Crowds overwhelming LiveCity Yaletown for Deadmau5’s Olympic performance

Update: At approximately 5:00 p.m., LiveCity Yaletown announced that its doors were closed for the night.

As early as 11:00 a.m., people were posting messages on the Internet from the lineup for Deadmau5’s 9:30 p.m. show at LiveCity Yaletown.

Speaking a little later in the day, Sue Harvey, executive producer for LiveCity Vancouver, told the Straight that she couldn’t say which act the hundreds of people were queuing up for so enthusiastically (here are many events taking place throughout the day.) But at least one person in line at LiveCity Yaletown was wearing a big red hat with ears–the telltale sign of a hardcore Deadmau5 fan.

Joel Zimmerman–as he is known outside of the studio–hails from Canada’s own Niagara Falls. The superstar producer is currently at the very top of the techno world.

Tonight’s performance is attracting more attention than any act to play LiveCity Yaletown so far, Harvey said. “There is no question we are expecting a large crowd tonight.”

She said that on LiveCity’s Facebook page, roughly twice as many people have indicated their intent to attend the Deadmau5 show than LiveCity Yaletown has capacity to hold.

“We’ve had pretty good interest in a lot of shows but this one has really generated a lot of interest,” she added.

Charlie Isaac had been in line for 45 minutes when the Straight reached him on his cell phone at 4:00 p.m. He said that the line–which stretched for at least four blocks–was still moving, but that people were already getting nervous that they would not get in.

According to Isaac, it was obvious that many–if not most–of the people in line with him were also there for the 9:30 p.m. headliner. Word spread about the lines, Isaac explained, and people came down fast.

What’s the deal with Deadmau5?

“He’s local,” Isaac said. “I knew him long before he ever popular so it’s good now that we’ve finally seen him become a local legend.”

At this article’s time of posting (about 4:30 p.m.), LiveCity Yaletown was not at capacity and still moving people through security.

LiveCity is posting news about the Deadmau5 show and updates on the LiveCity Yaletown lineup both on Facebook and Twitter. It will continue to do so throughout the afternoon and evening.

You can follow Travis Lupick on twitter.com/tlupick.