WELCOME TO HISTORIC downtown LITTLETON...where since 1867 the shop keepers have been pleasant, the food fantastic, the products unique, the entertainment enchanting, and the services personal. ...one of the Denver area's 10 best places to live, shop, and work. ...the best place to raise kids in Colorado. - Historic Downtown Littleton 2013 Spring/Summer Merchant Directory
...dads...to take on their share of responsibilities...don't want to look like a mom... "All dads have a style. We don't want to wear some pink quilted ladies diaper bag,"...
...this town, which won award after award for being among the happiest places in the country...one of America's Dream Towns (Outside Magazine)... - Colorado Parent, 6/13
...the new morality and the evolution in codes of conduct...taken over by the immature who have built up no sustaining social disciplines...it means "doing one's own thing"...with little regard for the social consequences. When such a rejection of codes of conduct is accomplished by a rejection of "the Establishment"...a cultural revolution is upon us. - Women in Church and Society, by Georgia Harkness, 1972
The practice of radiating 'True Light' from the hand is called Mahikari No Waza or purification and was practiced by Buddha and Jesus Christ according to ancient teachings. - natural awakenings, 6/13
I GOT A NOTE THE OTHER DAY from a business owner downtown. ...featured in our newspaper...she didn't want. ...what do homeless people want with her product? ...she was too busy to talk, to learn, and said she'd call back. She hasn't. So I sent a sweet note. Can't win them all. - Denver Voice, 6/13
It's a Sunday. I'm on my way crosstown. At the bus stop across the street from where I live is a guy doing push-ups. When I get there, I see that he is drinking something in a brown paper bag. He says to me, "After a 12-hour shift, this beer sure tastes good." He gets on with me and is telling someone that he works next door to a liquor store. They come in where he works "all fucking night," but when he goes into the liquor store after work, they ask to see his ID. There is another guy sitting up front. He's complaining that the native Americans "we're doing just fine, smoking their weed," when the white man landed and made it illegal. When a kid comes on and off just to grab a transfer, after he gets off, the guy says, "Queer." From the bus, I jump on the train into downtown. There are a group of adults listening to one guy, rapidly talking about the best place to purchase fresh meat. When I glance at the guy talking, I notice that the tip of one of his fingers is missing. Today, there is a comic book convention in the performing arts center while a festival is going on in the park. From the train, I jump on a mall shuttle. Amid the beautiful people is a homeless guy, in overalls and a sports jersey. His cardboard sign is folded between his bib and shirt. I have to walk a couple of blocks past the festival to catch another bus. At the stop is a young woman walking back and forth between a door to some upstairs apartments and an apartment window, up above a store front. She yells up to him at the window, "We fought last night. I need my small bag of change. Don't throw it down, open the door!" I catch my bus to see a movie. Afterwards, I make it back through the festival and convention-goers to a stop for my bus home. It's at the edge of a community college campus with benches made of concrete and tile inlay. On one of these is a middle-aged couple with their mouths open, as if they have just witnessed a murder, at a couple of drunks. A young couple, perhaps from the comics con, are waiting in line with those of us headed back to my neighborhood of thieves and cutthroats. The girl is dressed in a short dress and black fishnet hose. When the bus comes and we get on, they pass up a seat with crumbs, which I sit in.
