protest

So, Thursday evening about 9:15, as John McCain was starting his acceptance speech, my brother-in-law, Randy, and I headed into the LoTo bar in St. Paul’s Lowertown neighborhood just off downtown, about eight blocks from the Xcel. And a bunch of crazy-seeming women were screaming and cheering and jumping up and down on their seats on one side of the oblong bar.

I couldn’t figure out what the six or so women were making all the fuss about – were these McCain fans? The way they were dressed – in a general style I’d call “crunchy,” with a lot of pink, so perhaps “crunchy pink” – they didn’t look like McCain fans. And, man, were they loud

Actually, I was a little annoyed – I just wanted to have a couple of beers with Randy and maybe catch a bit of what McCain had to say. Unfortunately, the only available table was a table away from the obstreperous women. Though Randy and I were right next to a nice big-screen tube, we couldn’t hear a damn thing McCain was saying.

These women were loud and excited and in almost constant motion. As different members of the group kept running in and out of LoTo, new members kept showing up, eventually even a couple of guys – a young black guy with dreadlocks and an older white guy wearing a baseball jacket with “Kenya” written across the back.

Kevin Featherly is a Twin Cities freelance writer who focuses on politics

You've got to admit it. There is something about the combination of a night sky, an urban landscape, police in gas masks and riot gear, shouting protesters, and tear gas that will give even the most willfully rational being a case of the willies.