locked in

I spent Election Night in a Barcelona bar. After some wandering around, Meghan and I found our way to a bar that we'd seen before that promised to have election results until it was over -- a promise that turned out to be truer than I thought. We got there at 12:45 am, 6:45 pm EST, just time to settle in for the countdown to Indiana's poll closing. The crowd in the bar got steadily more American as the night wore on, which you had to expect, given that the first mildly interesting result, Pennsylvania, came in at 2:30 am, and Ohio was called near 3:30 am. The foreigners just didn't care enough. (Props to fellow post-doc, o-minimalist, and guy with a long last name, Serge Randriambololona, for staying up all night despite his being a Frenchy.)

Most bars in Barcelona close around 2 am, which I call a crock of shit, given the reputation the Spanish have of eating ham and occasionally embracing fascism partying late, but this bar stayed "open," in that it had a lock-in. The concept was quite literally foreign to me, since it's British, but it's apparently common there, and since the bar was, of course, Irish, they knew how to do. The wikipedia description is a bit sketchy, but basically accurate. The key point is that the solid metal shutters at the front of the bar were pulled down and locked. Thus, the bar looked (although it might not have sounded) closed, and the patrons couldn't get out without the owner unlocking the shutters. One more example, of course, of Europeans' flagrant disregard for fire safety. When Jon Wolff, who'd been having a grand old time at a bigger bar but with no TV view, came to our bar and called me, the owner very kindly let him and his one seven other friends in. I don't know your name, owner of the Quiet Man in Barcelona, but I salute you.

Right before 5 am, when CNN (the owner refused throughout the night to put Fox News on, for which I salute him again) had already called Ohio, I realized that, if they had called Pennsylvania right when the polls closed, they would also call California, Oregon, and Washington right when the polls closed, pushing Obama over 269. CNN's countdown was on the screen until the next poll closing, and I started a chant, which broke off at "3" when they put on the graphic for "CNN PROJECTION." Clever bastards, they knew the projection would take three seconds to queue up. Of course, everyone has that moment of the race actually being called for Obama, and this wasn't any different, despite it being at 5 am, locked in a Barcelona bar. It was amazing. No matter what Obama does over the next four years, that moment of elation will remain.