This cell-phone picture hardly does justice to the scene at Antoinette K-Doe's Mother-in-Law Lounge at about ten p.m. last night, when CNN called it for President-Elect Barack Obama. Easily over a hundred people were jammed into the bar and spilling out into the yard, festooned with Christmas lights and red-white-and-blue balloons for the occasion. Drivers leaned on their horns and waved out car windows as they sped down North Claiborne Ave.
Note bartender Jeannie's homemade "Barack Obama Bahama Mama Rama" T-shirt in the second photo (I don't get it either, but it's still cool.)
In a generation or two, kids will probably ask you where you were when America decisively elected its first African American president. So... where were you?
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Bridge Lounge. Surprisingly few people there but just as jubilant.
At a house party where, after the call looked certain, our hostess handed out plastic American flags and urged us to all join her outside. Soon we were running down the street waving the flags, and following our hostess's lead by striping off clothes to lope happily in underwear or just bare chested down to Canal Street, hollering and blowing on kazoos. People came out on the porches above us, cheering and flashing their porch lights on and off. When we got to the corner restaurant the dishwashers and waiters erupted from the kitchen service entrance to join us as we passed around a champagne bottle on the sidewalk.