(no subject)
I woke up naturally and fully rested at 9:30 AM today, please don't let this be the start of the inevitable life change that everyone goes through where they can't sleep in until two or three in the afternoon :(
Anyway, there was one guy I wish I'd gotten a picture of, dressed as Mussolini, with a sign that read, "Why is it always Hitler?" but I didn't.
Friday:
1.
This is the end of the "official" rally area. It's at 7th Street. This is not actually where the rally unofficially ended.
2.
They broke the whole area up into corrals for crowd control. This is the second corral. As you can see, the view of the stage blows, it's pretty much impossible to see anything between the production tent and the camera dais. I actually got to the rally early enough on Saturday to be up there, but after having seen it on Friday I wasn't really pressed to rush out and stay up there.
3.
Seriously, no way to see shit. By the way, this is my "window" entry for that 30 Days of Pictures meme.
4.
Actually a little better further back, I thought. Up close, with all the relatively tall structures, felt a little bit claustrophobic by Saturday when you were in a crowd.
5.
Saturday:
I took the bus in. I could have taken the bus in much, much earlier, but after seeing the set-up, I knew that I wouldn't be able to walk around if I got into that first corral, and that getting into and staying in the second corral was simply not worth it.
6.
This was around 8:40 AM.
7.
Same here.
8.
9.
10.
This was around 8:50, in that second corral, right behind the cameras, looking kind of to the side/back. Not quite super dense, but a fair number of people.
11.
Still, it was pretty crowded when I turned around and looked the other way. You can't really tell here, but there was no way to walk through this crowd.
12.
Linking the larger version of this so you can read the words...honestly, it creeped me out a little because of the repetition of phrases. It reminded me of that creepy guy who wants to meet P Diddy and has stacks and stacks of notebooks just filled with the phrase, "Mr. P Diddy please accept." I realize I am overthinking this.
13.
14.
15.
Tried to get a better shot of this, couldn't.
16.
The other side of their shirts read STEWART! But they'd already showed that side, and disbanded after posing for this.
17.
Most chairs were small, most chairs got folded up later in the day. It also warmed up considerably - I was really glad I was just wearing a t-shirt under my jacket, no sweater or anything.
18.
19.
Gorgeous day, though.
20.
Bomb-sniffing dogs! Or trying to find Stephen in his underground bunker.
21.
That Death guy must have felt a bit awkward when they used Grayson's "die slowly" clip as an example of WTFery. Also lol BSG fans. I hear there was a Cylon (original flavor) there somewhere.
22.
Yeah giant flag! We're the greatest strongest country in the world!
23.
There was a nice amount of free shit. I picked up a Team Fear sign, as well as a couple towels and a red plastic cone.
24.
Most patriotic fetishwear ever? "Sanity" needed better arms, though, how sad is it that he couldn't fill out lycra?
25.
26.
27.
28.
This guy was angry that John Boehner golfs. Plus all those other things on the sign, but when he was talking, he really focused on the golfing.
29.
30.
Our old white people are funnier than yours.
31.
Please note the little old ladies on the park bench. There were a lot of little old ladies and gentlemen. They were a minority, but a large minority.
32.
Kind of hard to see, but the picture of Obama has him with angel wings and a halo.
33.
Steps of the National Gallery of Art. These steps were packed by the time the rally actually started.
34.
35.
I liked this dude's message about not letting anyone - no, not even TDS - do your thinking for you. Although he didn't put TCR on there, so...
36.
We officially had hippies!
37.
Neither of these were my favorite signs, but it was a good chance to get both a serious sign and a mocking sign in one shot.
38.
Um...yeah, this was the back of the rally at 11:11 AM, according to my camera.
39.
The only typo I found! And I'm not sure it even counts, since neither "changey" nor "changy" are real words.
40.
Oh my god, we hated that lady with the yellow. It was a Steelers-related sign. Yes, that's right, it was a Steelers fan, of course. Fortunately, she went away before the start of the rally proper.
41.
Hey so remember the steps of the National Gallery of Art earlier?
42.
This far back, there were still a few pockets with room to chill, but once Stewart and Colbert came on stage, even those areas tightened up a bit.
43.
44.
Well it's true.
45.
People wanted a view of things.
46.
This was when they did the gender-split wave.
47.
This was during the tail end of the rally, just a few minutes before 3 PM.
48.
I got up onto a park bench and tried to take a shot of the crowd as we were leaving.
49.
It took me like 20 minutes to get from where I was standing to this point. See the street sign? It's the corner of 7th and Madison. That's the corner of the rally site.
50.
This is so, so grainy, but you can see the crowd going all the way up 7th Street.
All in all, it was fun. I did have problems with two things in Stewart's speech - the Marxists boogyman vs. the bigot boogyman (one is an actual boogyman, the other happens to exist as certain GOP candidates), and the idea that today's Tea Partiers don't embrace racist ideology just because they're not wearing white sheets. And he does also do the false equivalency stuff on his show a bit much, and it carried over into his speech in a sad, strange though not unexpected way. But, that said, the test for me is: if you fix the problems in those statements, does the basic premise of the rally for sanity and/or fear still generally hold up? And it mostly does. I think there is room to argue that he basically made the tone argument in front of 200,000 people, and I think he kind of did veer into that territory, but on the other hand it's fair to say that dumb shit gets blown way out of proportion on cable news sometimes, and important shit gets crowded out. And that seemed to be the bulk of the message, much moreso than the "be nice to bigots" message that unfortunately cropped up in the speech. So yeah, some of the speech was bleh and uncomfortable, but on his overall point for the rest of the speech (and the other three hours of the rally, minus that horrible Kid Rock song), okay, I'm mostly with him.
