girls and I went to the John Edwards event at the local bowling alley.
He was scheduled to bowl a few frames at 8:30pm, but by 8:00 the place
was mobbed. Before he got there there started to be frequent, and
increasingly stressed out announcements from bowling alley manager --
don't stand on the fountain, stay off the bowling area with street
shoes, move your car if it is in a firelane, move your triple parked
cars it will be towed to finally she was going to call the police and
fire marshal if people didn't start to leave. All this before John
Edwards showed up. She would have done better to cancel the league
games and just kept the food and beer flowing.
The girls had colored some homemade 'Go, John, Go!' signs and were in
their pretty dresses, but the spent most of the time on our shoulders.
We ran into a video crew from Germany and a photographer from
Switzerland. There were a few college boys from Union College from
outside Albany who were up for the weekend and another college girl
from NYC said there were about 150 from her school up helping with
campaigns (didn't catch which college or if they were only for
Edwards.)
On the way out I chatted up a reporter from the Boston Globe about how
the media seems to be covering NH as a Kerry/Dean horse race with no
real coverage of Edwards or Lieberman and just a little of Clark.
With Edwards surprise 2nd place showing in Iowa and Liebermans make or
break in NH I'd think there should be more coverage of that.
Edwards was late from attending the Democratic dinner down in Nashua
and came in and gave a 10 minute standad stump speech. Mentioned that
he isn't here to take swipes at other democratic candiates and
introduced Glenn Close who has endorced him (see the photo below).
AP News on Netscape.com has to say of the the event:
Hundreds of people who came to see Democratic
presidential hopeful U.S. Sen., John Edwards at a bowling alley in
Merrimack, N.H. Saturday Jan., 24, 2004 were told to evacuate the
building and sent out into the cold. Edwrads(sic) spole(sic) for about
ten minutes to the crowd inside before police told them they had to
evacuate. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)
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The didn't kick out the crowd although the police and fire marshal
were there. The crowd rapidly left the building after Edwards left
and hung around the parking lot as people got in the cars and left.
Below are my photos from the event.
John Edwards in Merrimack, NH bowling alley (24 Jan 2004)
John Edwards in Merrimack, NH bowling alley (24 Jan 2004)
John Edwards in Merrimack, NH bowling alley (24 Jan 2004)
John Edwards in Merrimack, NH bowling alley (24 Jan 2004)
John Edwards in Merrimack, NH bowling alley (24 Jan 2004)
John Edwards in Merrimack, NH bowling alley (24 Jan 2004)
John Edwards in Merrimack, NH bowling alley (24 Jan 2004)
John Edwards in Merrimack, NH bowling alley (24 Jan 2004)
John Edwards in Merrimack, NH bowling alley (24 Jan 2004)
Glenn Close is right of this guy -- yeah, she is out of frame... (24 Jan 2004)
At noon we'll likely bundle everyone up for the -4F weather and check
out the event at the Nashua Junior High School...
