S.U.M. Thoughts

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these courageous photographers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

We kind of re-purposed the Post Office slogan there, but when it comes to the last two NHL Winter Classics, the similarities are hard to deny. First, let’s fire up the flux capacitor and go back to January of 2010 to the Winter Classic in Boston on New Year’s Eve and Day. Set up outside in a tent, we cranked out custom trading cards for fans in the midst of snow flurries, braving the cold temperatures and freezing laptop trackpads. Sure, that sounds impressive, but even more astounding were the amount of fans lined up — in the snow — to get their hands on their very own trading card.

Snow? Check.

This year, the game and SUM Booth made an appearance in Pittsburgh, and you’d figure with an arena nicknamed “The Igloo” that similar conditions would greet us, right? Well, not so much. Due to a rogue New Year’s heatwave, we were instead greeted with temperatures in the 50s and rain. Not only did the rain and standing water toss SUM Booth a curveball, but the NHL was actually forced to postpone the game from it’s original 1pm start time to a night time start, with the hopes of drier and colder conditions. Due to the conditions, we had to get a little creative with our set-up — water and electricity don’t get along with each other too well — but it did nothing to slow down our production or the number of fans who came away with a personalized keepsake.

Rain? Heat? Check.

We admit, we haven’t really had to deal with the whole “gloom of night” aspect, and hopefully we didn’t just jinx ourselves for a power failure at the 2012 Winter Classic, but just in case we’ll bring a truckload of AA batteries and some glow sticks to next year’s event. We’ll see you there — we’ll be the ones swiftly completing our appointed rounds.