Raleigh Wide Open

(The photo above was taken by City Councilor Russ Stephenson. And Raleighing.com points to more photos posted to Flickr.)

Was Fayetteville Street always such a wind tunnel? The gods smiled on it tonight, sending the rain north and south, while blowing a steady 15-20 mph breeze from the south to cool the crowds. How many came? Could it possibly have been the 20,000 - 30,000 so boldly predicated here two nights ago by our downtown gurus, Hatem and Douglas?

I await the experts’ calls, but I’d guess it was more like 40,000 - 50,000. What a night! For Raleigh, a real downtown center is emerging. And for the region, a real center city is starting to take shape. Very, very cool. (And do read Raleighing’s take on it all.)
This just in — WTVD says 45,000. Great minds guess alike, I guess.

This is WTVD’s pic, from pretty early in the night, I’d say (the street was packed tight for four blocks from 7-9 pm) –

We did a quick survey at the Indy tent tonight of public opinion about the new street and the TTA. (Oh, and about the 2008 presidential election.) I’ll do a tally tomorrow, when I’m awake, and tell all. Looking over shoulders, though, it looked to me like it was overwhelmingly pro-street and pro-TTA. We’ll see. …

This entry was posted from Bob Geary on Saturday, July 29th, 2006 at 10:45 pm and is filed under City Hall, State Capital, Around Raleigh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.