It's later in the week. I am at my usual bus stop. It's perhaps a quarter past five am. A derelict who does not appear familiar shuffles up next to me. With a standard, "Hey, bro...", he tells me that he was hit by a bus, and he slowly pulls up his sleeve to show me a gigantic lump on his arm. I ask him how this happened. According to him, he was witness to a crowd of high school kids watching a fight. He was "at the wrong place on the grass." I suspect that he means between the sidewalk and the street. And they bumped him, he was knocked into the street, and was hit by a bus from behind. The hospital also told him, he claims, that they want to amputate his leg. I ask why. He says that it's because it has "screws and a plate" in it. He appears as they all do, tired from having been awake for who knows how long. He speaks and moves slowly. He tells me that he is trying to get to a hospital. I ask what a doctor told him. He replies that he was told to come back for a check-up. He just needs fifteen cents. At the same time, he doesn't "even know how much the bus is" now. Is it "twenty-five cents?" It may have been before I moved here more than twenty years ago. He hasn't asked me to call an ambulance, of which I see plenty on these boulevards from day to day. I ask if he is going to any hospital in particular. He mentions several relatives who have homes. When the bus shows up, he steps in front of me. I step around him and get on. He follows me as the driver tells him, "No. Off. No." He asks me, "So, you can't help me out? Please?" He really wants that fifteen cents. I say, "Bye." Eight months later, I will see this guy on a bench down the street in the afternoon, leaning over and either passed out or dead with his eyes open. He will be taken away in an ambulance.
The following morning, I am back in the deathburger behind a guy who appears dressed as a contract transit employee. I watched as someone dropped him off. He says to the woman behind the counter, "No cream I said." He points to the coffee pot. "How fresh is that coffee?" The manager comes out to tel hi that they can brew a fresh pot if he so desires. He takes his coffee and disappears. I say to the woman in Spanish, "white people." "White people," she answers. When I get to the bus stop, a guy is there who must have been there the morning before. He asks me what the derelict said to me. I told him, and he said that he was going to pay the guy's bus fare. I have an unexpected reaction to this, which is that it makes me feel a part of the gang waiting for the bus early in the morning.
"neighborhood chit chat"
...we get a lot of STRANGE people in our neighborhood passing through so Most of us around here just kind of stay to ourselves with all the weirdos around here!! I hear dogs crying at night when I go to let my dogs out... ...I used to walk my lab years ago but won't now too dangerous!!! Too many strangers. If I had the money, I would move out...
We have had murders, robberies, break ins. Drug dealing. ...the cops never did anything about this neighborhood. Here...people come SPEEDING... ...kids...won't even play in the front yards. TOO SCARED! This neighborhood is changing for the worse...
...we walk our dog, but nobody is friendly. The landlords in the neighborhood are scumbags. ...across the street from me... The tenant has been there for years, she sits outside and screams at people coming and going from her home. A couple of years ago, her "guests" sat in their pickup truck and removed the steering wheel, started it up and backed it out - into our gate. No ticket was issued b/c no steering wheel on vehicle. They were drunk! ...unless you want everyone to see you file a complaint, ain't nothing going to happen. If we had the money, we'd up and move too!
It was not even like this even 10 years ago! Everyone is afraid...as we think they deal drugs...
Let's figure a way to get together & talk about these problems.
We've been here for 20+ years and it's going downhill rather fast.
We must get this neighborhood back. I'm so sick of what's going on around here.
Called the police about the huge fireworks going off... They...tried to talk me out of signing a complaint! They...did nothing...because they could not get anybody to answer the door.
I have tried to force the issue several situations to get the police to act.
Seems to me this area is becoming a powderkeg the cops are afraid to come down here... AND LORD knows, you wouldn't want to...be afraid if you walk out of the door someone will shoot you!!! Or them!!!
