from Orlando Weekly's Happytown section–May 24, 2007
It's getting cheaper to support the Buddy Dyer for mayor campaign, and paradoxically, a hell of a lot more fun.
Two weeks ago a spot at one of big Buddy's fetes would have set you back $250 . On May 16, you could get in on the action for $25 at Urban Think. Of course we didn't pay the $25 – working journalists, here – but YOU could have gotten in the door for that money. A couple of women were piped in from the Washington Shores demo, some city staffers were sprinkled throughout and the SAK Comedy Lab showed up for no apparent reason.
Things were so cozy, we thought it appropriate to actually interview Buddy. And he even pretended to like us ! We were totally melting. He said some stuff about the venues, we countered with a witty comeback about Harris Rosen and everyone was happy. The end.
And then ... bang! bang! bang! Within seconds a 50-hippie protest exploded outside – an angry one, too – and everything took on a crisis tone. What is this, Berkeley?
The STOP Coalition (with SDS and Food Not Bombs ) pressed their faces, fists and placards up against the storefront window with ravenous abandon. Were the hippies going to eat Buddy?
"We intend to dog the Dyer campaign!" Ben Markeson told us as we journalistically ventured out into the throng.
"This is a war and I'm gonna wage it to the bitter end!" added ACLU Central Chapter mouthpiece George Crossley .
"They started it," SDS alum Matt DeVlieger chimed in.
Crossley told us that they had been looking into picketing outside the homes of both Buddy Dyer and commissioner Patty Sheehan (not legal), and decried the fact that local government is "in love with the developers."
Back inside the bookstore you wouldn't have known anything was amiss. Dyer proved unflappable, going on with his speech (though moving it away from the front window). He mentioned the words "partnerships" and "fund-raising" the requisite 67 times.
The speech ended on a creepy note with the improv "talents" of the SAK troupe doing a little musical number called "Re-election Blues." So we had a rich white guy being serenaded by white men singing music traditionally associated with black poverty while homeless people pressed themselves up against the glass. Orlando, your portrait is ready.