The Not so Sane Rally

My question; Is it worth going to something solely for the purpose of being able to say "I was there"? Because that's where I am with the rally to restore sanity, and will probably will be with many other events.

In theory, it was a really cool event. An enormous crowd, mostly full of people that don't go to those types of things, fun and intelligent speakers, amusing signs, historic, etc. And I suppose all of that was technically still true, but to me it pretty much felt like being squeezed like a sardine amidst a horde of people, and being physically propelled from one side of the mall to the other by the sheer force of people movement and a strong desire to not be trampled.

I wasn't really expecting anything all that huge. Silly of me, I know. My first clue that I was very, very wrong was when we went to the bus stop Saturday morning. The bus, only about 1/3 of the way through its route was already packed to the gills. We ended up taking another bus to a metro station across town, having two trains come by that could not fit in another human being, and trust me people tried, taking a train the other direction to try to get a jump on things and finally barely squeezing in. All in all, it took almost two hours to make a trip that should have taken half an hour. I've never seen crowds like that on the metro, and it was even crazier once we got above ground. We managed to get in around 7th street, but we could never find a constant place to just stand, people kept moving in an exercise of futility. We couldn't see a thing, and could only make out a few words of what was said. Did I mention the crazy? I'm talking people climbing up and falling of off trees, lightposts and pretty much anything that could possibly be scaled. It wasn't just on the mall, the crowds extended out for a few blocks. Needless to say, getting home was also an adventure, only with the added bonus of our good will and patience having been spent.

Also, my cell phone is gone. It seems melodramatic to say that it was pickpocketed...but everything else was still in my purse, including little things that would have been much more likely to fall out, I never set my bag down, or meant over in a way thing could have fallen out, I've called all the businesses I was in that day, and well it's gone. So that kind of sours my experience a bit. I hate spending money on things that should just be.

Don't get me wrong, people were fairly polite for how crowded it was, there was a cool atmosphere and some fun signs. But, uh, the point is that while I can say I went to the rally, my experience was pretty much just being pushed and pulled and stuffed into small spaces with a crowd of decent people and their amusing signs and losing my phone. Ordinarily not a recipe for a good time. I'm not convinced that calling it something cool and historic really takes away from the fact that objectively it was kind of miserable. 

But, I can say I was there.

Towards the beginning of the rally, when we were still relatively optimistic. Also the only picture that isn't just the tops of heads of random people, because that's pretty much all we saw.

Ok, I lied. There's also a picture of Obama loving Jesus on a street light.

And a Viking party boat. I don't understand either.