A Supposedly Fun Thing that I Can Never Do Again (Even if I wanted to)

As cranky as my last few twitter posts have been, let me explain that the experience of being in DC was actually really neat, and we did get to actually BE there, which is more than most people could say.

The complete mess the PIC made of the ball and the purple gate debacle was really infuriating, because NONE OF IT HAD TO HAPPEN. I know what most of you are thinking: that I'm a whiny bitch for complaining when I GOT TO BE THERE, but the whole experience of navigating DC in the cold on foot during this particular inauguration was emotionally and physically and mentally exhausting, especially since we crammed it in after a wedding, two hour drive, two flights and a sato rescue. It was like running a marathon or (insert demanding task here) that is rewarding but intense.

In the scheme of things, the mess with the ball was truly not important, but imagine running said marathon, and then after it's all done, some jerk comes over and sucker punches you in the balls right when you're about to take a bite of your celebratory meal. In the end this doesn't really eclipse the magnitude of the whole marathon thing, except that getting hit in the balls hurts. A lot. And you just ran a marathon, so you're already tired and achy. And...

Okay so half of you don't even have balls. I give up. Let's just say it was really-really-not-fun. But here's what happened (reverse chronology so we end on a high note):


THE BALL
This was actually complicated. The very short version is that we had tickets to the Mid-Atlantic ball, but ended up getting Youth Ball tickets instead. This was supposed to be more fun anyway, with lots of youth-ish performers and MTV and blah blah... except that the PIC and Hilton (or both) royally screwed up or got greedy or both. The ballroom holds 900, they sold SEVEN THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED TICKETS. So basically after all the insanity and almost not getting my tux, and then trying to hem it at the last second, and sort of succeeding, and then getting there (which took forever because they were randomly closing Metro stops), and then walking for ages and waiting outside in crazy cold in thin black-tie wear for hours and hours and getting yelled at by rent-a-cops for not crossing the street properly, we finally got to stare at the back of a completely non communicative security guard's head and listen to the party going on. Downstairs. Without us. Obama came, then went. WE COULD HEAR IT.


Not Obama.



Can I emphasize that we spent HOURS, skipped meals and froze only to be stopped dead inches from the goal? And they wouldn't even say what was going on? All this made me really really sad. More emosad than Pete Wentz even, who was apparently downstairs. But I wouldn't know, because right, we didn't get in. Oh and the food sucked: buckets of dried out pasta and mystery meat. Ten bucks for a plastic cup with a room temperature shot of Jim Beam in the bottom. They didn't even have champagne, even for five dollars, although for that price you could get a cup of water. So yeah, we ended the weekend in the lobby of a crappy hotel with a mall cop and a crowd of upset 20 somethings.

Honestly the most heartbreaking part was this was really their celebration, and they got screwed. I'm angry, but to the kid behind us who quit school to spend a year on the campaign? The other guy next to us who flew in from Montana? The girl who quit her job to be a community organizer? They're the ones who said "it's okay I missed the swearing in and I don't care if I get to see Kanye, I just want to see Obama." A hard earned lesson that when it mattered no one actually gave a fuck about them. That was hard to watch.

Utterly Random Interlude: Some guy that the person next to me thought was Frank Gorshin walked by in a tuxedo covered in question marks while we were being blocked from the party. I didn't know who Frank Gorshin was until now (and he died in 2005, incidentally), but this guy was eating a plate of mystery meat, which given the question marks all over his tux I rather appreciated. At the time, however, I'd just been metaphorically ball-kicked, so my sense of humor was not intact enough for a photo. Still, in retrospect this was amusing.

To make this whole experience weirder, at one point in the evening we actually had, in hand, tickets to a THIRD ball (the Midwestern) courtesy of a random dude in a tophat who must have thought we looked young and ticketless. We politely declined. Damn. Shit. Woulda-coulda-shoulda... Agggh... okay, so before that? There was...


THE SWEARING IN
Okay this part was actually fun and interesting. I'm going to mostly skip the purple line mess because they've already issued an apology, except to say that we did actually make it after waiting 3.5 hours. We were very lucky and a little aggressive and we got through, but in all seriousness? This was a pretty scary scene.

Feinstein called for an investigation, but it's damn simple: they never opened the purple gates. One cop told us (against a backdrop of a dozen other cops who had their back to the fence ignoring the crowd) that they hadn't bothered because they didn't think they had enough police to open the gate. Instead, they funneled EVERYONE through one gate. The also opened that one at 9:15! The crowd had been gathering for hours before then.

It didn't help that the police were actually taunting the crowd as in:

Woman: Sir, sir! We've been waiting for three hours!

Policeman: And you'll continue to wait for three more hours, because *I* specifically do not want to help *you*.

-and-

Policewoman with bullhorn addressing crowd of quarter million: Stop shoving right now or I'll close this line! Go slow or I will stop it! I will!

(and actually, she did. It really didn't help.)


The crowd was shoving, the fences weren't moving. I was honestly contemplating exactly how to throw Anindita over the security fence before we got crushed. In our group, I was last in, but not before a smaller barrier did come over, and a cop got slammed against the fence, and another braced her feet against the wall and leaned full against the barrier to stop people from getting even more hurt. If this had been a Walmart rather than an inauguration I am completely convinced people would have died.





But being in a crowd wasn't entirely bad - I helped lead a few chants that got featured in some of the news coverage. A bit of my angry yelling even got the attention of an intelligent undercover guy who realized the gate people were letting the wrong people in (and he did something about it, though too late for the tunnel folks).

And then there was a woman who climbed a tree to plead our case with the police. She was having trouble getting up, but the crowd politely encouraged her with shouts of "YES YOU CAN!!" She didn't make it up the tree but did find a garbage can or something a bit later.




And the guy in front of us had a box of redhots that he thoughtfully shared. So there were snacks.



In the end we didn't die ignominiously squashed against the riot fencing. We made it.

Security searched me and took away my banana and an orange because you know, fruit is a national security risk.

And then

we were in!

(to be continued)