As many of you know, I am a huge Daily Show fan, so when Jon Stewart announced his Rally to Restore Sanity, I knew I had to be there.  Luckily, I knew I’d be in New York by that point, so that made getting to DC a lot easier and cheaper than from Los Angeles.

I left NYC Friday night on a very crowded Megabus down to DC.  I would say that everyone on the bus and everyone on previous and subsequent buses were heading down to the Rally.  The crowd waiting for the buses was very white, very young and many carrying signs … so I made an assumption.

Friday night, the city was packed full of people heading to the rally and that was the main source of conversation at every bar, restaurant table, street corner, etc.  

I went to bed early and planned on getting to the Mall around 11am.  I assumed it would be a good turnout, but, clearly had no idea.  I went down for breakfast around 9:30 and a front desk attendant was asking if anyone else wanted to hop on the shuttle.  I over hear a lady tell her friend, “I was just watching the news and the Mall is already packed” — once I heard that, I immediately grabbed a bagel and headed for the shuttle.  

We were dropped off at Union Station which is a pretty easy walk to the Mall.  Sure enough, as we got closer, it was clear that the turnout was going to far exceed any expectations.  At 10:00am - I would say it was already 50% full, it not more ..

Luckily, DC Police are pretty good at handling this stuff, so there were closed streets everywhere and it was pretty easy to get around.

While wondering around looking for the best vantage point, there was some of the best people watching I’ve ever seen.  The signs were amazing … the costumes amazing … the spirit of the crowd was so positive, it was just awesome.

These guys were two of my favorites.  They wore blow up fat suits, mullet wigs and drove around in motorized wheelchairs.

Finally, I settled on a spot close to a screen and near a speaker array — I figured seeing anything was nearly impossible, but hearing would be very important.

My biggest complaint is that the stage itself was blocked to 95% of the audience.  There was a huge media tent right dead center of the stage — so even though I was tall enough to see over everyone and up to the stage, I couldn’t see anything on the stage because it was blocked by this tent.

The show opened with a pretty great energetic set by the Roots and John Legend.  Easily, the highlight of this was when John Legend covered the Monsters of Folk song, “Dear God” — it was really cool.  The music went on a little longer than most of the crowd wanted — the Rally started 45 minutes ago and we still haven’t heard or seen Jon.

The music was plenty loud, but when the Mythbusters guys came out, we could barely hear a thing.  The crowd behind us (which was about 65% of the crowd) started chanting LOUDER — which was actually really cool, because it moved forward through the crowd like a sound wave.  You heard it back there, then it kept getting louder and louder and the next thing you knew, you were chanting LOUD-ER.

Eventually, Jon Stewart came out — couldn’t hear his first few words and the chant started again … this time someone heard us and cranked the volume from 2 to 10 — it was awesome.  Finally, everything was crystal clear.

Meanwhile, the crowd kept getting larger and larger and my personal space smaller and smaller.  There were people in the trees, on porter potties, on friend’s shoulders, everywhere … incredible.

I won’t recap the whole show — but my personal favorite moments were the Ozzy and Cat Stevens duel, Jon and Stephen’s song — especially the line “from gay guys who like football to straight guys who like Glee” — good stuff.  Jon singing was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.

Finally, of course, Jon’s closing speech was perfect.  I knew at some point he was going to get “serious”, but I was very nervous about how it was transition and how he would present it.  I think he nailed it.  You could really tell that he was so surprised, excited and truly grateful to see so many people here … his analogy of the cars going through the tunnel was spot on and really smart.  Seriously love that man.

There were thousands of great signs and I could do a whole post just of my favorites … here are two:

I lived in DC for about 9 months and saw a lot of political activity and rallies, but nothing ever on this scale.  I talked to many people that lived or grew up in DC and they said they had never see the city so crowded.

Here is a photo right outside the building I used to live in looking down 7th street after the Rally.  It’s about 3/4 of a mile down from this point to the Mall … and it’s just a sea of people… it took hours for the crowds to disperse and almost as long just to get cell service back to normal (I turned my phone off during the rally just to save battery).

Do I think the Rally changed anything?  No.

Do I think anyone got anything out of the message?  I hope so.  But if you’re already a fan of the shows, then you already know the message.

What I do think it showed was that Jon and Stephen were right.  There were 250,000 people that cared enough to get out there for a “comedy show”.  I know plenty others that wanted to be there or watched on TV, etc … who knows what the total audience was.  I guarantee, though, it was more than any recent rally that I know of.

I do wish it was a bit more political … I know that’s exactly what they didn’t want … but it was political, it was just masked in comedy … I think there was an opportunity missed to get the word out and present some good messages … I was shocked that at not once anyone really said to go out and vote today.  They could have done that without being political.  That’s just being American.

In closing … if you’ve even read this far … it was an amazing experience.  I’m so glad I went and would totally go again …

Thanks Jon Stewart for keeping us sane.