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July 28, 2004
The Democratic National Convention -- The View from the T
The Boston commuter can only ask "what convention?". The roads have never been clearer and trains are luxuriously
empty. Driving is no problem -- unless we forget to leave our offices by 2, in which case we find ourselves trapped on buses
and in cars for hours as we learn to navigate Boston on two lane roads. We credit Mayor Menino with making the legendary
Boston traffic vanish by scaring the bejesus out of our citizenry to the point where most of us have fled town.
Last night, Miss OT and I sat on our favorite barstools at Joe's and toasted our elbow room, contemplating whether we should
invite the DNC to visit more often, but then recalled the fish and houseguests rule. It's only Day Two -- we'll hold off the sequel
till we see this one through.
July 30 – The DNC Pulls Out
As Boston exhales,
we only just now realize how tense we were. As one of the few people awake at 12:15 am on July 26, I tuned into the zeitgeist
early on, when the local news station broke into regular programming to tell us that that four people had apparently succeeded
in parachuting onto the roof of the building adjacent to the Fleet Center, and no one knew who or where they were. “We’ll
keep you posted,” they told us just before vanishing from the airwaves. CNN, CNBC, FoxNews – all silent on this
(trust me, I kept checking them all) – until finally the local news broke back into programming just before one o’clock to basically say “oops – our bad” and declare the whole thing
to have been a case of mistaken reporting by one person who thought he had “seen something.” You just know somebody
got slapped around after that (someone, I hope, at the news stations), but in the meantime those of us lucky enough to have
been brought to a state of high alert for forty-five minutes started rethinking our decision to stay in town this week.
It all
ended well, though, and as of yesterday most Bostonians were walking the streets wondering aloud what all the fuss and fear
mongering had been about. (Note, however, that the predicted freeway parking
lots would certainly have materialized in the absence of the mass urban exodus that resulted from this. I only point this
out because I heard so many people referring to those who chose to avoid downtown as wimps and slackers. To those of you who
took vacation or worked from home this week, significantly shortening my commute to the financial district, I salute you!)
Next
week, lacking excuses to leave the office early or “work from home,” we’ll be nostalgic for the days of
the DNC – who would have imagined?
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