Street party

The evening seemed to be over pretty quickly for me. After weeks of chewing my nails to down to the quick and a day of anxiously hitting the refresh button on my browser over and over again, I settled in after happy hour with coworkers to watch the results come in on the networks. I expected a long night and my expectations and hopes were girded by a health dose of pessimism forged after eight years of Bush.

Instead, the night unfolded as a bit of an anticlimax, didn't it? Obama--the cool, confident, steady candidate--won the states he was projected to win. By ten o'clock Minnesota time it was over, and over decisively.

Then, the tears came, for a little while, both my own and snapshots of the networks were showing of people across the country--young and old, white and black, Jesse Jackson and otherwise anonymous.

An hour later, I heard shouting and horn honking a half a block away on the corner of 26th and Lyndale. A street party had materialized, and my friend Diana and I decided to check it out. At 12:30 in the morning we South Minneapolitans danced in the street. People actually came down from their apartments with pots and pans. The kindly owner of the Egytian deli on the corner allowed some kids to borrow an extension cord and an outlet so they could blast music out onto the intersection. We partied pretty late, but it was particularly easy to wake up this morning and get out of bed. A pleasure to wake up in such a transformed America.