My visit to Supreme

At approximately 9pm on Wednesday the 17^th of November I took a trip to London to experience a Supreme restock or ‘drop’ for the first time. I wanted to go on a day which guaranteed a large queue  so opted to go on the highly anticipated winter collaboration with The North Face which was bound to draw in a crowd. I arrived in London at around 11pm and stayed with a friend for as long as I could before venturing into Soho on my own.

Supreme, Soho

I arrived at the Supreme store at 5:30am and noticed roughly 60 people dotted around the surrounding streets, but no one directly outside the store. I was then informed by security that Supreme almost faced closure due to noise complaints as a result of hundreds of people mingling around the area in the early hours of the morning and causing disturbances to the local residents. Because of this, security were told to send away anyone who tried to queue before 8am and if those who have been turned away continue to return, they will be banned from visiting the store on that day. I felt slightly like my time had been wasted coming so early but it gave me a chance to see what it was like for people who used to come and spend multiple hours queueing from very early on. 

A cafe next to Supreme

Next door to Supreme was a small cafe that had been open since before I arrived. Despite being 5:30am on a Thursday morning the cafe was filled with people anticipating the Supreme opening and was so busy that in order to sit down you had to buy something; which inevitably led to me buying copious amounts of tea and coffee. The cafe opens early every Thursday morning as no other day in the week provides such rife business and I was told that before the new 'no early queueing'  rule was implemented, the cafe would see large queues throughout the night, similar to Supreme itself. I'd been in the cafe for around an hour when the bouncers came in to remind those who had been in there for a fair while that anyone seen loitering close to the Supreme store would be banned from visiting the store on that day. So I left and wandered around central London for about 10 minutes before realising how cold it was so sought refuge in the nearest McDonalds. I went back over to Supreme just before 8am and was cautious to revisit too early incase they turned me away. As I got outside the store bang on 8 o'clock I was surprised to see no one outside apart from one bouncer. I thought I'd maybe got the time wrong so I disappeared for about half an hour before returning to the same sight. I asked the bouncer what time people were supposed to start queueing and, much to my dismay, he informed me that the queue had started half an hour ago, but on Hopkins Street two roads down from Peter Street (the road Supreme is on). I walked around the corner to witness a the largest queue of people I'd ever seen.

From the back of the Supreme queue, Hopkins Street

         

The queue, which snaked from the start of Hopkins Street (round to the left at the end of the road in the picture above) all the way back to the main road, hosted roughly 500 people (that's a complete guess after a poor attempt at a head count from myself) and was kept in order by 4 or 5 bouncers. At the back of the queue I figured there was no chance that I'd get the opportunity to go inside and buy something for myself but I then discovered that Supreme's 'no early queueing' rule was popular with regular Supreme goers and the bouncers had developed a new system whereby one bouncer would walk down the middle of the road and hand out 'tickets' to random areas in the queue so that everyone had an equal chance of getting in. This encourages people to come later as the chance of you getting a ticket is the same whether you arrive at 5am or 10am. This gave me some hope, however, I soon realised that the people getting 'randomly allocated' the tickets for the store seemed very much like the sort of people you'd imagine come regularly and it soon hit me that the chances of me getting a ticket were quite slim. I overheard someone behind me say "he's handing out gold" referring to the bouncer with the tickets which made sense as the most valuable product in the store on that day would retail for £300 but sell online for £700 meaning, in theory, each ticket handed out is like presenting someone with £400.        

About halfway down the queue on Hopkins Street

One of the things that I noticed while queueing at Supreme is that newcomers tend to stick out like a sore thumb and everyone in the queue, whether you come frequently or not, is in a group or with a couple of friends. This made it quite difficult for me to really engage in the experience as I did feel quite a lot like an outsider being there on my own.

In amongst the crowd as a bouncer begins handing out tickets

It got to about 1pm when my legs started to pack it in and I realised that I wouldn't be getting the chance to go inside the store so I headed home empty handed but pleased overall that I had made the visit and got an insight into what goes on on the day of a Supreme drop.