throwing shoes

~~~PLEASE CLICK ON PICTURES~~~~~~


from chicago we went to new york. quinn was waiting for me at the airport.
quinn is 13 now and her schoolmates think obama is a rockstar, he is
so popular that they graffiti his name. quinn wanted to go to the inauguration.
flying into d.c. you could feel the excitment sitting on the plane.
i was sitting next to some singer guy who was asked for autographs.
he was a very good looking black man wearing a ramones t-shirt.
i struck up conversation by saying that the ramones were the first concert i went to
without my parents. he said that he just liked the presidential seal. i never found out who the
guy was but he did tell me that he was performing at the inauguration.

we packed as tight as we could onto the subway. it was the last train. more people showed up than could fit into the train. many were wearing gowns and tux's .
already i could only see smiles, richpoorblackwhiteasianyoungold.
only smiles in an over crowded train that didn't pull out for over a half hour at each stop. they
didn't know what to do with too many people trying to shove on.
then the escalator was out of service, every one had to climb up the length of 10 stories to get out
of the subway.

washington square had an inflatable Bush and a pickup full of shoes to throw at it.









the streams of people were coming from all directions.
many roads were shut down by the military. i counted 13 starbucks
along the road we walked to the "mall"



we were at the fence to the white house and someone
threw shoes over the fence and was immediately taken away.



during the inauguration when bush and Cheney took the platform
a wave of 2 million "fuckyou"s and "boo"s and some shoes were thrown. a pair of tevas landed next to me. later i didn't hear any of that on the replay of the event on t.v. only a faint sing along
of "na na na good bye"








the networks were all there
in little glass boxes. people
loved them and crowded around
the sweeping cameras on cranes.
there were so many different people there, they didn't come to this festival to take drugs and hook up. they didn't come
to the festival to ride bikes naked with fun fur hats even. they came to see it happen, i could
have hugged any one of the millions of people and it woulda been o.k. no problems . one of the things to take away from the
whole experience was that the media loved to talk about michelle
obamas dress but that was the last thing on anyones mind.