Live 8 Live

This past weekend, I attended the Live 8 concert (Philly iteration) as a guest of Nokia's. They offered me two VIP passes, and accomodations in Loew's Hotel near downtown. I went, of course.

The unexpected part was the one million people crowded into a concrete column walkway that Joanna and I had to push our way through in order to make it to our "VIP" seats, invisible behind walls of The Public.

Even information assistants turned us away, saying that the solid flanks of dense human life ahead were impenetrable, and shouldn't even be approached. We said damn them, and shoved on...over and under the free-standing masses, until we reached the EMS tent at the center, the last bastion before the yards of steel barricades that separated us from our seats.

And we were refused entrance.

Eventually, two hours later, we made it in and found rows of unused seats. We sat and baked in the sun, watching Jay-Z and Stevie Wonder. And I wondered, as I entered my name into the text-message petition that threw my name up on the ticker-tape along with all the others, if 9 out of 10 people even understood what this concert was for.

At the end, we walked home exhausted through the aftermath of the throngs, on streets closed to cars and cast wide open to collect the trash of the filled.

Overall, a good experience. And we saw Al Sharpton in the Philly cheese-steak tent, so that's something.