Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Cleveland Post-Mortem II: Ground Zero with a Cold Frosty Brew
Cleveland isn’t usually ground zero for much of anything besides the greater Cleveland area. But last week was different. Cleveland felt like a place where things were converging. Bill and Stacy drove me from the airport to my first stop, a handsome old church where I’d be getting trained for the upcoming fracas; I tumbled out of their car with my suitcase in my hand into a crowd of many people working their way up the wide stone steps, many of them with suitcases too. Everybody was coming to this place at which I, too, had finally arrived.
On our way there we’d sped past preparations for a final downtown rally to be held later that evening; as I settled in at the training I got the details: Kerry’s last big campaign stop, with the Boss and the whole crew. In Cleveland. Where I was. Back home in San Francisco, which flattered itself as a “world capital,” whatever the hell that means, I had not seen even a single television ad for either presidential candidate. (Granted, I TiVo, but regardless.) There sure as hell wasn’t a free Bruce Springsteen concert at city hall to help get out the vote. Here in Cleveland it felt as if the very ground upon which I walked was contested, and was that much more precious for it.
After the training was over I got a lift back to my hotel down near the center of town, checked in (after 14 hours of travel and classes) and then stepped out again to find a cold beer. The streets were quiet, deserted, like most downtown streets are well after the close of business. I strode out into their murky canyons and heard a muffled roar. I walked toward it. It resolved into occasional words, a chant, a cheer. The rally. I got to it just a few minutes before it ended, so I only heard Senator Kerry’s speech, and I was all the way at the back of the crowd. But let me check that right there: I was suddenly in Cleveland Ohio, where the race was being fought the hardest, at 10:30 on the night before the election, listening to the candidate of my choice rousing us one last time to vote, with the vice presidential candidate and both their wives and their kids and the biggest name stars they could find on the stage beside them, close enough that I could see where they were, though not their actual selves; and the mood was electric, people crowding together, mesmerized, fascinated by the bright lights and the loudspeakers and the energy of the event, and there were sharpshooters up on the roofs of the big beaux art buildings around us, shuffling back and forth warily, and weird old men and excited young girls and pizza sellers and tshirt sellers and hordes of concerned citizens who were each aware - I could see it in their eyes - that we were all at the most important place we could possibly be, that for once, Cleveland was where it was really happening and it was to be taken seriously and respected even in the midst of the raucous chaos of the crowd… It wasn’t a matter of hero worship or a cult of personality, though we cheered and surged as if on cue when the right people told us to. It wasn’t about fame; it was about a legacy. We could feel the world’s eyes upon us out there on the broad plaza, watching to see what Cleveland would do, how it would acquit itself when called upon to perform on the stage of world events. Within walking distance from my hotel. Two thousand miles from my home. After sixteen hours of nonstop action, the day before the election. It felt historic - as if that night, those moments would be ones that thousands of people remembered and that made the days and years that followed different, maybe even better. But regardless of that value judgment, of the way the world would spin them out, those moments counted. I felt it.
Later on that night I finally got my beer at the Winking Lizard Sports Bar: a Burning River Pale Ale with a shot of bourbon back, and then a wonderful Belgian beer I hadn’t had in a very long time called, improbably enough, Kwak. It was served in a funkyweird glass, too, that fit into a strange wooden holder. It was also delicious. It had travelled a very long way to get there, to perfect a culminating moment. And so had I, I thought as I drained the last drops from the vase-like glass and wandered back through twisted and unfamiliar alleys to my strangesmelling room high above Cleveland. When I woke up the next day, the polls were already open. And I was still at ground zero - a numerator that grew to ironic dimensions as the day and week wore on.