One more day of the DNC to tell you about.

After the late-night gallivanting on Wednesday, I went back to work on Thursday morning. Because of the speech, I was going to leave at lunchtime and make my way uptown. But when it was canceled, I scrapped those plans. The more I thought about it, though, I changed my mind. I wanted to witness and be in the midst of the action. Plus, I found out that my friend Missy — who I’ve known since the Rent days when I was in college and she was in high school — was in town for the convention. I haven’t seen her in at least 7 or 8 years, when I was in New York and she was in D.C. Now I’m in Charlotte and she’s in San Diego — how times have changed. So I made plans to meet her in the afternoon before she had to go to the convention arena. (Even though the festivities didn’t really kick off until evening, capacity at the arena was a problem nearly every night, and the fire marshal ended up turning people away when the arena was too full. To guarantee entry, everyone had to start trying to get in about 3 p.m. Sheesh.)

I left work, drove pretty easily uptown and parked in the same lot as the night before. Again, the mood on the streets was electrifying. Tons of people were out and walking around, bands were playing in the middle of Tryon Street, an angry street preacher was shouting his hate from his homemade pulpit, police lazily dangled their feet over cement barricades, and dozens of sidewalk vendors hocked everything from t-shirts to buttons to hats and posters.

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