We stopped calling the police b/c they won't do anything about...fireworks going off in our neighborhood... I've been told on several occasions in the past our (local district's) cops are the worst for getting anything done. - Nextdoor Westwood
I'm downtown on my day off, to copy of my ID. Later in the evening, I will close on a refinance of my home. I stop by my bank to make a withdrawal and see if they can make me a copy. Their copy machine is down. I grab breakfast and head off to the downtown library's annual booksale. I pick up 14 books. As I am putting them into a big duffel bag, a homeless guy comes by with his shopping cart. "Is this where the booksale is?" "Yeah," I say. Can I help him out with some change, he wants to know. I tell him, well, I just bought these books. He wants to know if I have anything left. On the corner, someone offers me a couple of small bags of pretzels and a sample of hummus in an uncovered cup. I put it in the bag with the books. Before I grab some lunch, I stop back by my bank, which still is not able to get its copier to work. I pick a copy of the city's homeless newspaper from a vendor, who tells me that he is this month's featured vendor. At lunch, I go to pull out a book. I find that the hummus has spilled onto some of them. I spend some time wiping globs of hummus off of Chinese travelogues from the 1980s. From there, I spend some time walking for blocks, looking for a Kinko's. I finally find a Post.Net. I make it to a train, which takes me to a stop for a bus home. Downtown is hosting both a comics convention and a baseball game. At the bus stop, a guy asks me for spare change. When the bus comes, it's almost full. The driver tells waiting passengers not to be rude and to let a wheelchair get on first. After the wheelchair made it on the bus, the driver told the rest of those waiting to board that there is no more room. A woman with a stroller says, "Are you fucking serious?" She says about her daughter, "She's just a baby baby. " She asks about folding the stroller and holding her daughter on her lap. Nope. Someone else tells her, "It's like they want you to kiss their ass." Someone else yells at the driver, "This is the second bus!" Meaning that the last one for this same route to come by was also full. I decide to walk to another train station, which will take me crosstown to my connecting bus. It begins to rain...but turns out to be a false alarm.
Space in the priority seating and securement areas is limited. Disabled passengers, including individuals in wheelchairs may not have other options for seating. - transit service pamphlet
The following Sunday is the first day of the season during which I make it to the pool. On the way, I walk past the home of a panhandler, just down the street from me. Today, the front door of his house is either open, or it's missing. What I can see of the inside is completely empty. There is a grill and/or a hose gone from the back yard. There is a car in the driveway. I don't remember the last time I saw him in his usual spot at the corner of a business. The next morning, at 5 am, I'm on my way across the street to catch a bus to work. At the gas station are who I think are a couple of kids, but is actually a middle-aged couple with a little dog, at the Red Box. When I get to the bus stop, I see them walking across the middle of the boulevard, the wife/boy packing a pack of smokes. An oncoming car has to slow down for them. A couple of mornings later, I watch a different couple cross the middle of the same boulevard.
The middle of the week, I work a closing shift in the southern part of the city. When I step off the bus, for the first time in my life I am standing in the midst of visible smoke. On the grass is a charred piece of I don't know what. There are four forest fires burning in the mountains and one fifty miles to the south. By the evening the air had cleared. The sun went down as patches of orange through an overcast sky. It came up the following morning the same way.
...when embers began raining down and a state trooper pulled into his driveway, yelling they had 10 minutes to flee... "When we moved out here, there were no houses, just prarie." ...20 years ago. "There must be thousands and thousands of houses now." "You can either choose to neighbor or not, and if...not to, everyone leaves you alone. You live in the country so you can do what you want." Ariel images showed...blotches of grey ash where houses once stood. "Every time the black smoke shoots up like that, it's got to be a house"... Trailers had melted into streams of molten metal. "...I knew my house was going to be gone"... The fire had stopped at his fence. - Denver Post, 6/13/13
On Fathers' Day, I run into a middle-aged guy who is looking to borrow a phone. He sticks his head into a deathburger to ask someone. He tries the door of the business next door, but it's locked. He is wearing a T-shirt which reads, "It's five o'clock somewhere. Let's start drinking." The next morning at 5 am, I am headed across the street to the bus stop. I watch as a line of high school senior-aged kids file to the stop. There are perhaps four males in T-shirts and caps, and a couple of girls dressed for a night on the town. When the bus comes, they all file on, and one of the guys says hi to "all the drunk motherfuckers on the bus." In the deathburger are three more kids younger than the others.
A recent drug bust netted 45 weapons. Residents...reported a white van acting as a mobile drug selling point. ...a small girl was dragged, screaming, into a building but it took over an hour for police to respond. - Nextdoor Westwood
I'm back at the bus stop across the street at 5 am. I watch a teenaged kid on a mountain bike. With his left hand, he is steering a second bike he has with him. He's just slowly cruising up the dark boulevard with it. At the stop, a guy tells me that the kid asked him if he wanted to purchase a bike "cheap."
