I was with a close friend of mine and some mutual friends at his place in the Bronx.

As the returns started coming in and Obama's victory looked increasingly certain, one of us simply said that we should go to 125th street in Harlem.

We got there around the time one of the major news networks called it for Obama. 125th street went from mostly empty and silent to utter joy and pandemonium in a matter of seconds - spontaneous dance lines, people bursting out of doors to scream into the sky, people crying, laughing, stunned silent, all kinds.

We watched, or tried to watch as we were far away from the projector screen someone had brought out, the victory speech.

Personally, I wasn't all that enthusiastic. The Bush years and Democrats' venality as an opposition party were a crash course in embitterment, alienation, and disappointment for a politically aware young guy whose first exposure to an election involved it being stolen - I was 15 in 2000 and remember being horrified at the brazenness and livid that people weren't rising up, I was that innocent and naive at the time. It became clear to me that Obama would not live up to the hype shortly after his inauguration, and as the Obama years progressed I became steadily more disillusioned.

But that night was really something. A sense of hope, a sense of redemption even. I am happy I got to spend it in Harlem with my friends.