23 1 / 2009

#inaug09 Our view when we did finally make it into our ticketed section, around 11:45am. It was pleasantly close up, and though Obama appeared about the size of a jellybean and the jumbotrons were strategically placed behind trees, it was an incredible euphoric thrill to watch and hear him speaking and the world listening. The cannons were also awesome. One of the reasons we were able to get so close was that the ticketed section for purple tickets was sparsely filled. Of the about 10,000 people who were denied entry (I’m making that number up but I don’t think it’s far off, considering almost 6,000 people have joined this Facebook group) we could have fit at least half of them comfortably with decent vantage points for all. It makes me so fucking sad thinking about the people who were denied entry because of organizational ineptitude. And still, it was an incredible, magical hour. The only hour all week I wasn’t feeling like dying of hypothermia. After Rev. Lowery spoke, people just toddled around our section in a daze, taking pictures of each other and with the day’s Post we’d picked up at the Woodley Park metro station at 6am, making new friends, laughing, crying.

#inaug09

Our view when we did finally make it into our ticketed section, around 11:45am. It was pleasantly close up, and though Obama appeared about the size of a jellybean and the jumbotrons were strategically placed behind trees, it was an incredible euphoric thrill to watch and hear him speaking and the world listening. The cannons were also awesome.

One of the reasons we were able to get so close was that the ticketed section for purple tickets was sparsely filled. Of the about 10,000 people who were denied entry (I’m making that number up but I don’t think it’s far off, considering almost 6,000 people have joined this Facebook group) we could have fit at least half of them comfortably with decent vantage points for all. It makes me so fucking sad thinking about the people who were denied entry because of organizational ineptitude.

And still, it was an incredible, magical hour. The only hour all week I wasn’t feeling like dying of hypothermia. After Rev. Lowery spoke, people just toddled around our section in a daze, taking pictures of each other and with the day’s Post we’d picked up at the Woodley Park metro station at 6am, making new friends, laughing, crying.

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