DENVER—Standing in the middle of California Street downtown, they stared at a restaurant balcony where two TV sets were broadcasting Barack Obama’s acceptance speech.
These 18 people—some of them security guards, some of them tourists in town for the Democratic National Convention—gazed at the screens inside Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. as if they were watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.
America went where it had never gone before when Barack Obama became the first African-American candidate to officially accept a major party’s presidential nomination.
And he did it in Denver.
“We decided being downtown was being a part of one of the most important moments in American history,” said Patricia Palmer of Littleton, Colo., who stood on the street with her husband, Shawn.
The couple doesn’t have a television set at home so they came downtown—which hosted the Democratic National Convention this week—to watch Obama’s speech at Invesco Field at Mile High.
Tattoo artist Kelli Shigeno, 27, ducked out from work to hear Obama at a bar next door. Workers there cut the music for the historic moment.
“It’d be stupid to miss it,” said Shigeno, a Democrat. “It almost brought me to tears. The last five minutes, I was glued.”
Bar doorman David Anderson, 30, had access to a ticket to Invesco Field but gave it up because he had to work. He, too, kept an eye on the flat-screen TVs.
Many of the trendier, more upscale restaurants in lower downtown, a few blocks from the now-quiet Pepsi Center, were nearly empty in the lead-up to Obama’s speech Thursday.
Shuttle buses that had been crammed with riders the whole week through were barely half full. Business was slow for vendors selling convention souvenirs.
Thunderbird Burgers was abnormally quiet while a few customers in the back watched the convention’s concluding night on TVs. Bartender Brian Johnson peeked now and then while serving drinks.
“I don’t have a choice,” he said. “If I put the TV on anything else, I wouldn’t have anyone in here.”
Next door, owner-manager Kim Reuter and other partners and owners of the soon-to-open Blake Street Vault kicked back with cocktails and watched after a day of working on the bar. Drills lay on a booth, and an extension cord curled under their feet on the wood floor.
“I really was a Hillary fan, but this guy is getting the best of me,” said Reuter, 52.
