A couple of days later I am walking up the street to catch an even earlier bus than usual. At 4 a.m., a teenaged guy is walking across the street. It's the first morning this Autumn in the 30s. He has his coat open and halfway off. As we pass each other, we both stare at the other one. The next morning at 5 a.m., I am at a train station with a guy who sounds as though he is singing drunk. We get on the train and fly through the first snow of the season. He's sitting on a seat before he changes seats. He's in constant motion. He's going through his pack for several minutes. He looks up several times with a puzzled expression on his face. He's endlessly moving his head back and forth. Then his expression is pained. He takes something out of his back pocket, puts it in his pack. His upper body over several minutes is one constant non-stop series of movements back and forth and all over. Most of it is digging in his pack. He makes a happy face and swings his head back and forth. Someone he appears to know gets on and sits across from him. He begins monkeying with a wire (I-pod?). He stands up, moves his pack around his waist, moves it again, moves it a third time. He crosses his legs as he talks to his friend, making gestures with his hands and smiling.
The next morning is another Saturday, and a different pre-dawn train. In front of me is a sleeping guy with sunglasses. It's spitting snow, and will be all day, never getting bright enough for shades. Next to me is a middle-aged guy in a hoodie with an American flag patch on the right shoulder. Behind me is a man with a black handlebar moustache and a cane.
At one time, a city's cultural identity was tied mostly to what...(symphonies, opera, ballet companies, theater companies) did, and they mostly performed the canonical works of Western Europe and North America. We tend to...easily curate for ourselves through technology based on our own idiosyncratic tastes. - Westword Fall Arts Guide (2012)
...drives a Lexus, is married to an attorney, has two children attending private schools that require uniforms, wears high-end designer suits and custom shirts, attends charity dinners for the arts, travels frequently...is an avid cyclist, invests in an art gallery, has a personal trainer, has had cosmetic surgery, uses a Nordstrom personal shopper for clothes, and has Frette linens for the home. - American Drycleaner, 9/2012
Most Denver residents might be taken aback at the thought of opening an establishment where occasionally it can be a bit like Sesame Street, with the occasional strange character strolling by...
Almost all end-time predictions have...a way to be saved. Those who have consciously prepared...will survive and even prosper. They will be able to adapt, accept and move beyond the trials and tribulations of the purification. Working on self-purification now...to position ourselves to flow beyond the hard times. This year's prophesies are planetary, not nationalistic. The end of time is a cross-cultural myth... - Out Front Colorado, 9/19/12
"We're going to be at the epicenter," he says, "We believed in the city of Denver enough to mortgage ourselves fully...and we're still here, and that bet is still paying off."
"...that's why it's such a true, fabulous urban space, recognized nationally as the best in the country. If you just stand out there and take it all in, it's really marvelous.."
...Mayor Michael Hancock...telling Westword that some of the people who formerly slept on Denver's streets and sidewalks have returned to their homes and families as a result. Lucy...has opted instead to move further from the public eye... "I mean, I'm certainly not shopping." - Westword, 10/4-10/2012
It's another Monday. I'm out the door and across the street to the bus stop. A few yards from there, in front of the gas station, standing in the dark are a couple of women. A white van pulls up and drops off a guy, who they appear to know. One asks him if he has a lighter. The next morning, I leave the house a bit late, and catch a slightly later bus up the street. Many of us get off and cross the boulevard to the stop for the crosstown bus. This early, there is hardly any traffic. We approach the stop through the middle of the street, all of us walking in a line, a kind of human wave assault. Most of us are in black hoodies. On the bus, right above the windows are public service advertisements on thin cardboard. One of them falls onto the floor. From the bus to the train, where I get off the train, there is a guy on each side of the platform. One is headed northbound, one southbound. Both are wearing knit jackets of man-made fiber. Both are holding travel mugs at their waists. The morning after, I am at the same bus stop across the street from where I live. At 5 am, it's 41 degrees F. A young guy goes running past the stop, into the gas station before coming out to catch the bus. I never see anyone run anywhere in this neighborhood. He's wearing a T-shirt which reads, "got milk?". On the bus, I hear a middle-aged guy speak to the young guy in what I think is Spanish. The kid mentions something "tripping me out." When we get off, the kid runs across the street to the crosstown stop with his plastic grocery bag from the gas station. I stand across the street from the deathburger to watch employees walk up to the locked door, and have to knock on the window to get someone to let them in. I watch this for fifteen minutes after they are supposed to be open, until I have to catch the bus crosstown.
...the next ones in a leadership succession... They saw the premature close of what their parents had called "the American century"... They have embraced a good many heroes, and discarded most of them. "...people can't have an anti-government mood for a prolonged period of time. The government is the servant of the people, and there should be some measure of goodwill..." ...his answer, I'm afraid, came unintentionally close to parodying Doonesbury's parody of Governor Brown... "Thinking for the year 2000. Where does America fit in? ...the planet is filling up with people and technology... I think people want leaders to discuss the big picture..." he said, the words tumbling out at an accelerating pace, "How do we maximize quality of life...consistent with...other people in other lands?" We were mow far removed from...worries about...social programs... "...if the person is right for the historical period ahead, the people will listen."