...I had to be a victim of att. auto theft Sunday night...neighbor says happened at three but didn't tell me until 4 pm next day. They broke my whole ignition...cops say that summer has not even started and they have tons of these reports.
This is the new normal. My neighbors watched as i did when a black Humvee II with two male Hispanics started shooting out the passenger window in broad day light around 11 am last summer. ...and...refused...to even...make a witness statement.
Bicycle Thefts
With the warmer weather...we have...bicycle thefts...around RTD bus stops and Light Rail Stations... - Nextdoor Westword
...reluctant to accept as their equals these...who submitted to no one, who came from nowhere and spent half their time in hiding, who captured baggage trains and shared the spoils... Civilians do not ordinarily desire to disrupt the pattern of day-to-day living with violence of military conflict. Large cities provide suitable access for the activities of partisans engaged in actions...not usually military... ...although he may at times assist...the community, cannot be considered as one of its self-sufficient or even contributing members. The day may come when nations, with their cities leveled and communications systems destroyed, will be forced to rely upon extremely decentralized organization and highly flexible strategy in order to survive. - Modern Guerilla Warfare, ed. by F. M. Osanka, 1962
...it's also a mad liberal's vision of an America beset by white wingnut terrorists, set in a sketch-comedy White House so broad that...starring as its president you might guess it to be Leslie Nielsen. Set in a science-fiction America where nobody's ever seen Die Hard... I won't spill their leaders' affiliation , but I will give this hint: It's with one of the industrial complexes. The dozens of dead hardly bleed, the word "fuck" is only spat once during the greatest crisis America's ever faced, children endlessly weep with guns in their faces. - Westword, 6/27 - 7/3
It's 5 am at my usual bus stop. A guy, who is taking large steps, comes up the street and tries the door of the deathburger, only to find it locked. He strides to the newspaper box to check the coin return, strides to the trash can at the bus stop to peek inside. He turns around and heads back to the deathburger. When he sees that it is now open, he says something about "paying customers." He has an empty cup with him. He strides over to the fountain and fills it up with ice. He says, "What, no water?" and strides out, saying, "Gonna break my jaw?" He disappears into the dawn.
Unlike the average citizen of a democratic country, the guerrilla does not feel ill at ease in the presence of conflict... - Osanka
A staff writer from the Denver Post is doing a story about the history of Westwood. Who has lived here for over 30 years?
A youth and adult group from Arlington, TX will be here in Westwood...working on outdoor projects through Extreme Community Makeover... - Nextdoor Westwood
Community members seeking to help the homeless will be able to make donations by swiping their debit or credit card or dropping spare change at any of the Better Way to Give smart meters located throughout the city. ...replacing the existing red...with new, light blue smart meters. "We selected the color blue because... Blue symbolizes strength, new beginnings, optimism, all qualities the homeless must embrace on the journey to self-sufficiency," Mayor Hancock said. ..designate all meter donations for the next year towards mental health services and substance abuse treatment. - Denver News, 6/10-7/10/13
It's Saturday. Five am. The streets are empty. The bus up the street is full. In one seat is a middle-aged guy in boots, denim pants and jacket, cowboy hat, and teardrop sunglasses. He is surrounded by passengers who look nothing like him. At my usual bus stop, local drunk Richard Spotted Bird shows up, looking for someone to acknowledge his presence. Alas to no avail. He passes me and busts one of his trademark moves. He quickly put his hand out as if to ask for money, before taking it back just as fast. He's off around the corner.
On the bus home from work, a guy and a kid are talking about just being released from county jail. The guy tells the kid that he was arrested and put in the hospital. He has a reaction to aspirin, "That's why I went off on that nurse." They discuss three jails being closed down. The guy is waiting for a shipment of sunglasses to come in.
