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A bit too early for me!
Me and my dear friend Nat woke up at the crack of dawn yesterday to make the trek to Detroit for Barack Obama's scheduled Labor Day rally in Hart Plaza downtown. He was scheduled to take the stage at 11:00 AM, so we figured we would arrive when the gates opened at 8:30 AM. Traffic was congested because of Detroit's Labor Day parade that morning, so we didn't make it to the plaza until 9 AM. Not too shabby, we thought. We were wrong!
We tried to find the end of the line, which snaked for miles around buildings downtown. We heard a rumor that it snaked for six miles through downtown Detroit, with well over 100,000 people waiting to see Obama. Holy shit! I had never seen that many people in my entire life. Ever. Not even close. It was nuts. We slowly moved forward for the next two hours, hoping that maybe, somehow, we'd make it inside the ampitheatre. At about 11:00 AM, suddenly the line began to disperse, and we looked around confused. It was over. The jumbotron outside the Plaza had been turned on, and everyone made a beeline for the area in front of the screen.
We were so disappointed! We had traveled so far, and waited for so long! Nat was hoping to get a glimpse of the first Black US President, something he's quite excited about (even as a British citizen!). Anywho, I was disgruntled and refused to stand in the sunshine to watch a jumbotron, especially as I was starving and ridiculously thirsty. So we made our way over to the food stands set up for Detroit's Labor Day Parade, and I got myself a corn dog and some fries. Delicious!!!!
At that point, someone was shoutting to their friend that Barack's speech was being broadcast live at one of the stages near my corndog-eating-face. So Nat and I hurried over to hear (where we could also sit), but we surprised when the speech ended soon after it began. Nine minutes! That's all we got. Lame. He didn't say much of anything interesting, only that he had to cut things short because of Hurricane Gustav. Whatever, dude. Perhaps as many as 200,000 people waited in line for hours to hear you speak, and that's all we get? Hmph. I'm a little grumpy about it, clearly. Thankfully I wasn't one of the people who woke up at 4 AM to get in line at 5 AM. I would have been REALLY pissed.
Anycrankygay, it won't deter me from voting for Mr. Obama. But it certainly was disappointing! Oh well.
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Nat waiting in line. You can see the line snaking around in the background.
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Detroit's "People Mover" (which only goes in one direction) running above the long, loopy line.
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The line made all kinds of crazy turns in front of the Cobo Center
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GM looming above the crowd.
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An unintentionally funny photo of Nat.
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Jesus folks marching in the parade walk through Obama's crowd, Caeser's Casino glittering in the background, at the entrance to Hart Plaza
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Notice the cute boy with the "I'll sing you a song for $1" sign
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After Barack, we listened to a high school band play here.