The Obama Victory Party

Captain Cantankerous, says, in a comment to a post below:

i eagerly await your account of the historic night in grant park. i expect nothing less than a jean shepherd -style narrative complete with sharp well chosen details of things that seem superfluous but somehow stand as enduring metaphors for all that occurred and also the funny voices. but mostly, just pour it out all jumbled and feverish, talking with your mouth full.

Uh-oh. I'm in trouble now. I think I can do jumbled and feverish, though.


All day long they had been telling us no one would be admitted to the ticketed area before 8:30 p.m. So we decided we'd wait until 6:30 to head down there, to minimize the amount of time we'd be standing around. At 6:00, though, the news reported that the gates had been opened because the crowd was so large. We still headed out the door at about 6:30, but now we were a little more wired than we would have been.

For those knowledgeable about Chicago, we took the Blue Line down from our neighborhood Addison stop, and wound up at Grant Park by 7:30. We got into the first line, which was the width of Congress Avenue (a wide street) and fairly soon made our way though a check-point where they checked our ticket and photo IDs. Then we got right back into a wide line on the other side of the check-point. This line moved for a while, then stopped. Then moved again, around a corner onto Columbus Avenue, until we got to a second check-point, where they checked our ticket and photo IDs. This is about the point this picture was taken:


If you would like a better look at any picture, click on it, then click your back arrow to return here. If you do so on this picture, you should be able to see the Royal Chicago Mounted Police on the left.

As soon as we got through this check-point, the line moved pretty quickly for about half a block, then stopped again. It inched forward, up to a third check-point, where they checked everyone's ticket and photo ID. Finally through that, we scurried forward for another half-block, then slowed down as we were routed to the real security, the TSA.


They sent us through a metal detector (you can see them under the awning) and wanded me. Then we were free to make our way to the ticketed area.

This is what we saw. The arrow indicates where the stage was:


We actually made our way about one-third of the way towards the stage, but decided it was wise to stop there. There was no way we were going to get a clear view of the stage from anywhere, but having a clear view of the jumbo-tron screen was a challenge, too. We finally found a spot, and stuck to it.

One nice thing is that a French video-journalist interviewed me for a documentary she was working on. I was not impressive. She was very nice, though, and posed for a picture with Suellen:


Suellen is planning to do a post about her impressions of the evening, so I won't comment much, but will just share pictures. Here are some other sights from the evening:

The jumbo-tron was tuned to CNN, so we watched CNN call the election for Obama. People went nuts. Suellen will talk about that.

Obama giving his speech (on the jumbo-tron, of course).


What political party could survive without pretty girls?


Pretty girls, again, but with a patriot theme.


OMG!


This was the ticketed area, where there were 70,000. The unticketed folks were about a quarter mile away. The local news said the total of ticketed and unticketed revelers was 250,000. I believe that.

Two more thoughts:

• This rally was held in the same place where the Chicago Convention mayhem occurred 40 years ago. I thought that was significant in some symbolic way.
• The uproar when CNN declared a winner was amazing. But for me the chill-down-the-spine moment occurred earlier, after Ohio and Virginia were declared for Obama. Somebody at CNN said they had emailed the McCain Campaign after that, asking whether the McCain strategists now saw any path to victory. Their answer: "No."