How was it on the Mall! Were there giant TV screens

it would have been impossible to see anything, otherwise. Right?

Where've you been???

I was almost all the way at the back. The Jumbotron is the little black rectangle on top of the white truck, right of center in the grass patch just in front of where I was.

I got to the Capitol first, but soon realized that as a no-ticket-having scrub, that I would only be able to see the back of the Capitol, so I decided to look further away on the Mall. But after some false starts trying to find a viewing area and funneling into an area with a gate for ticketed folks, I wound up going with the crowd WAY WAY down towards the Washington Monument, which was the only area I was even able to get onto the mall at all. Biggest problem was lack of information, either posted or announced. Since it could take up to an hour just to go a block, to waste an hour headed towards an area that turned out to be for ticketholders, or towards a Metro station that was out of service, was a bad thing. Signs or bullhorns were needed.

I was starting to worry that I wouldn't be able to see even a TV, so once I spotted that Jumbotron, I camped my spot. Some folks right next to me had an argument about that. The women felt the spot was fine, and that they could at least see the Jumbotron (they were right, the spot was fine), but the guy with them insisted they needed to be "on the Mall" (we were in the paved area just kind of off of it as you can see) so against their (better, IMHO) judgment, they left for theoretically greener pastures.

I hope they were at least able to see SOMETHING. :shrug:

Here's my post/thread on the subject:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8122797

Even now, as I see the images of the dignitaries

http://gigapan.org/viewGigapanFullscreen.php?auth=033ef14483ee899496648c2b4b06233c

where you can zoom in, I feel cold just watching them. Sitting in that cold place must have been hard.

Even at my small 13" TV with air reception - cable was down - I could see close enough the details.

I have never been one for large crowds but it was exhilarating to see others do.

:hi:

I was replying to another person's question about the parade.

No I didn’t stay for the parade…the parade didn’t really interest me. Plus it really was freakin cold LOL

Getting home was not bad, traffic was not bad.

Metro…as bad as they said it was going to be. I have the pictures to prove it too! LOL

I would say from what I saw on the screen…I was up front so I really couldn’t see “the crowd” and from the cameras and what I have experienced in DC in the past I would say between 1.5 and 2 million in the mall area, probably way more than that just milling around DC.

That being said, from my own personal experience I give all the props in the world to the city of DC for being able to pull that off. For the kind of crowd that was there we had no problems and everything went as flawlessly as you could expect in that situation. The police seemed to be concentrating on crowd control and they did a good job of it. The crowd where I was broke through 2 different barriers to get in to areas that where there wasn’t supposed to be people (around the reflecting pool and around the statues/trees) and instead of trying to get everyone out of there and starting a riot the police just let us stay there and everyone was happy — they let the people stay in the trees — they even let people skate across the frozen reflecting pool which kind of surprised me, but no one got hurt and I guess the potential for injury was probably greater if they had tried to go over there and force them off. They did a great job of herding everyone out of there and getting them on to metro after it was over too.

And pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/34592857@N06/3214005512/in/set-72157612802557624/

Pictures…please excuse them, I am a horrible photographer in the first place and my fingers were frozen and I was shivering…these are what was left over after I finished deleting most of them LOL

Explanatory Note: I had tickets to the Silver Section.