My wife and I heard via facebook that Metro Vienna was mobbed and hard to get into as early as 9:30am, so we continued driving into Crystal City where we knew we could park where she works even if public parking was full. Public parking was not full; but the Crystal City Metro station was mobbed at 9:45am when we were there – so glad we already had Smart Trip cards with money on them…
Everyone in Crystal City Shops and Metro was friendly; I got several comments of praise for my “The Onion” t-shirt. There were many rally-goers in costume and carrying fun signs. Lots of cheerful jostling and banter, everyone in a good mood.
The platform waiting for the train into DC was packed full, completely full – not quite unsafe yet, but I hear they got that way later. The opposite platform had one lonely guy with a suitcase clearly trying to figure out what event in DC was drawing such a crowd.
Train was packed, not quite as packed as Tokyo subway trains during rush, but close; standing room only, no real need for hanging onto hand rails we were packed so tight. We picked up many more at Pentagon City and a few more at the Pentagon… train nearly emptied at L’Enfant Plaza…
We were supposed to meet a friend at the rally who was parking where she works in DC and walking. We’d agreed to call her once out of L’Enfant Plaza station, but could not hear her over the noisy, laughing crowd. We agreed to switch to text and that was the last my phone worked until we were well out of the crowd hours later. Pretty much all carriers were completely overwhelmed by the crowd.
We spent a frustrating 45 minutes looking for our friend and trying to text/call her – and gave up and randomly grabbed a small patch of grass that just happened to be next to a friend we did not expect to be there. The crowd filled in around us… we were about 200 feet to the East of the police tower at 7th Street, had a view of a Jumbotron but could not see either the front or the back at all. If I looked to my right we were in a straight line off the West edge of the Air & Space museum, about center of the mall.
By noon we could no longer move much and it was clear that this crowd was HUGE. I am guessing about 1/2 the size of the inauguration. When the Mythbusters guys did the wave thing, we were very close to the middle where the front started-wave and the rear-started wave collided. So, solid packed people with no free space from the stage to us at 7th, and probably close to that density all the way back to 12th or 13th before it began thinning out. Crowd covered the steps of the museum on our left (American History?)… Mobile circuits continued to be useless through the entire show/rally.
Here are pictures I took at the rally:
http://gallery.me.com/scottdavidnolan#100358
The humor was a bit campy and delivery live at this huge rally was a little off – but generally funny. The speech at the end was awesome. Spotted some co-workers, never connected with the friend we were supposed to meet. Walked back to L’Enfant Plaza and there was a three block line to get into the Metro from the North side; so we walked around to the South side and boarded a train as packed as a Kyoto city bus during Sakura Matsuri! It got less crowded with every stop back though and our ride was free as the machines were not working at either end and the Metro folks just urged us on through (with hundreds of others).
We stopped at Jaleo for tapas and a drink and some quiet after the crowd (which was fun, but loud) before driving back to Haymarket to meet friends for dinner.
Every Metro escalator going the direction of the crowd was turned off… I was told by others that this was to preserve the motors from the huge crowd’s impact. The escalators the opposite direction were all functioning normally. Visitors from out of town were very overwhelmed by the crowd and confusion and not knowing how the system works… thankfully many people in the crowd were very helpful and pointed out how trip cards and smart trip cards worked and how to get money on them.
The signs were a delight and people were very creative.
My phone got bombed with backed up texts and voice mails once were back in Crystal City and had signal again.
