My buddy, Mike, joined Athenae and friends to watch Barack Obama at Grant Park last night. I’m so jealous! Mostly because he got to hit Kitty O’Shea’s, one of my favorite Irish-American establishments (best potato leek soup on this side of the Atlantic – just don’t ask the bartender for an Irish carbomb or you’ll get a real one), before the shindig at the park. The closest I got to this pairing was wearing a Guinness t-shirt to go vote.
… The bar was strictly enforcing its rules for capacity, letting an equal number of people in and out, and in about 10 minutes we found some room inside next to a couple from Crystal Lake waiting for their son. The two decided that afternoon to come down for the festivities, which included corned beef sandwiches and for Mike Poper, remembering growing up in the city and playing ball with Richie Daley at Thillens Stadium off Elston on the northwest side.
They voted for Obama, and it turned out that typically GOP-loving McHenry County went for Illinois’s junior senator, too, as did most of Chicago’s collar counties. What turned the Mrs. off about McCain? The choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate and the way he ran his campaign the last month or so.
… I wandered off for some water, passing on the $10 barbecue Cuban pork sandwiches on the way. Further proof Democrats aren’t socialists: water was $3 a bottle.
… I think I may have been in one of those toilets when one of the first loud roars happened, laughing about my fate being taking a leak as history is being made. But I think the inevitable happened after I finished talking to the guy who was selling the $3 water, who originally was from Kalamazoo and could relate to a Chicago guy like me trying to wrap his head around what was happening in a city where less than 30 years ago a black guy became mayor for the first time after a really ugly campaign.
Hell, Obama got his political teeth cut community organizing about 10 miles from Grant Park, using Catholic churches where my parents went way, way back in the day – in a day when the tribal rules of Chicago meant you stayed with your own kind. Chicago got the first Irish Catholic elected, the Chicago way, less than 50 years ago.
Change, indeed.
