Friday, August 29, 2008

Denver: The City that Only Sleeps a Little Bit

We’ve been avoiding downtown. We heard it was quite the cluster, and we had no desire to wade through seas of Obama-happy tourists in our little Honda. But on Wednesday night I found out my friend A was in town, volunteering for the convention. Having not seen A in something like four or five years, I decided to make an exception and make the trek towards New York City’s alter-friendlier-ego, (at least for this week) Denver.

I parked a fair ways out and decided to walk in. At first, I was totally overwhelmed by the sheer number of people. How dare you all be in my streets and restaurants? This is the West, we need our space out here. But then I got sucked into the hype. There’s a really good energy downtown, it’s very festive, except in a kind of party-with-a-purpose way. Everyone’s got the same goal. (And the same buttons. Seriously, could we not get a little more variety in our buttons?) And I got very excited and swept up in the throngs of people who believe our next President could bring the change (what change? It has yet to be defined, but folks seem to be o.k. with ambiguous, all-encompassing Change for now.) our country needs. I was excited, I had made it! I felt like a big city girl.

Hey baby, do you want to move to New York? I think I’d like it there.

And then I realized I had forgotten a) cash with which to buy previously-mentioned buttons and b) my camera. How do you forget to bring your camera to something like that? Fuck-a-doodle-doo, I certainly wasn’t going home to get it once I had scored a parking spot.

Since A was volunteering at the convention, he was there until the bitter end. Which meant meeting up at 10:00 PM. AKA: my bedtime. So I did a lot of people watching, and met up with A and his girlfriend and their friends and got to see the celeb candids on their camera phones. I didn’t see any celebrities myself, but supposedly I almost ran over Cynthia Nixon (who plays Miranda on Sex and the City) as I gave them a ride to an after-party, so that almost counts, right?

Meanwhile my throat is still sore and my phone is kind of broken, which means I haven’t been talking as much as I usually do. (Much to The Funasaurus’ relief.) If you need to call me, I advise leaving a message, as The Universe has apparently possessed my phone and has decided to let calls through at its discretion, not bothering to alert me that anyone tried to call unless they leave a message. If that’s not a sign that I need to get an iPhone, well, I don’t know what is.

4 comments:

Amanda said...

how fun!!!

Christie said...

I stay out of downtown Seattle whenever there are baseball, football, or basketball games because sports fans are the stupidest people ever. Which pretty much means I don't ever go downtown. I might dare it for the DNC though.

Pauline said...

It was impossible to miss that crowd energy even in my living room in MA! For a girl that loves Boston, downtown Denver must be a breeze!

Diane said...

Sounds fun!!!!!