Post too long: Meta alert!!
posted by Sybil Vane
B liveblogged the speech last night, which was great, and everyone should be thankful for the sacrifice made to do so: I don't know if it occurred to you as you read, but it's just a leeeeetle bit dorky to remain seated clickety-clacking away on the laptop. OTOH, it was chilly and at least her lap was warm.
What I wish we could've liveblogged was the process of getting in to Invesco. Oh my hell, people. I know we twittered parts of it, but I really feel like you need a prose-y narrative to do it justice. And frankly I am sort of shocked that there isn't more bad press about what a clusterfuck it was. So, we find out we have these tickets at the last minute. B calls me and says I have 30 minutes to pick them up. All the way across downtown. So I really abruptly and semi-rudely leave the lunch I've just finished with a friend who was gracious enough to accommodate my silly schedule (and incidentally, this friend and I had a really good conversation about, among other things, Biden and judiciary issues that I mean to blog later) and I run from LoDo up to the Sheraton Hotel to get these tickets. No cabs around, of course.
I secured the tickets,community credentials, then set about figuring out how to get to Invesco, which is, in technical terms, ass-far-away from where I was. There were shuttles, which I tracked down to find they were only for press and delegates. I heard there were free bus rides for plebes like myself, but after searching for a stop for 20 minutes I learned that they stopped running at 2MT - an hour ago. So I meet B at the train station she is coming in on, and we decide to take the train in the opposite direction and transfer to get to the Invesco Field stop, which reason tells us will be closed, but LeBlanc tells us is open, and we figure she is already seated and comfortable inside Invesco and must be thinking clearly, so ok.
You know how this goes, right? Invesco Field stop is closed. Cops are directing people on one of 2 routes to the stadium, both about 3 miles. B and I chose the route that involves walking over a closed hiway, because how often do you get to do that? SO we start the long walk and can't figure out why we keep seeing stray people who clearly have tickets but have turned around and are walking the other way. Soon we find out.
We get our sights on the stadium, and on the epic line snaking out from it. We start marching towards the back of it, with me every 5 minutes going, "B, seriously, we should merge in here, we'll never get to the end of this line." B, my friends, is really a rule-follower in this kind of situation. We walk about 1.5 miles to the end of the line, which is, apparently, in the middle of a parking lot. This is amazing people: someone informs us the the line end is square in the middle of the parking lot and spirals out from there, creating the most miserable golden spiral that has ever existed.
B sort of stands next to the line at some random point for awhile while I stand in the porta-potty line. One toilet folks, one. In the whole damn lot. The line moves slowly because completely mystifyingly people seem to like to spend 2+ minutes inside there. So despite things being pretty miserable, we are actually having some pretty good conversation. There is a local high school English teacher behind me who is sharing some of his favorite pedagogical techniques. Also he coaches Denver's lacrosse team, so we chatted up about the league. We talked for a long time with a local couple who were both educators. Everyone was pessimistic - to, like, apocalyptic degrees - but pleasant. I was sure we weren't getting in to the actual stadium.
Then the big news drops: everyone not on the perimeter of the parking lot has been walking in a circle for 3 hours. One of the volunteers has apparently been tracing the winding lines and has concluded as much. Truly awesomely, this news is met with relative sanguinity. Volunteers begin merging the totally futile lines. Now, during this whole time we have been in the line it haas not moved forward in any substantive way. We are still 1.5 miles from the stadium and it is now 5:30 pm. Suddenly, though things change and the line starts zipping along.
[Is this tedious yet, this narrative? Probably. Just imagine how it felt to live it. This is a real form follows function post.]
So we march, fairly briskly, for the next 40 minutes. Also, cops start distributing bottles of water, sadly undercutting the ambitious young folk who were selling $2 bottles along the way.
Our procession toward the stadium is fairly uneventful at this point. I am sunburnt and have to pee again and am hating my laptop with all energy that I can spare. B is pretty upbeat, verging on annoyingly so.
