Saturday morning, Mike, Mike's dad, and I drove to D.C. to attend the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear and had such an amazing time. (Also, Mike and I have now managed to see each other more in the past two months than we had in the past 7 years...so that's an accomplishment as well). As for this picture, I just really liked the people sitting in the tree at the rally. The cops however, did not. They escorted the one kid out. We have no idea if he got in trouble or not, but we booed the cop for being a dick. So that was fun.
The crowds were INSANE. We got to the Metro station in Maryland around 10AM and parked the car. The line into the station wound all around the parking lot and was probably about half a mile (if not longer) long (we were smart and went directly to the station and realized we didn't NEED to stand in the line, the machines were running and the lines were much shorter for these. People were just getting on line thinking they had to.) We managed to bypass at least an hour long wait. The parking lot itself filled up by 10:45. The station we went to is one of the larger commuting stations, so the parking lot is HUGE. The fact that filled up that early was amazing.
My biggest complaint I have about the whole event is how terribly the Metro service handled this rally. They didn't increase the number of cars on each train, they still expected people to swipe their pass card, and they had at least 3 lines not running for routine maintenance. All of these things were frustrating, but still tolerable (It was so crowded. You didn't even need to hold onto anything while standing because we were jammed in so tight there was no where to fall. I made friends with a lot of people's armpits on the train rides)
However, the swiping of the pass cards pissed me off. Most stations in DC have 2-4 turnstiles to swipe your card through. There were 600 people getting off the trains at a time (I'm guessing this number, it may have been more or less but it was A LOT of people). This led to a HUGE bottleneck and an insane fire hazard. It took us about an hour to get from the train car to outside the station.
I don't do well being underground or super crowded (I have some claustraphobia issues) and I was starting to get really freaked out, but once I finally got outside it was ok.
The amount of people in the mall was so incredible. Usually the rallies take place around the reflecting pool, but this one took place at the Capitol end of the mall. When we got there, it was 11:30ish and it was already packed from the Capitol to 7th Street, and was filling up on the other side of 7th street.
We walked up the side and managed to get about 2/3 of the way up towards the stage. We were really far to the right side of the mall, and couldn't really see the stage, but we had a decent view of the screens (see the picture to the right) and were close to a set of speakers so it was actually a decent spot. 
You can sort of the see the stage in this picture (to the left). Look in the middle of the top. The stage is the rectangle thing directly behind the tree. However, the really cool thing about this picture is the guy in the front in the baseball hat looking towards the side. He was wearing hand-knit socks (sadly, with sandals, but I'm overlooking that fact because he had on some nice socks). I attempted to take a picture of them, but, my phone took a very dark picture with some darker lumps in it. You couldn't even see they were feet, let alone socks. So, that will not get posted. I still don't have a camera, but I tried to take a few photos of the crowds by holding my phone over my head:
This picture was taken in just my general area, so imagine how crowded the entire mall was. Lots and lots of people. I loved it. And, the crowd was SO WELL BEHAVED (you know, rational and SANE). There was no stomping on people's heads, no calling anyone Hitler (in fact, a lot of people were carrying signs proving that the only person who is Hitler, was Hitler himself), and just nice, normal, moderate people. I enjoyed myself so much. However, at the end I was slightly confused. A lot of people were sitting on the port-a-pots there.
As in, sitting ON TOP of them. You can see the tops are starting to cave in. They do not seem to be the most sturdy of seats, and really, do you want to tempt fate by sitting on top of an un-sturdy structure that is housing people's crap (literally)? I thought it was bizarre. But, all in all, I had a great time and I'm so glad I went.
*John Stewart/Stephen Colbert
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