New York returning to normal after RNC leaves

NEW YORK -- After more than a week of press, protests and politics, many New Yorkers will return to the city today since the Republican National Convention has left town.\nWhile some in New York weathered the Republican storm, many took a week or more off work to escape the more than 50,000 people who visited the city for the convention.\n"Life will go back to normal and it will probably be a crowded, crowded week with everybody back from vacation," said IU alumnus Julian Treves, who lives in New Jersey but works in Manhattan.\nWeeks before the convention came, Treves said his co-workers began planning to get away from the city.\n"What happened is that we started hearing about it in early July, and a lot of people at work were already worrying about it," he said. "We worked around it."\nTreves, who graduated from IU in 1988 and now works in the treasury department for a media organization in Manhattan, said rather than taking a vacation, he worked from home for a couple days last week.\n"(The convention) had a big impact on my work life," he said.\nChandra Czape took a different approach to the Republicans coming to New York. She left the country altogether.\nThough her vacation to London wasn't completely due to the convention, she said it was nice timing.\n"I would have preferred to leave earlier," Czape said. \nCzape, who graduated from IU in 1996 and now is a deputy editor at CosmoGirl!, was in Manhattan for a few days last week. She said her boyfriend asked her to stop by a camera store, only blocks from Madison Square Garden, the site of this year's convention, and thousands of protesters.\n"I was like, I don't want to go down there. I'll go to a different camera store," she said. "I don't want to be in there."\nLike Treves, Czape said her co-workers were complaining about the convention coming before anyone even arrived in the city.\n"We've been groaning about it (since) two weeks before they got here," she said.\nCzape said that if New Yorkers weren't protesting the convention, then they were staying away.\nPresident George W. Bush chose to enter the lion's den of the Democratic Party by choosing New York as the site of the RNC. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 5 to 1 here, according to The Associated Press, making the case for many New Yorkers that President Bush and the Republican Party used political reasons in choosing the city because of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.\nIn a poll taken by New York magazine of New Yorkers and their thoughts on the convention coming to town, most of the results were overwhelmingly pro-Democrat and anti-Bush. More than 40 percent of New Yorkers said it was not a good choice for the convention to be held in New York, while 58 percent of Republicans thought it was a good idea.\n"I think it's kind of stupid to come here, personally," Czape said. \nIn this Democratic stronghold, many believe the city was used as a political tool.\n"Clearly there was political symbolism in choosing the site," Treves said, who hasn't been in Manhattan since the Friday before the convention. "I think it would have been better if it would have been in another state."\nIndeed, many of the speeches centered around the Sept. 11 attacks. Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's speech Monday night invoked images of President Bush as a hero after his visit to the World Trade Center site days after the attacks. The terrorist attacks were continually referenced in videos and photos of the president as the only choice to lead the United States against global terrorism, as well as in speeches by Vice President Dick Cheney, Sen. John McCain and the president himself.\nAlthough he said the convention impacted his work life, Treves said taking a week and a half off of work was nice.\n"It wasn't the worst thing in the world," he said. "But sure, life will go back to normal."\n-- Contact staff writer Josh Sanburn at jsanburn@indiana.edu.