Inauguration Day: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly
Tuesday morning, I woke up at 5:00 a.m. est (2:00 a.m. pst back at home in
Los Angeles) and made the trek to Capitol Hill along with hundreds of
thousands of faithful Obama supporters, political junkies, and first-time
voters. In the dark of an early D.C. morning, I, along with a herd of folks
wearing all of the winter clothing their closets have to offer, jammed into
lines in the streets and tunnels of our nation’s Capitol. The maze of lines
throughout the city that led to the “exclusive” purple, blue, orange,
silver, and polka dot entrances all led to one thing – a mess!
After being
turned away, thousands of hopeful attendees resorted to watching the speech
from local bars or missing the ceremony entirely as they wandered the
streets of D.C. I spent four hours in the 3rd Street tunnel where our group
was resorted to such a cabin fever that children starting inscribing “Free
the Purple Ticket People” on the smut-covered walls. When we finally emerged
from our cave twenty minutes before the ceremony was scheduled to start, we
were told that the gates were closed since folks had cut the line by
knocking down barricades. After some persistence and patience, I found a
way in and spent my afternoon on the Capitol lawn, just a few hundred yards
from our new President.
On the Eve of This Historic Inauguration
It is the night before the big inauguration, the night before one of the most anticipated transitions of Presidential administrations in recent history (regardless of what box is checked on your voter card). Amidst the madness, excitement and confusion that is this inauguration, I have had the hottest seats in town all night – the hotel lobby.
Whether it was seeing an infamous national political commentator sipping Merlot and talking to a Mid-Western Representative in the hotel bar by Union Station or overhearing a celebrity in a hotel lobby by Judiciary Square talking about how he donated money for the first time in a hotel lobby by Judiciary Square, the after-parties in the lobbies across Washington, D.C. have proven to be the place to be seen and heard.