Seattle: a picture essay
Hey everyone! First, a big shout out to Dean National Ben in Redmond (pictured below with me)!! It was great meeting you. As you may have guessed, our net access in Seattle was not, er, what it was supposed to be. The report Scott linked to was sent in via a really nice gentleman at Starbucks named Steve. I'm going to file a longer DN exclusive report as soon as I finish processing all the events, but for now I'd like to address the size of the crowd.
Having experienced the Dallas rally, I figured the press would lowball our numbers. Reports said between 8000-10000 people were there. I am here to tell you that I wouldn't be suprised if it was at least 15,000. In fact, I overheard a reporter at the rally state just that. He was having a conversation with someone and he said something about having covered these types of events for two decades, and he said there were easily 15,000 people in attendance. Plus, I have it on good authority that when Al Gore came to Seattle before the 2000 election and spoke in the same park, he drew 4500 people. Those 4500 people were gathered in the space pictured here. (side note: if you look closely you'll see me at the foot of the stairs pointing up and asking people to start waving their signs for the camera) Look really closely at the picture. That is only about 1/3 of the crowd and that's 2 hours before he showed up.
Now check this one out. I took that picture from the third floor balcony at a mall across the street from the plaza. That is only about 1/3 of the space that attendees filled up. And then look at this. That's the back of the Starbucks and it was filled up too. Look at the street in the picture. When the rally started, it was packed with people all the way down to about the midsection of the taller white building. Now look at this shot. Take note of the concrete monument behind the press riser. About 40 minutes into the rally, I climbed over there and stood on top of the monument and took the next few crowd shots. This picture was taken on the far left hand side of the monument. This one was taken from the center facing the mall. That's the balcony I took the empty plaza shot from. I walked to the far right side to take this shot, then turned right to face the building the aerial shot was taken from. These are the people down there you could NOT see in the aerial. These are the people lining the street to the right of the stage. Now do you really doubt that there were 15,000 people there? I certainly don't.
Having experienced the Dallas rally, I figured the press would lowball our numbers. Reports said between 8000-10000 people were there. I am here to tell you that I wouldn't be suprised if it was at least 15,000. In fact, I overheard a reporter at the rally state just that. He was having a conversation with someone and he said something about having covered these types of events for two decades, and he said there were easily 15,000 people in attendance. Plus, I have it on good authority that when Al Gore came to Seattle before the 2000 election and spoke in the same park, he drew 4500 people. Those 4500 people were gathered in the space pictured here. (side note: if you look closely you'll see me at the foot of the stairs pointing up and asking people to start waving their signs for the camera) Look really closely at the picture. That is only about 1/3 of the crowd and that's 2 hours before he showed up.
Now check this one out. I took that picture from the third floor balcony at a mall across the street from the plaza. That is only about 1/3 of the space that attendees filled up. And then look at this. That's the back of the Starbucks and it was filled up too. Look at the street in the picture. When the rally started, it was packed with people all the way down to about the midsection of the taller white building. Now look at this shot. Take note of the concrete monument behind the press riser. About 40 minutes into the rally, I climbed over there and stood on top of the monument and took the next few crowd shots. This picture was taken on the far left hand side of the monument. This one was taken from the center facing the mall. That's the balcony I took the empty plaza shot from. I walked to the far right side to take this shot, then turned right to face the building the aerial shot was taken from. These are the people down there you could NOT see in the aerial. These are the people lining the street to the right of the stage. Now do you really doubt that there were 15,000 people there? I certainly don't.
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