Good News/Bad News

I've been meaning to write about election night for a while now, and I know it's a little late at this point... but it's my blog so I can do whatever I want. :-)



I guess our biggest mistake was starting our evening too late. AB and I had met our friends around 7:30 at 16th & Valencia, about a mile away from a bar called El Rio where we wanted to eventually end up. After a quick pizza break, we started walking south, past all of the bars on Valencia street. Every bar was filled with people, all of them glued to the television screen. Block by block, we could feel the excitement growing, until all of a sudden people were running out onto the sidewalk, honking their car horns, calling their friends and family on their cell phones... CNN had called the election for Barack Obama, and San Franciso was celebrating like it was New Year's Eve.

For a few minutes, we didn't quite believe it had already been won -- between the time difference (this was my first Presidential election on the west coast) and the quicker-than-expected results, we were caught a little bit off guard. My first thought was to call JM back in Illinois... I knew she'd be glued to the television, so she'd be able to confirm whether it was true. For the first five minutes or so, I couldn't get through. Everyone in San Francisco was on their cell phone at the same time, and the lines were all clogged up. Finally, on my third or fourth attempt, the phone rang through, and JM was able to confirm that he had indeed won.

At this point, we knew we had to hurry if we wanted to catch the concession/acceptance speeches, so we hailed a cab to get us the rest of the way to El Rio. While we were driving, JM was narrating over the phone, and even held her microphone up to her television, so I could follow along. Once we arrived, we were disappointed to discover that El Rio was at capacity and the line was about a dozen people long. We went to Nap's next door instead, and managed to get settled in just in time to see the end of McCain's concession speech. And then, Obama accepted the presidency, and the bar was full of happy cheering (and even some joyful crying).

Once the speeches were over, most of the bar cleared out. We were able to go back to El Rio, and get a seat outside to watch the local election results roll in.

We probably should have gone home instead.

We were all feeling high from the good news about the presidential election, but that feeling disappeared as the results for Prop 8 came in. For those of you who haven't heard about it, Proposition 8 was an amendment to the California constitution that banned gay marriage. I had heard, in the weeks leading up to the election, that it was going to be a close call... but as a native Midwesterner, I was POSITIVE that Californians are generally super-liberal and would shoot this proposition down. Unfortunately, the predictions were right, and Prop 8 passed. I think the final numbers were something like 52% to 48%.

So, the night ended on a very depressing note. One step forward, two steps back. The good news is that various groups are trying to fight this in the courts now, and there's still some hope that it could be overturned.