Harry Potter and the Midnight Release Party

What better way to end the best week ever than with a Harry Potter midnight release party? After all, now that Adam has read all the books like I have, we could truly enjoy the height of nerdity together. Around 7ish on Friday, we headed to Manhattan to Union Square to see what types of craziness were happening there. Four floors of enormous crowds, people dressed in wizards robes and all sorts of hilarious T-shirts (our favorites were: WWHD? (What Would Harry Do?), Voldemort Votes Republican, and Don't Make Me Go All Avada Kedavra on Your Ass) and a wide variety of HP-related events. There were live owls, wand-making tables, magicians, fortune tellers, potions (really some kind of soft drink mixed with Pop Rocks) and character impersonators. What was really the most incredible thing was that most of the crowds were teens and up, much fewer actual children than you would expect!

After we had done with all that madness, we headed over to the Barnes and Noble in Chelsea where we had reserved our copy. With MUCH smaller crowds, this was a wise choice. We hung out there for a few hours until midnight, getting our faces (well, Adam's arm) painted, taking pictures and enjoying our fellow nerds' company. A very flamboyant guy on the speaker kept making funny announcements, "Listen people, LISTEN. Numbers 100 to 150, please walk slowly, calmly and serenely to the front of the store. PEOPLE. LISTEN. We have plenty of books for ALL OF YOU...."

Finally, we walked out around 12:15 with our book, feeling like we had somehow gotten our hands on the holy grail. We've been swapping it back and forth since, which is kind of cute and vomit-inducing all at the same time.

So that's about it, hopefully we will be seeing the beautiful Cloisters tomorrow. Meanwhile, check out all our few photos!