"In the Sixties and early Seventies, many..." former senator W. Scranton said, developed "a tendency to love diffusion. The idea was that if I'm different from anybody else, therefore I'm good... They got terribly turned off... But now I think they're digging back in...rather than being revolutionary from the outside." His son, W. W. Scranton III, said "In my father's...and my grandfather's generation...any kind of personal concern they were always uncomfortable with. I think this generation saw that the world couldn't be fixed that way." President Carter remained aloof from the fervor...over the Vietnam war... The alterations in the sexual and social relations...the structure of the family, the church and community. ...Carter evoked the traditional values of a disappearing America. He was welcomed by many as a...churchgoing...businessman, with a devoted...wife, linked by history and the networks of an extended family to his land, his community, his nation and his God. - Changing of the Guard, David S. Broder, 1980
It's Friday morning, 5 am at the train station. A middle aged couple is waiting for a westbound bus. The guy has on his yellow and black Steelers coat, and he has a yellow and black pack. I hear what I think is the sound of a soda can being crushed. This is exactly what he is doing, crushing cans against the ground, and putting them in a clear Ziplock bag. I get on the train, which stop at a private university. Standing at a bus gate is a big, young guy in a T-shirt which reads, "MAN UP." Period. A bit down the line, a guy gets on. He's wearing a generic football jersey. His arms are crossed, as if he is cold. His red face has the weatherbeaten look of the homeless.
...to the emerging leaders is an acute self-awareness...as broad as having grown up in one of the frontiers of American society; the Sun belt...or the kaleidoscope called Suburbia. ...their destiny in their race or in their gender or in their condition. ...meant something different in the period of...the 1960s and '70s from what it had in the 1930s or '40s. ...in this nation...we function as parts of identifiable clusters or networks of peers...bounded by geography, history or common loyalty. ...those networks of young people, forged there in the 1960s and '70s, will shape our politics, government and society increasingly...until the end of the century...when they, in turn, will give way to those who are barely teenagers today. In moving from city to suburb a family is...asserting a desire to throw off...political disciplines. ...choosing a more homogeneous environment, where there are few clashes... "...the very difficult transition of Fresno becoming a major American city. ...as I go and talk to high-school groups and college groups, I sense a very negative attitude about government, and I think that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy." - Broder
I step off the bus at the train station. There in the lamp lights, I can see, spanning most of the distance from the back door to the front one is an advertisement. There are photos of a woman running through tall mountain grass. She's in shorts and a pink windbreaker. A guy is on a mountain bike. Young women are in a yoga class. Another guy is in snowshoes on a snowy trail. At the end is a girl on a swing. It reads, "New homes from the high $200s to over $1 million. Green Living + Economical Living." I step off the train at another train station. A bus pulls into the station. On this one, on the opposite side, is a message the size of one on my bus. This one reads, "Move out of your mom's basement. Riders save $10,000 a year." In 20 years, this guy will have enough to begin living green.
As a 10-year board member of Visit Denver, I'm very aware of the competitive nature of tourism... ...we have to constantly invest millions...to create and preserve positive images. ...Colorado's venerated reputation may be soon overshadowed by the marijuana industry. Remember, this is NOT your father's 1960s marijuana... - Washington Park Profile, 10/2010
...Centennial Statehouse, received the Jury Award for Best Documentary Shrot Film at the TriMedia Film Festival earlier this month. ...has been screening across the state of Colorado all summer (I never heard of it) telling the story behind one of the great architectural treasures of the American West.
Rosa Linda's Bombarded by Hate Mail Rosa Linda's Mexican Cafe would like to apologize to every one we may have offended concerning Mitt Romney, and the article in Westword. We did not refuse him service recently. That is false. - Denver News, 10/10 - 11/10/2012
It's my day off, and I'm on my way home from the bank. I needed to go there before I figured out that I actually didn't have $150 less in my account than I thought I did. On the bus home, a kid got on behind me who didn't have fare. Starving, he says, on his way to a job interview. In a seat, watching him and smiling in sympathy, is a young woman in a tube top under her coat. Her young daughter is next to her. I hear the young mom on her phone. It sounds as though she's speaking to her mom. She's talking about...the girl's father? She saying that "he wont be in forever..." ...(jail, that is? or worse?) After speaking some Spanish, she them mentions something about a psychic.
It's a cold pre-dawn Saturday. I'm coming from the deathburger, toward the bus stop. Before I cross a side street, I can see a car coming. It sounds as if it has a flat tire, as if the tire may be dangling. I hear a rattling. A small hatchback turns the corner. Its right front tire is completely missing. I watch it driving on a bare rim as, having come from as far as I can see down the street, It continues on as far as I can see down the boulevard.
...White House...occupants were not that emotionally involved...in particular causes. Most of them were not marching in...protests of the Sixties... Bert Carp said the salaries offered by private business...mean that "most people like me are going to be lost to government by the time we reach age forty." - Broder
It's a couple of days before Halloween. I have a long walk to the train station. I am thinking about the lives of the people I see on the streets of my own neighborhood. So often they appear so unconcerned about anything, solely aware of their own confined existence. A couple of Sundays ago, I was on the bus to the grocery store. A young guy was describing the neon beer signs he got for his home windows to a derelict guy. The derelict guy, because he "has three kids," has no choice but to "hustle all the time." It's a striking reason, making street hustling appear as a kind of prison rather than some kind of lifestyle statement. I heard an author on CSPAN describe the economy of the 1980s as a time when a credit bubble, together with moms entering the workplace, both defeated inflation. I live in a place where the street people have been transported from the 1970s.
On my way home, I stepped off a bus at the train station. Lurking at the elevator was a guy in a golf shirt and slacks, and his son by the hand. In a voice like a whisper, he asks me for a dollar.
Halloween 2012. A quarter to 8 PM. At the train station, waiting for the bus home. There are a couple of random passengers dressed as "costumed characters", as the sci-fi con puts it. When I step off the train, a guy dressed as a witch, with a shovel handle, is looking around the train to the other side. "Hey Brandi, did you get on the train?" Three drunks wander by, sharing a cigarette. I recognize a short, middle-aged and weatherbeaten guy who has a hat too small for his head. A couple of guys in the parking lot are tossing a football back and forth. The local football team is on top of the western division of the league. To the east, a harvest moon is rising.
