Their One Desire

Back - Index - Submissions - - What is RSS? Date: Feb 29, 2000 Source: St. Petersburg Times Submitted By: By stealth (and parental wealth), the girls behind the Backstreet Boys follow their hearts and the fumes of tour buses, camping out in hotels and chatting up the Internet. It's where the girls are. By DAVE SCHEIBER © St. Petersburg Times, published February 22, 2000 ATLANTA -- It is hours before downtown will tangle with more traffic than the Super Bowl spawned, hours before shrieks from 70,000 Georgia Dome fans will greet the Backstreet Boys in their biggest stateside show ever. At this moment, in the posh lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel, all is strangely quiet. Out of view of the front desk, trying their best to look like happy hotel guests enjoying a morning chat, 16-year-olds Jennifer Walker and Lindsey Barlow sit in an elegant marble nook, discreetly scanning the entrance and elevators. Jennifer and Lindsey are on a mission. They are tracking the Backstreet Boys. The quest is well-known to many young female fans around the world, and one that will undoubtedly unfold Thursday in St. Petersburg before, and after, the big concert at Tropicana Field. At the very least, the goal in this game of wiles and wits is to catch a glimpse of any of the five teen idols -- Nick Carter, A.J. McLean, Brian Littrell, Howie Dorough and Kevin Richardson. The payoff might be a simple wave from one of the Boys, maybe a smile, or perhaps the dream scenario -- a chance to get an autograph and actually talk to the pop mega-stars, to tell them how much they love their music, love them. That's why Jennifer and Lindsey set their alarm clocks for 4:30 a.m. Saturday, and drove in the predawn darkness into midtown Atlanta. Lindsey, a relative newcomer to Backstreet mania, is home from France on a two-week break from private school. Jennifer, her best friend, is the ace strategist. She has been down this backstreet before. The night before the Boys brought their record-setting "Into the Millennium Tour" to Atlanta in November, Jennifer's father drove her to their show in Birmingham, Ala. Afterward, they waited by the highway to tail the convoy of black Backstreet buses leaving the arena. Her father, a former cab driver and now a taxi company supervisor, managed to keep up with a pair of the elusive buses for two hours. "But it turned out those two buses were just decoy buses, and they turned off, but then, right out of nowhere like at 95 miles per hour, these other buses come zooming by," Jennifer says. "I knew it was them, because I could see Nick, with his foot propped in the window, and the side of Kevin's face! I was freaking out, and we just followed them all the way into Atlanta." She may have been the first fan in Atlanta to learn that the Boys were staying at the Four Seasons during their November tour stop. Her heart raced when A.J. stepped off the bus and waved to her, then sank when hotel security made her leave. "So I went home, and I made this video and I said, "Hey guys, I'm really, really, really sorry for showing up at your hotel, I love you a lot,' " she says. Then she took shots of the 10 giant Backstreet posters plastering her bedroom wall, and her CD collection that includes 35 Backstreet imports, (just two of their CDs are widely available in American stores) and raced back to the hotel with the 3-minute tape. She met one of the group's dancers, who promised to deliver it to the Boys. Jennifer went home euphoric. Last Saturday, she played a hunch. The two girls pulled into the Four Seasons parking lot just before 6 a.m. Bingo. The black buses with the gold swirls were there. It looked like the Boys had checked in. So the girls hurried home to change and fix their hair, then returned at 9 a.m. to begin their vigil. Now, at just after 11 a.m., the lobby is starting to stir with several clusters of teenage girls. One level up, in a balcony restaurant, a father and his daughter sit nonchalantly at a table overlooking the lobby. Hotel guests? Not a chance. Mark Jacobs, a professional fundraiser from Roswell, Ga., sips another cup of coffee, while 13-year-old Lauren peers over the railing to the activity below. Lauren has flown in from her home in Cincinnati where she lives with her mother. She has been to three Backstreet concerts with her mom, and two with her dad. But she has never come face to face with the Boys. Her contacts on the Web tipped her off to the hotel. Maybe now she'll hit the jackpot. "I think their music is so good, and they're really cute," she says. "I love them so much, I just want to get to see them or hopefully even meet them!" Father and daughter plan to keep ordering food -- salad, soup, snacks -- for the next few hours so Lauren can keep a look out. "The concerts I went to were the Rolling Stones and ZZ Top, but I've been to a couple of Backstreet Boys shows now, and they really put on a good show," says dad. "Even though you can't hear for a week after." Out of nowhere, a grim-faced security woman arrives. She is unyielding -- Jennifer and Lindsey must leave. But that's okay. They retreat to Jennifer's red Chevy Cavalier, with six Backstreet CDs tucked into a visor, and kill time in the parking lot. They had planned to leave at 2 p.m. anyway to get their hair styled at the salon where Jennifer works as a cashier, earning money to buy her Backstreet tickets (she even treated Lindsey) and pay for all those CDs and posters. After getting the new 'dos, they will head for the concert, joining the sea of fashionably attired females that fills all Backstreet shows. Tight pants, short skirts and bare midriffs will be plentiful in the mid-teen to 20-something age