Justin Siddons Dancing on the Jumbotron: Bulls Game, United Center

A few weeks ago, my friend Justin Siddons attended a Bulls Game at the United Center. It was a random thing he happened to mention on Twitter. They were good seats, courtside, and he was excited.

Shortly after the game… I spotted this post on Facebook. Our friend Utopia commented that Justin had been spotted on the Jumbotron, dancing.

In his own words:

On a whim, I decided that this video needed to be recovered… and tried to contact someone at the United Center. I found a lot of names listed on their Contact page and ultimately decided that Sergio Lozano was my best bet (he was listed as Senior Director of Scoreboard Operations). I got an email back very soon after from someone named Lina Martino. Through a series of email exchanges, Lina patiently listened to why I was writing, and what I was hoping they could track down.

I’m still not sure whether they house all the footage taken on-site, or if a particular vendor is responsible for archiving things. But all I really had to supply Lina was the date of the game (which I initially got wrong), and what Justin was wearing. Thankfully, he had posted up this photo of himself, which showed what he looked like the night of the game.

One thing Lina said would be helpful was isolating when the jumbotron cameo took place – could we identify the quarter, or even the half? Unfortunately, shy of asking Justin directly… no one knew. I was tempted to try asking Justin on the sly, but was worried about raising his suspicion. Lina told me not to contact him, and that they’d see what they could do.

About a week or so later, I got an email back saying that they found the footage. There was a lot going on at the time (NCAA games were starting up, I think) and so it would be a while until I got a copy of the video. Just yesterday, I got a note from Lina along with a link to a very large 500MB video file.

I posted it to YouTube soon after, and send the link to Justin via chat. Jose had the good idea to alert Ben L about the reveal, and we had him sneak over to record Justin’s reactions. Unfortunately, the video was a bit hard to make out… but you could tell he was enjoying seeing himself on the big screen, on his computer screen.

And so here it is, the results of a few weeks of waiting and the kindness of two strangers over at the United Center. Much thanks to Sergio for getting my email to the right people, and to Lina for the patience and legwork in tracking down the dance sequence:

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Goodbye, Justin
Bulls Vs. Celtics, 2004