We screech to a halt when we approach the security tents. Why is actually hard to say because by the time we get up to the metal detector/xray line, they are just shoving people through. Bags are being whipped through xray machine, cursorily glanced in and returned. Clearly, someone sent out a memo that the stadium needed filling, and fast, so pick up the security pace.
Finally, at 7pm, Invesco Field achieved! We take an inefficient route to our section, because, hell, why not. On the way, I decide to get in the (long) popcorn line. I am starving. I wait in resigned and somewhat defeated exhaustion. And then, when I am right up at the front of the line, with no provocation whatsoever, the strap on my sundress snaps off. I flash my left tit to 20 other very weary people. I briefly consider not even attending to it, that's how tired I am, but I end up holding it in place with the ear to the shoulder thing that you do to hold a phone without hands while I make the popcorn transcaction and hobble over to our seats, where B ties the strap in place. And we wolf down popcorn.
We sit dazed for awhile. B doesn't know who Michael McDonald is, which upsets me on a level that, under normal circumstances, would be irrationally visceral.
And then the speech. B's liveblog covered most of our reactions to it. I understand from a lot of people that it played magnificently on TV. There are probably a lot of people who were in Invesco who thought it played well too. Being there, for me, was not as intense as being in the Pepsi Center. It was almost too big, too expansive. And, also, we were sitting behind the fucking stage. So.
My favorite part of the speech last night was the bit about the things we can agree on. We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing unwanted pregnancies. We may not agree on immigration, but surely none of us benefits from a mother separated from her infant child. I loved how he acknowledge the passion behind these 'culture wars' issues, but insisted on the possibility of unity. I also like the evacuation of any kind of moral relativism charge: look, there are objectively right, moral things, and one of them is protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination. And then Obama points out that when these issues are harped upon in campaign rhetoric, it amounts to "making big elections about small things." That's right, period. Sort of how this post has made the big thing of seeing the first African American candidate for president accept his nomination for the office all about the small things that comprised the total hassle of getting in the door.
[At some point, one of us will will have to cover the *amazingly* ridiculous process of leaving the damn place. You cannot imagine.]
What I wish we could've liveblogged was the process of getting in to Invesco. Oh my hell, people. I know we twittered parts of it, but I really feel like you need a prose-y narrative to do it justice. And frankly I am sort of shocked that there isn't more bad press about what a clusterfuck it was. So, we find out we have these tickets at the last minute. B calls me and says I have 30 minutes to pick them up. All the way across downtown. So I really abruptly and semi-rudely leave the lunch I've just finished with a friend who was gracious enough to accommodate my silly schedule (and incidentally, this friend and I had a really good conversation about, among other things, Biden and judiciary issues that I mean to blog later) and I run from LoDo up to the Sheraton Hotel to get these tickets. No cabs around, of course.
I secured the tickets,community credentials, then set about figuring out how to get to Invesco, which is, in technical terms, ass-far-away from where I was. There were shuttles, which I tracked down to find they were only for press and delegates. I heard there were free bus rides for plebes like myself, but after searching for a stop for 20 minutes I learned that they stopped running at 2MT - an hour ago. So I meet B at the train station she is coming in on, and we decide to take the train in the opposite direction and transfer to get to the Invesco Field stop, which reason tells us will be closed, but LeBlanc tells us is open, and we figure she is already seated and comfortable inside Invesco and must be thinking clearly, so ok.
You know how this goes, right? Invesco Field stop is closed. Cops are directing people on one of 2 routes to the stadium, both about 3 miles. B and I chose the route that involves walking over a closed hiway, because how often do you get to do that? SO we start the long walk and can't figure out why we keep seeing stray people who clearly have tickets but have turned around and are walking the other way. Soon we find out.
