Chicago, city of the famously big shoulders , is also one of wide, flat, long blocks. If you’re a New Yorker or a Washingtonian, and I tell you some destination is three blocks away, you think, “OK, that’s nothing.” But in Chicago, they live life on a brawnier scale.
I had known this but had completely forgotten it when I booked an Airbnb for me and TNR colleague Alex Shephard in a neighborhood near Chicago’s United Center. On the map, it looked like a few blocks, more or less a straight shot down Ogden Avenue. In mileage terms, which I stupidly had not checked, it was about a mile and a half—on the margins of acceptable for walking to the convention around 6 p.m., but for heading back at 11 p.m. with a sore back after sitting in an uncomfortable seat for four hours, it might as well have been in Indiana.
I thought walking to the arena was a good idea because, aside from squeezing in a daily constitutional to fight the effects of the greasy food and excess booze that are inevitable consequences of convention week, I had learned from experience that, while conventions are generally fun and I know I’m privileged to be able to attend, they can be logistically challenging . If you’re important or rich or both, you have your own entry points, your own skyboxes (which were on a level the rest of us couldn’t access), and so on. But when you’re not important or rich, getting to and in the hall is an undignified rugby scrum.
Hoofing it, I thought, would give us control over one little piece of our transportational destiny. Convention approaches, I remembered, are mayhem; a deafening and confusing congeries of limos and Ubers and taxis elbowing one another for entry-lane supremacy, where it might take 10 minutes to progress one block. Walking would at least free us of that.
So, on night one, off we set in high spirits. We walked past nearby Union Park, the designated protest area , where a few hundred people milled about, protest signs strewn across the ground. We followed the crowd to Madison and Paulina, which seemed to be the entry point. It all looked fine—until we saw the line, which was hundreds of people long. We duly took our places; it was moving along, gradually, when suddenly, a security guard yelled: “If you have a yellow badge, you may skip the line!”
Amazing! This never happens in life, but indeed, we had yellow (Secret Service–issued) badges. Forward we sauntered. Sure enough, we were waved through.
Then we approached the security checkpoints, where a young man behind me said, “Excuse me, sir?” I turned around. He pointed out to me politely that the vent on my sport coat still had the stitching on it, as I’d forgotten to pack a jacket and had bought it that afternoon. I thanked him, yanked the stitching off, and through the detectors we sailed. Well, I thought, this will be easy.
By night two, though, every yellow-badged attendee had figured this out. And so night two brought to mind a question that often arises in such situations: Who decides these things? The pedestrian traffic jam at Madison and Paulina, where one narrow gate was open for attendees to get to the security checkpoint, resembled a 40-lane highway with 39 of its lanes closed, and all traffic funneled into one lane. Why one? Why not, oh, four? In any case, I made it inside in time for Doug Emhoff and the Obamas.
For nights three and four, it all eased up. Alex had discovered the media entry, around the other side of the arena, by Malcolm X College. No lines at all! Smiles and “good evening”s from the security folk. In the parking lot, I finally saw the large media tent that is a fixture at conventions and that included the workspaces for biggies like The New York Times and The Washington Post. It was about 64 degrees in there. (Who decides these things?)
Inside the hall, sections 315 through 320 were designated media seating sections. They were high up, sure, but for the first three nights, seating wasn’t hard to come by. For night four , however—Kamala Harris’s night—it was different. I figured it would be, so we got there on the early side. But the media sections were full; they weren’t letting new people in. Because of that, and my 5 a.m. wake-up time the next morning to get to O’Hare, I called it a night. I ran into my friend Charlie Pierce, Esquire ’s political writer, and we repaired to the nearby branch of the famous Billy Goat Tavern. I Ubered it back to HQ and arrived in plenty of time to watch her speech on my laptop.
I was sad to miss the speech, but, earlier that evening, Alex picked up my spirits a little.
“I have a piece of news for you.”
“Do tell.”
“You ever see that show Young Sheldon ?”
As a matter of fact, I had. My daughter is a big fan. Well, said Alex, remember that young guy who mentioned the stitching on your sport coat? I’m pretty sure that was Young Sheldon!
Young Sheldon turns out to be one Iain Armitage, just 16. A quick Google confirmed that he was indeed in Chicago for the convention (he’s the grandson of Richard Armitage, noted past diplomat, and a Republican to boot). I Google Imaged him, and, well, he did look like that polite young man from the first night. I don’t really know. But my daughter loved the story.
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