Denver 2008

Many have been noting that Barack Obama's presidential campaign has had, due to many sensational factors, an unprecedented amount of attention from the youth, the media, and cynical Canadians and Europeans. Nowhere were the effects of Obama's popularity more apparent than at the Democratic National Convention held in Denver, CO in 2008. His campaign brought with it to Denver young people, reporters, protesters, vendors, bloggers, photographers, communists, activists, and entire television shows to an area whose atmosphere was already too sparsely distributed for some people.

Within the Staples Center on the nights of the convention, there were no surprises regarding the general crowd: delegates, wealthy young people, members of Obama's "average, everyday, normal people" constituency who bought tickets and made complex hats to wear, Spike Lee, and winners of contests. Everyone was dressed like what people working backstage would call "stiffs" or "narcs," except for Spike Lee. He wore one of his several copies of an Undrcrwn-designed t-shirt for the Obama campaign, which is available from Undrcrwn's website or a small hypebeast boutique in downtown Denver.

Several people asked me to maybe check out what happens behind the scenes, so that I could get an idea of how the whole infrastructure works. What I gleaned from my five-minute trips from the stand to the digital darkroom and back is that the behind-the-scenes scene is characterized by infighting, resentment and general testiness. Observing anything more than a small, independent groups of friends revealed misunderstandings between security and press, accusations that another photographer had appeared prominently in the foreground of every single shot taken during Obama's surprise appearance, and issues with the so-called* "fratboys"/"punks" working the Pepsi Center.

On the outside of the official convention, the hostilities of the backstage crowd were overshadowed by those of the protesters, who would air their grievances, loudly and uninhibitedly, through megaphones or rolled-up things. Here was an environment in which sterile impartiality was the only thing keeping some people from writing an angry post on their LiveJournal about how many people are out there who are just incorrect. For every group that was protesting green advertising campaigns there was a dedicated cluster of folks holding signs proclaiming that Homo Sex is a Threat to National Security (which signs can be purchased, somehow, at http://www.officialstreetpreachers.com). For every communist demonstration there was one dude advertising his winery. For every anti-Obama, pro-troops, patriotic music-playing rally, there was a Green Safe Zone for disillusioned/idealistic** young anarchists to go and smoke pot, somehow avoid police detection, and threaten to Fuck You Up if you took their picture.

Which whole preceding paragraph is not to say that downtown Denver was a Bad Scene. Within the park, there was a DNC marketplace set up where you could see a youth group condemning certain governmental policies, buy Obama merchandise, watch an independent band play on top of a truck and buy some new products*** before they get huge. It was even rumored that you could see Chuck D and DJ Lord play a free concert for the Recreate '68 group.

The disparate activities around the DNC represented Obama's campaign in microcosm. This was the high point of the campaign so far; Obama's speech here was The Speech. He drew with him his most dedicated supporters, his most steadfast detractors, and all the vendors and journalists savvy enough to recognize that this would be worth going to. This completely objective figure provides the most potent argument for Barack Obama's historical significance: the tens of thousands of different people coming into one place on one weekend, thinning the oxygen concentration.

* by most everybody
** the distinction could not be easily made, since nobody in our party wanted to stay for very long near this Bad Scene.
*** The most notorious of which, known to all attendees, was Joint Juice: a foul-tasting beverage containing special Chemicals that allegedly lubricated one's joints. Nobody drank enough to notice any sort of effect.