Festive crowds honour Jackson outside memorial

By Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Authorities told them to stay home, but about a thousand Michael Jackson fans still jammed street corners outside his public memorial at the Staples Centre on Tuesday.

Watched by a phalanx of police officers, who had been bracing for upwards of 250,000 people, fans paid their respects to the King of Pop by singing his songs, keeping watch for his funeral convoy and cheering on costumed impersonators.

Then there were the vendors, who hawked everything from T-shirts to wall clocks with Jackson's image. A woman from New York sold animation cells from a 1970s Jackson family cartoon.

Jackson fan Angela Mendita, 47, said she thought the party-like atmosphere was a good way to honour him.

"When you're dead you're gone, there's no coming back. So we want to send him off in the best way we can," said Mendita, who was accompanied by two teenage daughters.

In the days before the memorial, officials worried about crowd control, and urged those who failed to win the 17,500 free tickets for the star-studded event to watch it on television.

Many ventured from afar for their distant glimpse of the proceedings. Sitting on a curb a couple blocks from the Staples Centre, sisters Eri and Maiko Miyake said they had flown in from Tokyo. They wore surgical masks, partly as a tribute to their idol's eccentric fashion choice.

SHUNNING THE SCALPER