We spent the morning wandering around downtown Denver and taking in some of the abundant street theater on tap during the Convention:
Pile O' Cops
In spite of a reported 106 arrests yesterday, the abundant law enforcement around seems to have time on their hands for practicing the famous "Pile O' Cops" tableau. I strongly suspect that of the 106 people arrested yesterday, somewhere upwards of ninety were let go immediately. Cops just
love paperwork, yanno.
16th Street Mall
This pleasant pedestrian/mass transit mall reminds me of the Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis and seems to have a similar population. I'm betting that when the DNC isn't in town there are a lot more buskers around. Currently, however, the buskers wouldn't have much chance on the 'best' corners:
Sound and Fury, Signifying Not Much
Oh the irony-- I didn't get the best shot, here, but the ladies in the right side of the shot, with the yellow stuff and mostly-occluded Hillary signs, are the PUMA crowd, marching up and down over about a two-block area hollering slogans and periodic chants of "Hillary! Hillary! Hillary!" Serendipitously, their chosen route takes them past the corner staked out by the McCain delegation, their ideological soulmates and more-evolved mentors (at least the McCan'ts are honest about what they
really want...) And lookie who's here!!
Himself Encounters an Old Acquaintance
The large white area center shot represents the reverse view of one of the laddies my esposo enjoyed a short, pithy conversation with yesterday (see downthread.) He waves and smiles, but for some reason the guy turned his back...
That was all on the UP side of the street. As we turn to stroll back down, it becomes clear that there is a tacit agreement about who "owns" the performance real estate on each side of the street. Coming back, we encounter:
Grim Reminders
A lot of delegates and Convention guests are strolling the Mall this morning and I'm hoping they get an eyefull of this. Priorities, priorities...
On the other hand, the lighter touch doesn't hurt:
Goodnight, Bush
Check it out online. Hilarious, and a little chilling. I wish them success in selling lots of books, they say sales have been pretty brisk so far.
And finally, the ones who give me hope:
Bless them. None of them older than seventeen, I'd guess. I'm gonna hang onto this photo for those moments when I'm worried about the future. These and many other young people I've run across here make me feel like the future could be in good hands, if we can keep from making the planet unlivable and crippling them with debt to the point of immobility...
Finally, I make it to the Big Tent and grab a burrito... two burritos, in fact, bland to my Santa Fean palate, but enough to fuel me up for the afternoon. Several B-list pols and celebs wander through while I'm eating but none of them excites me enough to make it worthwhile to juggle a lapfull of computer case, camera case, water bottle, purse, and plateful of burritos to jump up and do my paparazza imitation. The one I
might have made the effort for, John Podesta, comes and goes so fast and is so surrounded by layers of New Media that I'm stymied.
It takes a long time to get a post out-- this schmency Wi-Fi card has to be re-installed every time I want to connect (I'm sure that's not how it's
supposed to work, but I'm not geek enough to troubleshoot it, I'm just glad I figured out any fix at all.) Then I have to upload and prep photos and for some reason, Photobucket's running a little slow today. Finally, I'm interrupted (very nicely) a couple of times by other New Media folks --an NEA guy and a guy from some Italian news service-- wanting self-referential quotes from other New Media folks to convince everyone of how cool all of us New Media really are. And we are. So I give the NEA guy a brief rundown of a friend's dilemma getting their kids through college, and toss off a few provocative remarks for the paparazzo.
Finally Hissyspit shows up with credentials. It's getting back up to sauna levels in the Big Tent so I think I'll head over to the Big Chill.
More later...
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