New Yorkers accept vote result, but not the man who won the race

It was late-morning in New York City, and it was raining.

If this was a movie about the city on the day after the 2016 U.S. election, critics would have said it was too cliche. Rain, of course.

But in a world where truth is stranger than fiction and the star of Celebrity Apprentice is about to become president, it somehow made sense. On the Avenue of the Americas, staff at restaurants, bars and cafes abandoned their posts for a couple of minutes and started letting people in to gather around TVs and listen to Hillary Clinton give her concession speech.

Hours later, though, the mood changed. What had been a sombre city in the early afternoon became an angry metropolis by nightfall.

As darkness settled on Manhattan, thousands of New Yorkers took to the streets.

In a Democratic city that spawned Donald Trump, New Yorkers refused to let the Republican president-elect enjoy his victory without hearing their voices.

Clinton had called for unity, and these New Yorkers weren’t trying to question Trump’s legitimacy. He won fair and square, however implausible that might have seemed to the liberal minded masses who stood on 5th Avenue.

You win or you lose in this pesky game called democracy, and the protesters understood that the votes aren’t counted the night after the election. They lost.

But accepting the results of a democratically-contested election didn’t mean they weren’t going to exercise their constitutionally-guaranteed right to make their voices heard. They yelled, they screamed, they chanted in unison, all while knowing that their preferred candidate had been soundly beaten by a man who many would describe as their worst nightmare. Lock him up. She got more votes. F--- you Trump. You name it, they said it. And yet, the mood in front of Trump Tower didn’t read as angry.

Even with the NYPD closing down an eight-block stretch of the city and a police presence that included countless cars, thousands of officers and dozens of trucks carrying sandbags, it never felt as if confrontation was in the air.

One Trump supporter showed up wearing a makeshift cardboardbox costume. It didn’t look like he’d spent much time on it, but at least he’d bought a Sharpie to write ‘Make America Great Again’ in capital letters.

He’d also written ‘Stop Crying,’ but he might have gotten the sentiment wrong. Nobody was crying Wednesday night. The tears might have flowed earlier in the day, but the evening was devoted to a decidedly more brazen attitude.

That lonely protester wasn’t attacked, verbally or physically, but he didn’t get to march through Wednesday’s protest without a few demands that he explain himself.

A young Muslim man asked why the Trump supporter believed he shouldn’t be allowed to work in the country.

A young gay man asked why he shouldn’t be allowed to marry.

A university-aged woman asked why the man in the cardboard box thought it was OK for a president to grab her vagina.

Mostly, the Trump supporter refused to answer.