walking down the street and all of a sudden came across the skydiving, it was fantastic. However, the hype of the event as portrayed by local media was blown out of proportion. I had people contacting me telling me they heard such and such a rumor.
One reader wrote that they heard there were gonna be 350 skydivers, and that they were filming a commercial. I mean, with hype like that, which gets the city excited, when you show up and from your vantage point can see some 10 skydivers at a time, it’s just not meeting the hype. Even the fly over was anticlimactic as far as fly-by’s I’ve seen in my life.
I love skydivers. They do something that I’m too chicken to do myself. Anyone who does that gets immediate respect in my book. But I was more disappointed by the media. The media, and the random sideshows such as the acrobats with street clothes. It felt like it was thrown together last minute.