Charlie Brown

This convention is starting to grow on me. I went to the Zone again to see what was going on. This is the last day of the festivities. Soon we'll have our city back. The statue of Charlie Brown that sits in Rice Park will be the attraction of note for visitors to downtown, again. It's a really nice statue and commemorates Charles Schulz, home town boy who made it big.

I walked around the Zone, down 1oth Street to St Peter and then to the MSNBC stage in Rice Park. Chris Matthews was arguing loudly with Pat Buchanan on "Hardball" when I arrived, and the beautiful woman panelist was trying to keep them apart. (Except that she's not as beautiful in real life as on the tube.) They were talking about the new girl in town, Sarah Palin and comenting on her acceptance speech from last night. Then Rudy Giuliani came on and they continued their "discussion." I got a fairly good photo of the set and the surroundings with at least a few of the sign wielding crowd in evidence. It was a mixed crowd - Republicans, Democrats, independents, and an occasional Loonie. There was even some taunting from the crowd.
And to show that peaceful demonstrations were tolerated, this guy (below) with the sign stood just outside the gate to the convention Zone and brandished his sign. Quite a few of the conventioneers took his picture - presumably for their blogs. The zoned part of the city will be liberated sometime tomorrow, the anarchists will go home and Charley Brown will again be king of the coop.
There were demonstrations and protests again tonight. I understand that there were a couple of hundred arrests for marching without a license or something. That story can be found on cnn.com.

Later on in the evening I managed to get in a couple of sets of mixed doubles at Wooddale. I split sets and came away without serious injury.