bracket, while colorful Backstreet Boys T-shirts and band buttons will dominate the preteen set. Even if Jennifer and Lindsey can't get too close to the Boys on this night, they will have another shot next week at the Super Dome in New Orleans -- Jennifer's dad is driving them there for her 17th birthday and picking up the tab for the tickets, too. Meanwhile, three Atlanta teens, accompanied by a pair of moms, stroll through the lot, pondering their next move: There's a rumor the Boys may head to the Georgia Dome for a press conference, another that A.J. is getting a new tattoo nearby. What to do? Brittany Felton, 16, Andrea Williamson, 14, and Jessica Green, 16, sidle up to the Backstreet Boys' bus and playfully draw their names on a dusty side of the luxury coach. They had second-row seats at the last Atlanta show, and Brittany actually heaved Jessica over the first row at one point so she could touch Howie's hand. "We all ended up in this big pileup with the people in front us," says Andrea with a laugh, "and then Brittany pulled me back into my seat, like she had gotten this superhuman strength or something." Upstairs, in his room on the 11th floor, Backstreet Band keyboardist Tommy Smith is getting ready to check out with the rest of the entourage. Nobody knows more about Backstreet Boys fans than Smith. In 1998, he started up the Backstreet Band Web site (http://www.bsbband.com), a homespun site to run as a complement to the group's site (http://www.backstreetboys.com). Smith serves as writer, photographer and webmaster for his site, which averages 30,000 hits a day. He is also helping out on a fan-club site launching next month (http://www.bsbfunclub.com). Smith has seen followers use endless ploys to get to the Boys. He hears constantly from fans who say they have friends and relatives with grave illnesses and want to meet the group backstage (the band does meet such fans, but only after management screens them); he is often approached by fans pleading with him to deliver a teddy bear to one of the Boys ("I can't," he says, "because if I do it for one, I'd have to do it for all.") Still, Smith is impressed by their determination. "They are very smart and crafty," he says. "The thing about Backstreet Boys fans is that they often know information before I know it. They know the tour dates, sometimes which hotels we're staying in before I do." They definitely know the Four Seasons. By 3 p.m., about 30 excited fans have amassed outside the hotel, many bundled up and some shivering in weather plunging toward the 40s. Polite security staff and Atlanta police keep them a healthy distance from the Backstreet Boys' bus. Female faithful, accompanied by parents and little brothers, hold flowers, posters, photos, cameras -- poised to scream as soon as one of the Boys appears. Nick, sporting his new short haircut, steps into view. Amid deafening screams, he waves and disappears into the bus. But the Nickelodeon-generation fans are suddenly enraptured by a twist in the Nick-load-in show. The blond Backstreet boy steps back out of the bus and walks toward the crowd, bodyguard close behind. This is not in the script. The group seems momentarily dazed, then delirious with joy as he begins to mingle. While the rest of the Boys wave and board the bus, Nick signs autographs, poses for photos and makes small talk for nearly 10 minutes. But before he can meet everyone, his bodyguard ushers him away. He did not get to Lauren, who breaks down crying. Fans hug her. A woman who has flown in from Seattle for the show offers to e-mail Lauren a digital photo she just took. That softens the blow, but the tears still flow. At the other end of the pack, the scene is much different. Christine Marzouca, a 24-year-old real estate agent, had driven her younger sister Natalie, 13, mother Janette Mazouca, 48, and with 14-year-olds Tala Ayyad and Lana El Tarazi from Spartanburg, S.C. They caught the Boys the night before in Raleigh, N.C., then drove through the night to Atlanta, trailing the tour bus to the Four Seasons. "I never went to a concert when I was young, so I wanted my little sister to have this chance," Christine says. But even this determined bunch seems amazed to have scored Nick's autograph. They beam, exulting in the moment, as the black bus carrying the Boys slowly churns off to another stop on the heartthrob circuit. How they get their men Here's how the experts keep tabs on the Backstreet Boys: BE GENTLE: If you see the Backstreet Boys' black bus with the gold swirl, and are lucky enough to spot one of the Boys, do not scream and rush toward him. "I can't imagine them wanting to talk if you're running at them screaming,' says Jennifer Walker, 16, of Atlanta. Be patient and polite. BE COOL: If you're in a hotel where you think they may be, act casual. There's less chance you'll be asked to leave. And don't tell lots of people -- a crowd could force everyone to have to go outside. BE INFORMED: Get on the Internet and converse with other fans to check information. BE CAREFUL: And one word of caution from an insider, Backstreet Band member Tommy Smith. On his site, http://www.bsbband.com, Smith tells fans to be aware there are Backstreet Boys impostors who go online to chat with unsuspecting girls. "If you've been chatting to someone who says he's one of the Boys, repeatedly, for a length of time, it's not them," says Smith, "Not that the guys don't get online, but they simply don't have time to do it every day with the schedules they keep. So be careful." Comment on this item. Recent Comments Submitted by: johnansaz http://imrdsoacha.gov.co/silvitra-120mg-qrms Comment on this item. Next Item: Goin' to the Chapel Prev Item: About other boy bands