The News Hole
Scenes from Penn Station This Morning
Things were calm and under control at Baltimore’s Penn Station this morning. Crowd control at the station was good–way better than at the inauguration itself–and people were excited.
“I’m from Levine, Arizona,” says a woman in a fur coat, for no reason. She walks away.
Though a good number of people showed up at the train station without tickets (MARC trains were sold out), there there was no market for extra “inaugural” train tickets. I tried to sell an extra set I had and ended up giving the tickets away.
The Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) folks, on the job in some cases since 3 a.m., were cheerful, helpful, and calm. “A lot of older folks got here without tickets,” said Jawauna “Jo” Greene, director of MTA’s office of communications and marketing. “They didn’t know.”
One tall MTA man who was directing the crowds at 7 a.m. had several extra tickets clipped to his clipboard: “When people give me a sob story, I can give them one,” he said.
“Isn’t it great?” said Mary Washington, getting ready to take the p-8 train at 8:05 a.m. She scored an extra “standing room” ticket for the mall. She had two extra sets of train tickets as well.
Milford Jeremiah, a linguistics and psychology professor at Morgan State, was in line for the p-9 train sporting a wool cap that read “Obama 44th President,” which he says he bought at Saturday’s rally in Baltimore. He said he considers the historic inauguration a teaching moment for his students.
He had no particular strategy for his trip to the Capitol: “I just want to see the crowd, take a few pictures, just see the setting, peoples’ interactions and their mood,” he said.
