StubHub Head of U.S. Communications JOELLEN FERRER spends so much of her time on the road that she is thrilled to be home in S.F. for this coming weekend. She started the weekend off early with tickets to a LAURYN HILL concert Thursday night. A native of the area, her stomping grounds are mostly around her neighborhood in South of Market. The A’s enthusiast lives across the street from the MLB Giants' AT&T Park, and when she is not getting teased for her fandom, she’s out and about shopping for shoes and dealing with Linsanity.
LET’S GET IT STARTED IN HERE: Every weekend that I’m home I say it’s going to be a mellow one and something always comes up. That being said, I’m somewhat kicking off my weekend (Thursday). I love old-school 90s hip hop and so Lauryn Hill is coming into town at the Warfield, it’s a small venue in San Francisco.
DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH: Friday I will probably spend watching (sports), you’ve got the Knicks game, you’ve got the Red Wings game. Two big games that you’ve got a couple good streaks that are on the line here. … There’s a sports bar down the street (Zeke’s) that I would say is my diamond in the rough. We’re around all these big sports bars and I’m right across the street from AT&T Park, but I like one that’s down the street. It’s a little more unassuming, but you go inside and it’s a much more intimate environment in there. You’re just surrounded by a bunch of TVs and that’s what you really care about at the end of the day.
HAPPY (BELATED) NEW YEAR! I’m the youngest of three and my older brother and older sister they’re both quite a bit older and they both married Chinese. We’re celebrating Chinese New Year a bit delayed with the family. … We’re going to go out and feast. We’re going to have a big massive family meal on Sunday and it’s more of my catch up with everybody now that everybody’s in town for this weekend. … I’ll be honest, though we’re celebrating Chinese New Year, I don’t think we’re actually eating any Chinese food. We’re an Asian family that doesn’t really eat rice.
LINSANITY HERE TOO: I would say that I’ve had at least a dozen conversations every single day in the past week about JEREMY LIN. It’s interesting. It’s a fun story, it’s one of those things that you don’t have these underdog stories too often. … The fact that he’s from this area is what I root more for. I root more for that and for the underdog story. The Asian factor adds another interesting wrinkle to it. If we’re going to talk about more of the Asian story, I’ll go back to some of my first sports loves and baseball and boxing were always my first two loves as far as sports are concerned. Granted, I already miss my football Sundays, but it still comes secondary. Being Filipino, MANNY PACQUIAO is the one that I root for.
WALK THIS WAY: I actually am an avid shoe collector. So it’s a mix of sneakers, high heels, you name it. Being sandwiched in the sports industry, there are not as many girls so I dabble with my mix of wearing the five-inch heels or wearing the sneakers. … I joke around with people and I always say that I’m the short girl that’s wearing your five-inch stilettos with a baseball cap on. A bit of the unconventional but it works out well.
SUNDAY MORNING REFRESH: My routine on Sunday mornings, because my brother has a newborn, he and I do our catch up at the gym. It’s ungodly, but we go usually at 6:30 in the morning on Sundays regardless of whether or not I came home at 10:00pm or 2:00am the night prior. I usually suck it up and go and meet my brother.
EARLY WATCHER, LATE ADOPTER: Given that I’m in the world of PR and sports and everything, I am such a slow adopter of social media. My Twitter handle I only started about six months ago, or even less than that. But I’ll be honest, I don’t even have a Facebook account. … For me it is one of those things that now I think I’m just a stubborn hold out. For me, I have access to our StubHub account and I know how Facebook works, but I don’t use it personally.
THE SHOW MUST GO ON: My job is so very heavily dependent on the event landscape, and so I literally cannot watch a big game without thinking to myself: Okay, which reporters are going to call me tomorrow? Especially with this whole Jeremy Lin, Linsanity ride, I get e-mails and calls from people immediately following games and it’s such an interesting story I will have some of these conversations on the weekends. But I feel like when you work in this industry, you’re always sort of working and your work becomes your play in a sense. Part of me watching the Knicks on Friday will determine a little bit of what I do this weekend. So if the Knicks win on Friday, and even if the Red Wings win on Friday as well, I’m sure I will have the Knicks in some conversations with reporters that want to be able to tell that fan story from a ticketing perspective.