This entry was originally posted at http://baked-goldfish.dreamwidth.org/1803771.html. Please comment there using a DW login or OpenID.
Anyway, there was one guy I wish I'd gotten a picture of, dressed as Mussolini, with a sign that read, "Why is it always Hitler?" but I didn't.
Friday:
1.
This is the end of the "official" rally area. It's at 7th Street. This is not actually where the rally unofficially ended.
2.
They broke the whole area up into corrals for crowd control. This is the second corral. As you can see, the view of the stage blows, it's pretty much impossible to see anything between the production tent and the camera dais. I actually got to the rally early enough on Saturday to be up there, but after having seen it on Friday I wasn't really pressed to rush out and stay up there.
3.
Seriously, no way to see shit. By the way, this is my "window" entry for that 30 Days of Pictures meme.
4.
Actually a little better further back, I thought. Up close, with all the relatively tall structures, felt a little bit claustrophobic by Saturday when you were in a crowd.
5.
Saturday:
I took the bus in. I could have taken the bus in much, much earlier, but after seeing the set-up, I knew that I wouldn't be able to walk around if I got into that first corral, and that getting into and staying in the second corral was simply not worth it.
6.
This was around 8:40 AM.
7.
Same here.
8.
9.
10.
This was around 8:50, in that second corral, right behind the cameras, looking kind of to the side/back. Not quite super dense, but a fair number of people.
11.
Still, it was pretty crowded when I turned around and looked the other way. You can't really tell here, but there was no way to walk through this crowd.
12.
Linking the larger version of this so you can read the words...honestly, it creeped me out a little because of the repetition of phrases. It reminded me of that creepy guy who wants to meet P Diddy and has stacks and stacks of notebooks just filled with the phrase, "Mr. P Diddy please accept." I realize I am overthinking this.
13.
14.
15.
Tried to get a better shot of this, couldn't.
16.
The other side of their shirts read STEWART! But they'd already showed that side, and disbanded after posing for this.
17.
Most chairs were small, most chairs got folded up later in the day. It also warmed up considerably - I was really glad I was just wearing a t-shirt under my jacket, no sweater or anything.
18.
19.
Gorgeous day, though.
20.
Bomb-sniffing dogs! Or trying to find Stephen in his underground bunker.
21.
That Death guy must have felt a bit awkward when they used Grayson's "die slowly" clip as an example of WTFery. Also lol BSG fans. I hear there was a Cylon (original flavor) there somewhere.
22.
Yeah giant flag! We're the greatest strongest country in the world!
23.
There was a nice amount of free shit. I picked up a Team Fear sign, as well as a couple towels and a red plastic cone.
24.
Most patriotic fetishwear ever? "Sanity" needed better arms, though, how sad is it that he couldn't fill out lycra?
25.
26.
27.
28.
This guy was angry that John Boehner golfs. Plus all those other things on the sign, but when he was talking, he really focused on the golfing.
29.
30.
Our old white people are funnier than yours.
31.
Please note the little old ladies on the park bench. There were a lot of little old ladies and gentlemen. They were a minority, but a large minority.
32.
Kind of hard to see, but the picture of Obama has him with angel wings and a halo.
33.
Steps of the National Gallery of Art. These steps were packed by the time the rally actually started.
34.
35.
I liked this dude's message about not letting anyone - no, not even TDS - do your thinking for you. Although he didn't put TCR on there, so...
36.
We officially had hippies!
37.
Neither of these were my favorite signs, but it was a good chance to get both a serious sign and a mocking sign in one shot.
38.
Um...yeah, this was the back of the rally at 11:11 AM, according to my camera.
39.
The only typo I found! And I'm not sure it even counts, since neither "changey" nor "changy" are real words.
40.
Oh my god, we hated that lady with the yellow. It was a Steelers-related sign. Yes, that's right, it was a Steelers fan, of course. Fortunately, she went away before the start of the rally proper.
41.
Hey so remember the steps of the National Gallery of Art earlier?
42.
This far back, there were still a few pockets with room to chill, but once Stewart and Colbert came on stage, even those areas tightened up a bit.
43.
44.
Well it's true.
45.
People wanted a view of things.
46.
This was when they did the gender-split wave.
47.
This was during the tail end of the rally, just a few minutes before 3 PM.
48.
I got up onto a park bench and tried to take a shot of the crowd as we were leaving.
49.
It took me like 20 minutes to get from where I was standing to this point. See the street sign? It's the corner of 7th and Madison. That's the corner of the rally site.
50.
This is so, so grainy, but you can see the crowd going all the way up 7th Street.
All in all, it was fun. I did have problems with two things in Stewart's speech - the Marxists boogyman vs. the bigot boogyman (one is an actual boogyman, the other happens to exist as certain GOP candidates), and the idea that today's Tea Partiers don't embrace racist ideology just because they're not wearing white sheets. And he does also do the false equivalency stuff on his show a bit much, and it carried over into his speech in a sad, strange though not unexpected way. But, that said, the test for me is: if you fix the problems in those statements, does the basic premise of the rally for sanity and/or fear still generally hold up? And it mostly does. I think there is room to argue that he basically made the tone argument in front of 200,000 people, and I think he kind of did veer into that territory, but on the other hand it's fair to say that dumb shit gets blown way out of proportion on cable news sometimes, and important shit gets crowded out. And that seemed to be the bulk of the message, much moreso than the "be nice to bigots" message that unfortunately cropped up in the speech. So yeah, some of the speech was bleh and uncomfortable, but on his overall point for the rest of the speech (and the other three hours of the rally, minus that horrible Kid Rock song), okay, I'm mostly with him.
This entry was originally posted at http://baked-goldfish.dreamwidth.org/1803771.html. Please comment there using a DW login or OpenID.