What's the best place to celebrate the win in your area - a fun diary to fight the jitters and the gloom.
Hello, gang. We have had a lot of "Puritan" diaries of late - focusing on the bad acts of Republican thugs at rallies, urgings to stay strong and fear not, etc. These are important, but we should also take a few moments to celebrate and to think about celebrating.
I live in Northeast DC about 1000 yards from the Maryland line near Eastern Avenue. If you know DC, I am at Fort Totten, that weird no-man's-land where three Metro lines meet at a transfer station. Obama is going to carry this neighborhood more strongly than he will his own zip code in Chicago. It's where you expect to see the ghosts of nasty Republicans past like Jesse Helms serving their time in Hell or Purgatory. So there will be jubilation on my quiet street, guaranteed.
But I want to party somewhere else. Someplace where we can congregate. Somewhere with a grill and a liquor license (since I will be taking Metro, no problem.) I will have to work intensely for my paycheck on Election Day, and won't be free to do anything except vote to help move Senator Obama from 95% to 95.001% of the DC vote. When I punch out, I will want to party, as I feel the victory in my bones. African-American early voting may even be putting the vote in places like Georgia - GEORGIA! - in play. North Carolina is being promoted (or demoted, in the minds of some) from a "Dixie state" like Tennessee to a "mid-Atlantic state" like my beloved Maryland. McCain knows he is losing, and may actually be throwing the election to get back to his houses and his cars. I can smell the flowers down in the valley of the Promised Land below.
So where will I be partying on election night? I will be partying at the place in DC least likely to be serving Dick Cheney a cocktail: Busboys and Poets, a hip, stalwartly left-leaning bar, bookstore and restaurant near DC's historic U Street district. The name is a reference to the Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. I expect it to be crowded and extremely happy.
So: where will you party on election night in your neighborhood, city or town? It's perfectly fine to say "___ HQ" but not all of us will be there, or be there all night. What's the friendliest Blue spot near you in which to celebrate?