We (LuLu and devtob) waited a bit to write up our diary on YKos. As former weekly newspaper reporters, we know when you can’t break the story, you have to try to get a different angle.
So here is our unique YearlyKos story about the view from a sailboat.
More below deck:
Like a number of others who were planning on attending Yearly Kos, devtob and I saw the diary by Chicagochamp (Brendan, below) offering to take conference-goers on his 36-foot catamaran on Thursday and Friday afternoons.
The directions that arrived by e-mail seemed pretty clear: be at Monroe Harbor, at a cement pier where there were pump-out stations about 2 p.m. on Friday. We had Brendan’s cell phone number, so what could go wrong?
Well, for starters, we did not want to show up empty-handed. We asked the cab driver to find us a place where we could buy a six-pack or a bottle of wine. He stopped at two places, but no luck. Chicago is so weird – there does not seem to be any store that sells beer and/or wine between McCormick Place and the Loop.
As Lipris said about the lack of corner stores ubiquitous in New York City, "These people are not like us."
The cabbie did find Monroe Harbor and we walked to the first cement pier we saw. Yup, there were the pump-out stations. And sure enough there was a catamaran tied up to it. We went down and spoke to the people waiting to board. "Is this Brendan’s boat?"
No, they had no idea what we were talking about. So we continued to walk all the way to the end of the harbor, seeing only one other catamaran docked. This time the piers were gated and locked. "Is this Brendan’s boat?" we asked again.
Again, no. We called the cell phone number twice, but nobody picked up. By this time, devtob was becoming suspicious that this "sailboat ride offer" was the work of some devious Chicago-based troll, who created the elaborate ruse to lure unsuspecting Kossacks away from the afternoon’s workshops.
Determined to give it one last try, LuLu suggested going back to the first pier but it was almost 2 p.m., so we grabbed a pedicab to get there faster.
And when we got there, a different catamaran was tied up.
"Are you Brendan?" Yes, he was.
He apologized for being late. We apologized for not having beer. He said he had a cooler-full.
Brendan and his girlfriend Michelle motored the catamaran out of the harbor and onto the lake. After a while, Brendan winched up the sails while Michelle manned the wheel, and reduced our carbon footprint to zero.
For about an hour, we drank beer, talked politics and breezed along in the light winds. The Chicago skyline is a really impressive sight from the lake.
The best part was all of us getting up front, on the trampoline netting between the two hulls.
Brendan said he had been up to YearlyKos Thursday night, and chatted up Duncan Black (Atrios), a fellow economist.
We asked how an economist came to be a progressive Democrat offering sailing rides to other progressive Democrats, and he explained that his family had been Democratic for generations, and that his grandmother was a pioneering union organizer for nurses.
The boat is named for her.
Brendan also told of meeting Barack at a small house-party fund-raiser back when he was running for Senate and of how impressive he is in a small setting.
Brendan said he would be at the convention later in the day, but we never ran into him.
So here’s our DKos thank-you to Brendan and Michelle, for providing a couple of strangers with a unique view of Chicago and of the remarkably wide world of DailyKos.