Arriving at the DNC

Unlike Washington, Boston is not a converted malarial swamp. Yet tonight it feels similar. Clothes stick; the heat is damp; the riverbanks are green and lush; and the evening emits a faint buzz. Even the breeze over the Charles River has the slight chill of an oncoming fever. Because soon they'll be here: 5,000 delegates and three times as many journalists, and at their flanks an army of DNC volunteers, party hacks, party flacks, celebrities, strategists, logistics teams, and heavy security details – together turning the city into a frenzy of political celebration and speculation.

On Thursday, the visitors were still arriving in a trickle. Only a few Kerry buttons were on display at the bar at the Sheraton, where even a couple rooms were still open. "By Saturday afternoon I expect bedlam," said a porter at the Back Bay Hilton just up the way when I ducked in there looking for a bar. This weekend, the airports and train stations will fill with incoming conventioneers. The galas will start. The satellite trucks will multiply. As will the number of notable persons on the streets. It will be impossible to find a place to stay, unless you don't mind paying $1,800 a night for the Omni Park Hotel or lodging for cheap in southern New Hampshire.

A shortage of rooms, it turns out, is one of the reasons Boston has never hosted a national party convention. Whereas New York and Chicago are both financial centers with the infrastructure to house plenty of visitors, Boston only caught up enough during the commercial boom of the last decade and a half to bid for the DNC. Until the middle of last century, Boston also would have been a poor geographic choice. Chicago has seen more conventions than any other city because it's in the center of the country, and it was convenient for all the delegations to meet there by rail. That traveling was part of the tradition; New York's three trains would all come steaming into the station together, flags-a-waving. So in addition to summoning entire party leadership annually, the time en route helped people get to know each other.

In 2004, California's delegation to the DNC will make a much easier trip on many more than three planes, but they'll stay together at the Westin Copley Place. Not surprisingly, the hotels' quality tends to confirm the pecking order of their patrons. New York will be at a nearby tony address in the Prudential Center complex. Montana's delegation will be put up at Northeastern University's dorms, alongside many convention volunteers, while Kerry's campaign people are at the Sheraton, the nicest Sheraton, I might note, that I have ever seen. But there are exceptions. Little tiny Hawaii is at the quite respectable Marriott. And Kucinich, yet again, managed to buck the system; he will stay alongside Kerry's crew at the Sheraton when he arrives Saturday.

My situation is not one of these exceptions. Best Western is where the alternative presses and literary journals and other "special media" wind up. The Village Voice, I understand, has a house somewhere, which sounded pretty good, until a friend staying there said he had to be sure to track down an air mattress for himself. I have a room at a place called the Chandler Inn, but the reservation begins on Sunday. The Chandler Inn is no prize – the management, in a feat of euphemism, refers to its two-star converted flop-house establishment as a place of "European style" charm – but it sure beats the place I stayed my first night.

After an arrangement to crash at a friend's fell through, I had to resort, at the last minute, to the temporary/sublet section of Craig's List. It was there that I saw this posting:

"1 B/R, Hot Tub on Roof, overlooking Back Bay, for DNC, cheap!"

Seemed reasonable. Enticing even. As a lover of hot tubs, I had packed swim trunks and was sold on that point alone. Except that I didn't realize until I had walked all my stuff across Harvard bridge that it was a frat house. Nestled between the stately and quaint historic riverfront buildings of MIT was the squat, ugly, brick habitat of the university's Alpha Tau Epsilon chapter. I almost turned around, but Steve Elliott, who I've traveled with on the campaign and who is also in Boston, convinced me to give it a try.