Women’s March on Saint Louis

We marched! I joined Anne, Joanie, Pat, Matt and about 15,000 other people, as we all marched down Market from Union Station to the Arch. It was glorious! The weather was perfect. It hit seventy degrees today and there was not a cloud in the sky. The best day all year, at least so far. The crowd was congenial and well-behaved. The police reported having no problems at all. It had a rather festive atmosphere. Here is a link to a short 11 seconds Twitter video. It shows part of the crowd from above. It was shot from a drone that we saw flying around as we marched. Can anyone pick us out of the crowd?

Both of our signs were well received. Per yesterday’s poll results, I went with “Respect Existence or Expect Resistance”. I saw several other versions of this sign in the march. Anne went with, “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights!” I must admit that her sign was the better of the two, but there were lots of other good signs at the demonstration. I think that we can both do better next time. In order to get the above photo, I mounted my GoPro on top of my sign.

There must have been more people in attendance then were originally expected. It took us four trains and over an hour to get downtown. We missed the first train, because of the long line at the ticket machines. We missed the second train when it arrived too full to board us. We ended up going across the tracks and first took a train in the opposite direction to Shrewsbury, the end of the line. There we were able to board a fourth train that eventually took us downtown, but even then it was still standing room only.

After the march, we were way too far away to hear any of the speakers, so we bailed and left the rally in search of lunch. We ended up at a restaurant called Sauce on the Side. It’s specialty is calzone. There are now three restaurants in this local chain. Anne knows the proprietor, because she used to teach with her in Maplewood. Anne and I split one of their calzones, which are Yuge.

We had no problems getting home, where Anne went to couch and I went for a bike ride in Forest Park. Did I mention that is was 70 ºF today? There were easily another 15,000 people in the park and most of them seemed to be on bicycles. Being the Retired Guy, I had kind of gotten used to having the park all to myself. Like when I cycle at ten in the morning on a Tuesday. Having all of these other people in my park was a little bit too much. I soon fled.