Days Zero and One at the RNC: Yes, Mom, I am Still Alive

Let’s Republican Party!!

The two best times to arrive in a city are midnight and the crack of dawn. You have the city to yourself, the streets are empty. No one seems to notice that you have no idea where you’re going, you’re walking in circles. But no one sees or cares. You can just be lost. All cities are beautiful at midnight: lit up, beckoning out to every direction out. At the crack of dawn a city is laid starkly out. The sun greets us harshly along all possibilities. And, in my case, arriving in Cleveland this weekend at the crack of dawn, I got to see a ton of cops go to a Starbucks.

I came to Cleveland mostly out of an on-air dare on our weekly WFMU show “Sportsytalk” by Station Manager Ken Freedman way back in April a few days before whatever deadline it was for us to try to get press passes for what we imagined would be a brokered and historic Republican National Convention. The last political convention WFMU covered was, yeah, the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The one where the police went into the crowd with batons and beat protesters. I think we imagined this election was going to be some kind of reboot-sequel to that one. As the new “Confessions of a Republican” ad released by the Clinton campaign suggests, we are dealing with the very same brand of wacky this year.

I imagined a road trip, a few days of eating Polish boy sandwiches. Blowing some vacation days in the great Midwest. I also didn’t imagine we’d get credentials in the first place. We’d gotten credentials to the Superbowl Media Day in Newark a few years back. We had a nice day of me reading haiku to a bewildered Wes Welker, me asking Richard Sherman whether he’d make a better Batman than Ben Affleck. You know, my wheelhouse: being kind of goofy. This election does not particularly need goofy coverage. But this election has gotten and given all kinds of things it did not particularly need.

Cleveland right now has almost every kind of police, state trooper, public safety, and crime fighter imaginable. They have cops from in-state, out-of-state, space, the future, the past. Time cops. I’m staying in the basement of a friend of a friend. Nice enough to put a grubby poet up for a week, he’s been making sure I don’t leave without carrying an apple around with me as I travel from Midtown to Downtown, where all the action is happening. I goofed around the first night, wandering around with all my clunky radio equipment and somehow bumped into the Mayor of Cleveland, Frank Johnson and the police chief, Calvin Williams. I’ve seen Chief Johnson two nights in a row, working long days. He used to be a cop on patrol in on the Upper East Side. He smiled widely.

The events in Baton Rouge have cast a pall over Cleveland. I hear it in the things people say to me, unbidden, in monologues I am presented with because I am so obviously an outsider. Police are nervous, always looking over their shoulder, many in an unfamiliar town. I say good morning, I say hello. But people are tense. Everyone’s been sending me articles for the last two weeks that are like “The 45 Reasons Why Going to Cleveland to Cover the Convention Will Get You Murdered in the Streets Like a Dog: #23 Will Double Murder You.” I can hear it in the voice of my mom when I call her to let her know I am OK. I tell her I’m OK. She doesn’t believe me.

Everyone in Cleveland is still wearing Cavaliers’ championship gear, looking as fresh as the moment they bought it. It is a town transformed by winning, and I am happy to report that Cleveland is getting cocky. They think the Browns have a chance now. I’ve been wearing my Jets’ Tim Tebow jersey around, getting teased relentlessly. I hope he still might come! So far celebrity speakers have been Scott Baio and a guy from Duck Dynasty. Don King was hanging around. I saw Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and Trevor Noah. Wolf Blitzer’s beard is very impressive in person.

Like you, I am getting most of my news from Twitter, except I am in the Quicken Loans Arena, all the way at the top, with my phone plugged in for power. I keep trying to cover protests, but everything either goes very smoothly or kind of peters out right in front of the barricades. I am but one poet amid all these waves of politics, adrift and bobbing. Certainly I am horrified by many of the things that people are saying in speeches. But some of the speeches are pretty good. I get why some Republicans feel the way they do. I went to a tony Prep school, I get it. For the next few days, you may see me circling, head down, looking at my phone to tell me something I need to know. Possibly texting my mom to let her know I’m OK.

Jim Behrle lives in Jersey City and works in a bookstore. He is reporting and Periscoping for WFMU at the GOP Convention in Cleveland this week.