Have I mentioned that I love New Yorkers for Obama? November 7, 2008 Jill This is a few blocks from my apartment: I spent part of election night in Midtown, part in Brooklyn, and part in my own ‘hood (the East Village, where this video was shot). It was like this everywhere.
That is officially the one and only time that my eyes have ever teared up during the national anthem.
One of the things I love about NYC is that even when people here are happy, they’re still arseholes. I was in a bar to hear Obama’s speech, everyone there had voted for him, yet some dude kept yelling annoying comments so everyone yelled at him and we couldn’t hear the speech and he eventually got chucked out while other people were yelling (including at us) for making too much noise and laughing too loudly. Brilliant.
In addition to my previous comment, people were dancing in the streets, yelling, laughing, hugging, waving, smiling, honking horns and being generally wonderful. I just thought it was ace that even on this most fab of nights, some New Yorkers just couldn’t resist getting into arguments…
We even had dancing in the streets in little Bellingham WA, town of about 100,000. I missed it….my 46 year old butt was home in bed *laughs*. I was impressed I made it past the speech.
Oh, and I have to share this story. A guy I work with was driving through downtown during the aforesaid dancing. Someone was running up and over cars in the traffic and accidentally landed on his windshield, breaking it. Another coworker saw an add on Craigslist this morning from the perpetrator trying to find the person whose windshield he broke so he could work something out to pay for it. You’ve got to admit, Obama supporters may be rowdy on occasion, but they’re honorable.
i was part of the obama rally that started at my school (UW in seattle) that later meandered from the u-district down to the open-street dance party on capitol hill, and merged with the rallies in downtown seattle. there was a guy holding a life-sized obama pop-up at the front of the crowd which grew bigger in size as we swarmed the ave, campus parkway, 45th, greek row and returned to red square to make a united stand in front of the scenic, back-lit suzallo library. we even briefly invaded odegaard undergraduate library where we were welcomed by students and librarians alike, even though people were obviously studying for midterms. i saw a dude getting arrested on the ave, and you could tell that he couldn’t be happier when he raised his fist at us and the policeman thunked it back down on the hood of the car. we were running through campus, cheering continuously, setting off firecrackers, stopping traffic, high-fiving drivers, eliciting uninhibited horn-honking, singing, chanting “yes we can!”, and spontaneously singing the national anthem several times. to imagine that this kind of spontaneous and unadulterated celebration was simultaneously popping up on other college campuses, and undoubtedly in cities from coast-to-coast was beyond amazing.