OK, that's not the official number (couldn't find an official one yet), but it's the number that Kerry said in his speech - 50 to 60
thousand people in the Bowl at Waterfront Park.
Update [2004-8-13 21:49:8 by cyclopatra]: OK, now it's official: according to bassjhs, Portland Fire & Rescue has estimated the crowd at 50K.
More after the cut.
It was hot. It was crowded beyond belief. It went on for far longer than it was supposed to. It was great.
My brother and I had blue 'VIP' tickets that got us into the area closest to the stage. We still ended up a good hundred yards away from it, arriving at 10am. We intended to take the MAX to the rally, but when we got to the transit center, the lot was full. That was our first sign that the rally was going to be packed. Hawthorne Bridge, which we could see above the river, was a solid crush of people walking to the rally, when we got there and for a good hour and a half afterwards. More and more people just kept showing up.
And then we stood there. In the sun, in 90-plus degree weather. For hours. Apparently Kerry got held over in Eugene - they just loved him too much, I guess - and the opening acts, our Democratic Congressional delegation, didn't start speaking until around 12:00. I discovered that it was much cooler if you sat on the ground in people's shadows, and I spent a lot of time that way, draping my hoodie over the parts of me that were exposed to the sun to try to keep the sunburn to a minimum.
Around 11:00 they started passing out bottled water - have I mentioned that this rally was incredibly well-planned? They didn't want anyone passing out on them from heat exhaustion, so they brought case after case after case of Aquafina and passed it back through the crowd. Later, signs, pom-poms, little flags and even red, white and blue fabric to wave were handed out the same way.
Finally, around noon, the show started. Ted Kulangowski, our governor, spoke, followed by Sen. Ron Wyden, Rep. Darlene Hooley, Rep. David Wu (my congressman, and the best speaker of the Oregon Dems today, if I may say so), and Rep. Earl Blumenauer. Then we went back to vamp music for a while while we waited for the main act.
Leonardo DiCaprio spoke first, and pretty well, stressing Kerry's record on the environment (always a good tack to take in Portland). Then Jon Bon Jovi spoke and performed a couple of songs ('Livin' on a Prayer' and 'Wanted Dead or Alive', if you're interested - not sure if they were on message, but they were crowd-pleasing, anyway). Then it was time for the real deal. A 'cheerleader' from the Kerry campaign got up on stage to get us fired up for Kerry.
The real screaming started when his bus pulled right up to the Bowl. After a minute or two of dramatic music (I think it was the theme from Superman, actually), Kerry, Teresa, Andre Heinz, one of the Kerry daughters, and Jim Rassmann got out. Kerry and Teresa waded straight into the crowd (with Secret Service clearing a path, of course) and spent a while on a mini-stage about ten feet away from where we were standing, shaking hands and waving at the crowd. I considered fighting my way to the front to try to shake his hand, but decided against it - it was just too hot to expend that kind of effort!
Andre Heinz spoke first, very briefly, to introduce Teresa. She gave a long speech very similar to the others she's been giving on the campaign trail, about how great Kerry is and why we should vote for him. Then she introduced Jim Rassmann, and I started to think Kerry was never gonna talk. I mean, at this point we had been standing around for three and half hours. In 90-plus weather. In the sun. I was wilting, to say the least.
Fortunately, Rasmussen only spoke for a few minutes, and then it was time for the main course. It took a while for the cheering to die down enough that Kerry could speak. When he could, he gave basically the stump speech that he's been giving since the convention. I was impressed, though. I haven't seen him give this speech in person before, and it was worlds better than the speeches he was giving during the primaries. We're not going to have to worry about Kerry going all Gore-boring on us, I don't think.
Then it was over, and we had to join the immense herd of people filing their way to the exits and try to remember where we parked the car.