Above, a crowd mingles at the 2009 South by Southwest Music and Media Conference in Austin, Texas.

It's palpable daily in the city's many outdoor public spaces, where crowds mingle at makeshift markets, at restaurants and pubs, and at its numerous festivals.

Upstairs at the club, a crowd of mystery writers including Thomas Chastain, Dorothy Salisbury Davis and Judith Kelman mingled with publishing executives.

"It is already like another coup d'etat," one of the protesters, a student who gave his name as Paul, said tonight as the crowd surged through the government offices and mingled with lounging soldiers and policemen.

At the Sony after-party at Gotham Hall, a sharply-dressed crowd mingled respectably.

It is at these intersections, where the crowds of dead mingle and cross, that this forbidden highway is most likely to spill through into our world.

In the conference room, a crowd mingled; mostly lawyers from nearby offices, a judge or two, some courthouse types.

As they waited, the crowd of prominent women from business, academia and government had mingled and checked their wristwatches, sipping champagne, nibbling on canapes and trying to hear themselves talk over the strains of an electric keyboard.

People were crossing the street to get to the public beach, the country-club crowd in their tennis whites were mingling with the locals in their bathing suits.