It feels like your pew is missing its hymnal. You need to shape up, sit up, get with the program, and don't even think about giggling. Everyone is looking uphill, booing at the arrival of John Kerry on the Jumbotron screen, cheering wildly for . . . Dan and Marilyn Quayle, who have arrived via a time machine that seems always set to keep on redelivering them to this celebratory morning and vantage point.

At Eighth and E streets NW, about 1:20 p.m., a bunch of kids come running around the corner by the Ginger Cove restaurant, past the Penn Camera store. The protesters are wearing black hooded sweatshirts, and red leotards, and gas masks, ski masks, goggles, and for a second you don't know if they're running toward something or away from it until you see cops chasing them, too, and weapons being drawn and arms flailing. Everyone has a camera or a picture phone or a digital recorder. Bystanders scramble out of the way. The crowd flows down toward the FBI building. Snipers watch from above.