Before Tuesday's election night rally, the Obama campaign asked associated vendors not to speak to the press about the evening's logistics. "But now that it's over, we can talk all day," said John Curran, vice president of charter sales and marketing for Chicago Trolley and Double Decker Company. And while the Obama camp prepares for its transition to the White House, rally vendors have been sharing more details.
Curran said that Chicago Trolley's task on Tuesday night was to work in conjunction with the Secret Service to safely transport V.I.P. guests—Brad Pitt, Spike Lee, and Rahm Emanuel (now set to be the president-elect's chief of staff) among them—to Grant Park from the nearby Fairmont Chicago and Hyatt Regency hotels.
"The routes moved from the two hotels to a backstage area of Grant Park, which had been created especially for transportation and emergency vehicles," Curran explained. Throughout the evening, Curran and his team traversed the routes with a "steady stream of trolley departures, escorted by the U.S. marshals." Ultimately, the job took some 30 trolleys, six dispatchers, and 38 of the company's staffers.
Heffernan Morgan designer Bob Mertzlufft and Botanicals' Casey Cooper also participated in the event, working with Limelight's Rita Gutekanst (whom we spoke to on Wednesday) to spruce up the buffet stations and bars in the park's V.I.P. tents.
They received the commission just last Friday, and quickly decided to create 14 focal arrangements that would each comprise 100 12- by 18-inch American flags. "I frantically scoured the Internet for a local supplier that could get us 1,400 flags right away," Mertzlufft said. When his local search proved fruitless, Mertzlufft focused on West Coast listings, and was ultimately able to find a supplier that could deliver the flags by Monday.
For the arrangements' stands, Cooper and Mertzlufft looked to the Heffernan Morgan warehouse, where they honed in on the five-foot-tall iron risers that decorated the Field Museum's recent Aztec Gala. They immediately had the risers painted white and loaded onto a truck to await the flags' arrival.
Mertzlufft said that "because of Secret Service requirements ... our install window had been condensed to a few hours" on Monday afternoon. (Heffernan Morgan staffers were not on site Tuesday night.) "Once down at Grant Park," he said, "everything went very smoothly."