The following day, I am on my way to the swimming pool. I pass by a home where a panhandler lived, at least for the six years during which I've lived in this neighborhood. A couple of weeks ago, I passed by and saw the door standing wide open, the place empty, and a car in the drive. Today, there is a completely different family living there, with a huge inflatable swimming pool in the back yard.
The next day at work, I glance outside to see what may be a red-tailed hawk, turning circles in the air with another smaller bird.
A new week begins, when I will catch a ride to work with a neighbor. On my way to her place at the beginning of the week, I am passed in the street by a teenager on a tiny BMX bike. I wonder what a teenaged kid is doing on his bike at 4 am? A couple of days later, I'm in the gas station across the street before I head over to catch my ride. The guy behind the counter pulls out a foot-long pipe, maybe PVC, with a key on a ring attached to one end. is talking to another employee. "Look what the boss gave me. It's the key t the bathroom. I could beat someone up with this, right? I could mess their legs up. I don't want to show no heart." (?) The other employee says, "Yeah, you don't want to leave no evidence."
...a hookah lounge...a dance venue...where smoke pipes...are available... They have been evicted twice as I understand it. a recent post from their Facebook page... I'm not really sure what some of this means. Our newest District...Lieutenant...has made it his goal to learn as much as possible about these establishments...
.3 different people while coming to my house...to pull into the driveway...have been cut off by the people behind them. The other car is generally swearing, honking, throwing the finger, etc.
Several chases...netted several suspects, including one related to a homicide and the other a 3 or 4 times convicted felon. - Nextdoor Westwood
...if we ever put a thumb on the scale, it should be...always looking for what, and who, is being left out of the mainstream consciousness. ...a journalistic ethic...an activist ethic, an anti-oppression ethic, a community-building ethic and a spirit of arts and humanities... - Out Front, 6/19/13 - 6/3/13
"...drive...to Greeley and tour the mall. Half the shops are shuttered, and just about the only people left are the little bangers with nowhere else to hang out and a handful of shoppers who don't feel like heading all the way to Loveland... ...we were enamored with Park Meadows... It was like taking a time machine back to when malls were relevant but without having to listen to Tiffany or Debbie Gibson..." - Westword, 6/27 - 7/3
It's my day off from work. I'm on my way to do some grocery shopping. Outside my door, I head across the street. There, in his usual parking lot, is the panhandler who moved out of his house. He has a 40 oz. bottle in a plastic grocery bag, out of which he is taking occasional swigs. Last Mothers' Day is the first time in my six years of living in this neighborhood, and seeing him, in which I ever remember seeing him drunk. On the bus home from shopping is a woman in her fifties, with a suitcase with wheels and a handle. She is standing and talking to the driver, who appears to know her. She is telling him that she can get free beer, that she gets people out of jail... I notice that she is missing the tips of her first two fingers on her left hand. A short time after getting home, I am back out of my door to go swimming. I cross the street of the panhandler's previous home, to see him standing in front of his old digs, his thumb briefly out and his bagged bottle in the other hand. When I come back a short time later, he is passed out on the sidewalk in the shade of a tree, across the street from where I live. Some passersby stop to make sure he is still alive.
After work on the last Saturday of the month, I am waiting to change buses in my neighborhood. One of the people waiting with me is a woman in a white sequined tank top, work gloves, and random tattoos including one for Danzig. In the bus shelter, she has a red toy wagon with a bag of big wires or equipment. She bums a cigarette and tells someone that she can build her own motorcycle. When the bus comes, she asks the driver how soon we can make it sixty blocks north. I am waiting to watch her bring her wagon full of crap on the bus. She must not have liked the driver's answer, because she declines to come along. She wheels off into the afternoon.
One car pulls up, remains idling. Second car pulls up and either drops someone off or the driver gets out and gets in the first car. First car drives off with the new passenger. The first car is likely the dealer... The police...recommend reporting...and....the dealers will find somewhere else to go. ...no sense inviting trouble by walking outside... - Nextdoor Westwood
