The CEO of Burlington & Santa Fe Railroad brought in a train for drinking and dining with both nostalgia and class, and the City obligingly created a little instant park beside the tracks.
It will be the week that will be. After more than a year of careful, intense, frantic, disorganized, jealous, demanding, money-desperate planning, followed by a month of furious construction, the week of the convention has come at last. At last. At last.
San Diego, the Convention Center, and the Gaslamp Quarter are ready. Sidewalks have been swept and steam-cleaned, banners hung up, parties organized, streets blocked, traffic re-routed, temporary no-parking signs scattered everywhere, motorcade routes (for Ford, Bush, Nancy Reagan and 32 Republican governors) carefully determined, and security fences put up everywhere.
At the "intimate" Convention Center (don't say "small" - that word is verboten), all is prepared and waiting. The podium has been constructed, skyboxes raised, seating tiers built, carpets laid, chairs set out, and vast nets of balloons and confetti lifted to the ceiling. Of course, within such an "intimate" venue, the balloon drop - when it comes Thursday night - may only last a second or two. It will be intriguing to see how they are going to work that one out.
Outside, "mags" (magnetometer metal detectors) have been set into place at the various entrances to the center and surrounding security zone. On the perimeter, trailers and tents channel the armies of volunteers organized to support the convention. Media trailers, dragged in and furnished, provide working space for reporters. Satellite dishes and news anchor platforms have been lifted up toward the heavens, to broadcast palaver and commentary unto the world.
Fifteen thousand media people have arrived. The two thousand delegates are checking in at their hotels. Hundreds of party sites throughout the city are ready and waiting.
The CEO of Burlington & Santa Fe Railroad brought in a train for drinking and dining with both nostalgia and class, and the City obligingly created a little instant park beside the tracks.
On the waterfront beside the Convention Center, both Embarcadero Park North and South are closed to the public (one homeless man commented he was glad that all the sharpshooters would be around?!). Across the park lawns and paths, multiple performance stages - for the media party tonight, Dole's arrival tomorrow, and for the five-day Young Republican party zone - have all been built. Temporary kitchens have been constructed and porta-potties dragged in to serve the expected hundreds, no, thousands, of get down VIPs and reporters. The Marriot Hotel is even providing valet service to regular boat owners who are now landlocked in their marina beside the Convention Center, unable to drive to their docks.
A huge sand sculpture of an elephant wearing dark glasses - VIP (Very Important Pachyderm) - has been created at the entrance to Embarcadero Park North, awaiting that International Media Party tonight - a two million dollar private blowout (paid for by NAME DELETED) which will include the largest fireworks display ever seen on the west coast. Tens of thousands of ordinary San Diegans - not to be admitted to the party - are expected, however, to watch the pyrotechnics from areas of the city still open to the public. The fireworks display is thus one of the only benefits of the convention available to the citizens as a whole. Okay, okay, it was bankrolled by Helen Copley, owner of the San Diego Union-Tribune, a conservative newspaper notorious for its connections with various Republican Presidents, most notably Richard Nixon. Satisfied? (Grit your teeth, hold your nose, and say it anyway: "Congratulations, Ma'am. You too, David.")
At our old Santa Fe Railroad station, a large crowd of supporters and a smaller crowd of protesters has gathered in the golden light of California evening, to welcome the Republican Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich - or so the buzz is. This writer watches from a red trolley window (no political pun intended). As the sun sinks into the west behind Point Loma, the trolley jerks to a halt at the street crossing, and the scribbler witnesses the crowd being warmed up by speech from a local big-elephant, Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R.-California). Do not think the Duke will say anything about Speaker Gingrich's lesbian sister (who will be speaking at Voices '96 rally Monday night in the official Free Speech Site). Nor will anyone comment on stage about Speaker Salamander's enforcement of family values by divorcing his wife as she lay suffering from cancer.
Whew! That was close. Almost lost it, there....
Meanwhile, back in the real world... Gaslamp Quarter restaurants are expected to reap the greatest benefits from delegates and media fleeing the nearby convention center, and have accordingly stocked up on food and drink. Stores in the quarter have decorated their windows (including the Goodwill Thrift Store, with its "Votes for Women" theme), and hung welcoming banners across their doors. Crowds of vendors are staking out impromptu sites along the sidewalks. Locals are flocking down here, hoping to catch a glimpse of "a Republican or two."
The City's official Free Speech Site, a parking lot at 4th & K, just across the railroad tracks from the Convention Center, is finally ready, in spite of the Republican Party's attempts to have it banished four blocks away. Out of sight, out of sound, out of mind. What were they worried about - surely they're not going to be listening...? As if. Not. But after a court challenge led by the ACLU cavalry, the protest zone is right back where the committee of Police and activists wanted it to be; and after a last minute flurry of activity - and final inspection by over-worked city officers it, too, is ready.
Stage, microphones, loudspeakers, porta-potties, camera platform, temporary pay phones, nine foot high fence, even the sign-in tent where your author - the volunteer host - will work for five days, fifteen hours a day... all, all of it is ready.
Everything is ready. A buzz is evident in the warm summer air around the Gaslamp.
Love'em or dis'em, they're coming, and we're all going to be having fun at the Republicans' expense. WRONG!
The price of admission is a twenty million dollar guarantee from the City. What the Mayor's Host Committee can't raise, the taxpayers....
Oh yes, definitely sticking out your tongue may be this writer's ultimate stance, emoticon says... :-b .... but... then... there comes this irresistible desire to just throw oneself into the fires of Moloch and burn, baby, burn. Translation: ride'em cowboy! Get down! Enjoy. Can't beat'em, so join'em. After all, they aren't the enemy, just the... well... well... they're... Republicans. So what if they oppose much of what you stand for?! Ah, yes, "oppose" -there... that's the word for what they are - the President's loyal opposition, trying to earn him an honorable retirement! As for those of you who agree with them, well... lucky for you. But what the hell are you doing here in the protest zone journal? Looking for abuse? To give abuse (e-mail xanadu, maybe we'll post your letter), or to take abuse (read every damn page), or both?
Nuff 'sed. I wink and smile... (-;
Let the games begin!
- AVE CAESAR MORITURI TE SALUTANT -
;-) Hail Caesar, those about to die salute you (-;
Or Proceed Immediately to The First Hour of the First Day, San Diegans for Honest Government