So I went down to Pumpkin to grab a chicken salad and while I was waiting, I ventured over to the little thrift store across the street. As I’m flipping through the CDs, a woman wanders in and she and the owner start talking about how they’re expecting Obama at the Philadelphia Tribune in about half an hour. I bought a CD , grabbed my chicken salad and headed home for my camera. I quickly changed shirts (from a Coors Lite shirt into my Phillies T. Oh, like you would have let Obama see you with a Coors Lite shirt on.), grabbed my camera and headed back toward 16th and South. There were cops on the corner, but I just cruised past them and walked down to the Tribune. The staff was all waiting outside (almost all of the men were wearing extremely sharp, colorful suits and looked like old timey newsmen. Very cool.) Apparently they had had to evacuate so the bomb dogs could come through. The ladies were giggling about Obama. A guy wandered over from a nearby construction site and asked me, “Whose heading over here, Obama?” I told him yes and he and I sort of hung out there, the only two non staffers waiting for the candidate. We started talking about the Phillies, and discussed the Santana-Hamels match up on Friday. One of the older Secret Service men wandered over and said, “I think Hamels could turn out to be another Koufax. He’s really something.”

A police car pulled up, with one of those black cars that the bad guys used in Twister right behind it. Obama stepped out of the bad guy Twister car and called out, “Hey, how’s everybody doing today?” The staff hollered back “Great”, and he said, “Where we headed?” Security pointed to the door, but he said, “Let’s go meet these good people first.” He walked over, and I definitely got a little bit star struck. OK, so a lot starstruck. Probably the most startstruck I’ve been since I saw ?uestlove at Superfresh a couple of years ago. He was shaking hands and he reached back over towards me and said, “How are you?” as he stuck out his hand. I wanted to say something witty and urbane, really leave an impression, you know. So that later, when he was with his wife, he would say, “A guy in a Phillies shirt said the most profound thing today.” However, all I could stumble out was a course, “Fine” and with that he was shaking the next hand. I wandered home. You can see the hand (below) that shook Obamas tonight at the Rendezvous and the Black Sheep. I promise not to wash it beforehand, and I will let you take pictures of it if you’d like. (There’s another photo after the jump.)

Continue reading “An Explosion of Face to Face With Obama! JGT Shakes Hands With The Man.” →