Last week’s election may have boosted gun sales for some Coloradans, but it’s flags that others are rushing to stockpile.
Hardware stores are reporting increased sales of American flags since Barack Obama’s win on Tuesday.
In some areas not exactly known for flag-waving, Old Glory is flying off the shelves.
Take, for example, the East Ninth Avenue Ace Hardware in the liberal and heavily gay neighborhood near Denver’s Cheesman Park that’s also home to a supermarket known as the Queen Soopers.
The Ace had run out of all flag sizes by Monday morning.
“We’ve got blacks, whites, gays, straights, young and old coming in for flags,” said clerk Katie Kendrick. “Usually, you don’t see anything like this unless it’s the Fourth of July.”
Levi Lewis was sipping coffee at the nearby Daz Bog Monday, sporting a small flag on his wool cap.
“God bless America,” he said, lifting his latte in a toast to a president-elect long bashed for not wearing a flag pin on his lapel.
“They don’t own this,” Lewis said, pointing to his patriotic adornment.
They, as the 32-year-old Capitol Hill artist tells it, are “white right-wing conservatives” who long seemed to co-opt expressions of nationalist pride with their narrow definitions of patriotism. Growing up, he says, the flag was merely a relic paraded on Memorial Day, Independence Day and Veterans Day.
“For years — decades — there have been certain people who have associated flag-waving with a belief that criticizing the government is unpatriotic,” said Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. “But there’s a certain sense of pride and enthusiasm that results from the election of Barack Obama — the first African-American and a fresh voice as president. That triggers a certain amount of excitement by Americans who feel like they’ve been on the outs for a while.”
“Even the phrase ‘flag-waving’ had for a long time a connotation of skepticism and cynicism,” added University of Colorado historian Patricia Limerick. “I think we’re past that now. It’s possible to wave a flag and say, ‘We have serious problems and we will take them up.’ ”
In a housing tract in Roxboro, Erica Koch left her Obama sign in her front yard as a testament of pride in Obama’s win. So it came as a blow Thursday when she watched a neighbor walk into her yard and kick the sign off its posting.
When she opened her door to confront him, she says he called her a communist, a terrorist and other epithets not fit for a family newspaper.
Douglas County sheriff’s deputies twice have blown off her complaints, Koch says. And her homeowners’ association requires that all political signs — including her Obama replacement — be removed seven days after an election.
These developments have prompted the environmental scientist to contemplate flag-waving for the first time in her 31 years. Not only out of patriotism, she says, but also as a flip of the bird to the neighbor who’s harboring obvious hostility issues.
It’s time, Koch says, to recapture the flag.
“To tell you the truth, it was kind of an embarrassing symbol, because I feel like we as a country have been bullies who pushed other people around just like this guy pushed me around,” she admits. “Now there’s a hope, a sense of progress in this new president, and I feel like the flag has new meaning.”
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tues days and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.
