NYC Supports the Troops, the U.S.A. and President Bush - 3/23/03

[NYC GOP Chick]

We got to Times Square shortly before noon, and there were well over 1000 patriotic people there! We started out up front, but my dad was uncomfortable and we kept going back and back and back and back... Therefore the only speaker photos I have are of the lady from the Christian Coalition and a couple of FReepers.

By the time we left, there were at *least* close to 3000 flag-waving, "USA! USA! USA!"-chanting patriots squeezed into the area near the ticker tape in Times Square.

I didn't see any other threads on this, so I apologize if this is a duplicate.

[Cacique]

Here's my set of pictures from the rally. Thanks to Coleus for taking that last half of the set. The crowd at peak time was about 3,000 ralliers. Thanks to all who came. The rally was a learning experience and we make mistakes every time. We will rectify those mistakes. We are getting better at this every time. Let us hope that support the troops rallies are no longer necessary. I suspect however, that we will have to continue the struggle. We will do better next time.

Some shots taken from the speakers platform. Captions will follow before each set.

Some shots of one our speakers, the honrable Brett Schundler from New Jersey.

A shot on me and Brett Schundler.

More shots taken from the speakers platform. You can see the sea of troops supporters. I also used the opportunity to hog the megaphone and cheer the crowd on.

Since I was stuck at the platform I couldn't take wide angle shots of the crowd, I gave my camera to Coleus who took all of the following shots of the rally. You cann see how deep that crowd was, easily close to 3,000 people at it's peak.

Some of the pictures may not load, they are a total of 3.9 megs, right click on the little empty pic box and then click on show picture.

[Cacique]

I know that not being a techie you have no clue. But here it goes. First I had to compress the photos from over 1 meg each. Then I had to find which one of my servers had enough room for the total of 3.9 megs of photos and enough traffic quota left. Then I had to upload them to the server. Then I had to HTML code the post. Then I had to compose a ping list of people who posted to this thread etc.

Sorry it took so long.

[jonalvy44]

Wow!! Awesome pics...

I noticed a few things:

1. I did not notice anyone having to wear bandanas on their face to hide their identity
2. The police looked rather comfy without having to wear riot gear.
3. The people pictured look like me or my neighbors.
4. The same people look gainfuly employed.
5. No home made clothing or dreadlocks, no bongos at the rally

6. The barricades imposed by the police appear to have been respected.
7. How many arrests? I'm willing to say....NONE.

I love America!!

[firewalk]

All your pictures loaded fine for me (I'm lucky enough to have cable though)

Standing on my chair(at least in my mind) and applauding you guys (-:

[areafiftyone]

Excellent pictures!!!

[tcostell]

As much as I appreciate the photos, since you sent them along with the ping (instead of posting them and sending a low bandwidth ping) I can no longer access FR from home since it will take me 4 hours to load my comments page. In the future, I'd appreciate it if you could go ahead and post the photos to the thread, then send a little pinglet saying the pictures are up.
thanks,
T

[stanz]

Wonderful shots.

[Cacique]

hmm, good point, sorry about that.

[Soaring Feather]

What a fantastic Rally!
I could not be there so..
here is my contribution to the Rally!!

[rs79bm]

Outstanding! Good Job!

[Admin Moderator]

Please repost only pinging yourself, or greatly reduce the size of your pictures, or both. They are locking up computers from some on your ping list. Thanks.

[general_re]

...I can no longer access FR from home since it will take me 4 hours to load my comments page.

Actually, you can - when you get home, if you're not there already, just go to your "My Comments" page and click on the "brief view" link to set it to the brief view. You'll still see new comments to you, but just the thread and poster that they're from, and not the body of the comments. That way, the pics won't be visible on your comments page. Then you can switch back once the offending post gets pushed off the page. Easy as pie, if a minor inconvenience ;)

[tcostell]

Will do. Thanks gen.

[Cacique]

I am sorry about that, it hadn't occured to me it might screw up somebody's comments page.

[eleni121]

Halelujah!

You guys are the greatest! Beautiful or what as we say here in the Buffalo area!

[general_re]

Eh, it happens - no sense worrying about it now. It won't help anyone's comments page, but it might help anyone else clicking on the thread if you engage in a little self-abuse on your post, and then post thumbnails in a new comment ;)

Just shrink all the pictures down to 100x100 or so, and squeeze the tar out of them on compression, until you wind up with 5K or 10K jpegs - they'll look horrible, but they're just thumbnails, so who cares? Link the thumbnail images to the original-format images, and you get the best of both worlds - people can "preview" all the images, and look at the ones they're interested in, in detail.

[tcostell]

NP, I know how excited a person can get over stuff like that. General_Re's suggestions seems to work fine.
Nice pics by the way.

[Cacique]

I have a thumbnail generator. That would have doubled the number of files. I had thought about going through the extra process, but some people wanted to know what happened to the pics and i stupidly jumped the gun and posted them. Oh well, mistakes in life are experiences to learn from.

This has not been a very good week.

[general_re]

Like this:

Instead of an 800x600, 66 KB image, I shrank it down to 150x113 and 3.7 KB, and linked that thumbnail to your original.

[NYC GOP Chick]

LOL! I used to work for the Journal News. :D