On Tuesday, I watched the inauguration at a local cafe (The Aster Coffee Lounge) with some friends. Robin commented afterwards that it was amazing how many different forms of media were present.

We had a live stream of the event from the web being projected onto an inflatable screen. This was their workaround for a USB antenna thing that wasn’t working. The stream kept stuttering, though, with periodic stops for buffering. So we turned off the audio and were listening to the NPR live coverage while watching the video stream. But the video lagged about 5 seconds behind the audio, so that was kind of odd, especially when Roberts and Obama had their repair moment during the swearing in.

There was at least one live blogger at the event, at least one twitterer, and people texting and calling each other on their cell phones.

King 5 news, a local TV station, was there, as was print media in the form of Ballard News Tribune. Since I ordered one of the Aster’s special Inauguration Waffles, King 5 shot me taking a bite, and Ballard News took a photo, too. Here’s a photo Erik took:

After the inauguration ceremony, King 5 interviewed me really quickly. (Maybe because I was the only Asian guy in the place… They also interviewed the only Black guy in the place…) I said something like it was prophetic to have happened the day after MLK, Jr. Day and that I hoped that the nation took seriously Obama’s call for collective responsibility and action.

And, of course, there were the multiple sub-groups of people interacting with each other through verbal talk.