We get our sights on the stadium, and on the epic line snaking out from it. We start marching towards the back of it, with me every 5 minutes going, "B, seriously, we should merge in here, we'll never get to the end of this line." B, my friends, is really a rule-follower in this kind of situation. We walk about 1.5 miles to the end of the line, which is, apparently, in the middle of a parking lot. This is amazing people: someone informs us the the line end is square in the middle of the parking lot and spirals out from there, creating the most miserable golden spiral that has ever existed.
B sort of stands next to the line at some random point for awhile while I stand in the porta-potty line. One toilet folks, one. In the whole damn lot. The line moves slowly because completely mystifyingly people seem to like to spend 2+ minutes inside there. So despite things being pretty miserable, we are actually having some pretty good conversation. There is a local high school English teacher behind me who is sharing some of his favorite pedagogical techniques. Also he coaches Denver's lacrosse team, so we chatted up about the league. We talked for a long time with a local couple who were both educators. Everyone was pessimistic - to, like, apocalyptic degrees - but pleasant. I was sure we weren't getting in to the actual stadium.
Then the big news drops: everyone not on the perimeter of the parking lot has been walking in a circle for 3 hours. One of the volunteers has apparently been tracing the winding lines and has concluded as much. Truly awesomely, this news is met with relative sanguinity. Volunteers begin merging the totally futile lines. Now, during this whole time we have been in the line it haas not moved forward in any substantive way. We are still 1.5 miles from the stadium and it is now 5:30 pm. Suddenly, though things change and the line starts zipping along.[Is this tedious yet, this narrative? Probably. Just imagine how it felt to live it. This is a real form follows function post.]
So we march, fairly briskly, for the next 40 minutes. Also, cops start distributing bottles of water, sadly undercutting the ambitious young folk who were selling $2 bottles along the way.
Our procession toward the stadium is fairly uneventful at this point. I am sunburnt and have to pee again and am hating my laptop with all energy that I can spare. B is pretty upbeat, verging on annoyingly so.
We screech to a halt when we approach the security tents. Why is actually hard to say because by the time we get up to the metal detector/xray line, they are just shoving people through. Bags are being whipped through xray machine, cursorily glanced in and returned. Clearly, someone sent out a memo that the stadium needed filling, and fast, so pick up the security pace.
Finally, at 7pm, Invesco Field achieved! We take an inefficient route to our section, because, hell, why not. On the way, I decide to get in the (long) popcorn line. I am starving. I wait in resigned and somewhat defeated exhaustion. And then, when I am right up at the front of the line, with no provocation whatsoever, the strap on my sundress snaps off. I flash my left tit to 20 other very weary people. I briefly consider not even attending to it, that's how tired I am, but I end up holding it in place with the ear to the shoulder thing that you do to hold a phone without hands while I make the popcorn transcaction and hobble over to our seats, where B ties the strap in place. And we wolf down popcorn.
We sit dazed for awhile. B doesn't know who Michael McDonald is, which upsets me on a level that, under normal circumstances, would be irrationally visceral.
And then the speech. B's liveblog covered most of our reactions to it. I understand from a lot of people that it played magnificently on TV. There are probably a lot of people who were in Invesco who thought it played well too. Being there, for me, was not as intense as being in the Pepsi Center. It was almost too big, too expansive. And, also, we were sitting behind the fucking stage. So.
My favorite part of the speech last night was the bit about the things we can agree on. We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing unwanted pregnancies. We may not agree on immigration, but surely none of us benefits from a mother separated from her infant child. I loved how he acknowledge the passion behind these 'culture wars' issues, but insisted on the possibility of unity. I also like the evacuation of any kind of moral relativism charge: look, there are objectively right, moral things, and one of them is protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination. And then Obama points out that when these issues are harped upon in campaign rhetoric, it amounts to "making big elections about small things." That's right, period. Sort of how this post has made the big thing of seeing the first African American candidate for president accept his nomination for the office all about the small things that comprised the total hassle of getting in the door.
[At some point, one of us will will have to cover the *amazingly* ridiculous process of leaving the damn place. You cannot imagine.]
Labels: democratic national convention
Posted at 9:01 AM
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