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The day began innocently enough. After having driven through the worst snowstorm in recent years on Thursday (5 Dec) and seeing the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, The Pokémon Store, FAO Schwartz, and Toys-Ya-Us with my family on Friday (6 Dec), I abandoned my family to the fate of visiting relatives and took the train in to Penn Station. I arrived around noon. Fred Ramen had met Jeff Zeitlin earlier at Grand Central Station to welcome Larsen E. Whipsnade himself (Bill Cameron) to New York. [No official first meeting picture was taken of Ramen and Whipsnade for security reasons - and the lack of photographic equipment.]
Bill, Fred and Jeff met me at Penn Station. It was an honor to be in their presence, that's all I can say. We waited a while for our fifth member, Brian Hurrel, and then decided to venture forth onto the streets of New York to find our meeting place (just across the street from Penn Station).
Here, just outside Penn Station, with the restaurant in the background, I forced the trio to stand for the first of many irritating pictures - but in my role as entertainment paparazzo it was my duty and they humored me. All in the name of bringing you, the Imperial public, these exclusive first-ever images of Ramen and Whipsnade together in Real Life. :)
Larsen/Bill is on the left, with Fred Ramen in the middle, and Jeff Zeitlin, is on the right as our tour guide and host (though Fred lives just uptown a bit in Hell's Kitchen [none of this wimpy "Clinton" name for his place of residence]). Jeff is wearing his signature Imperial Starburst chapeau, which we all envied and were going to try to get duplicated later that day.