It's the middle of the week. At the deathburger at 5 am. The place appears to have plenty of employees, but they are off to a comparatively slow start this morning. Over the speakers comes "Pretty In Pink." The guy who comes in behind me does not strike me as homeless. But after deciding not to wait for someone to take my order, so that he may place his, I hear him say something before I see him get a cup out of the trash. He goes to the soda fountain and gets a drink without ice. Perhaps he avoids the ice so that he will not draw attention to his clandestine activity. Yet he gets his cup and drink in full view of a girl who is sweeping the floor. I look at her and she looks at me.
An atmosphere of instability and apprehension prevailed. People with property were particularly anxious, and their anxiety spread throughout the social structure. The troubled times of out technological revolution, of mounting debt, of social cataclysm, of war threats...make...apprehensive...people in positions of financial security...middle-class property owners, and those who have vested interests in the church or endowed institutions. Segregated housing...means...children will go to schools attended...by...their own in-group. Stores, medical facilities,churches will be automatically segregated. Neighborhood projects will be ethnocentric... Friendships across boundaries will be difficult or impossible to form. ...if one group...is forced into overcrowded slums, disease and crime will have a high incidence. Serious conflict may occur at the boundaries of the segregated region. It is at this point of junction that ethnic riots are most likely to occur... Especially is this true if the minority belt is expanding... - Allport
Convenience for passengers is a primary concern for...the 2013-2014 American Public Transportation Association (APTA) Outstanding Public Transportation Manager of the Year in North America. ...at the helm of RTD since 2009... "We want to be the catalyst that attracts development." Transit-oriented communities have popped up around the metro area. Transit oriented development (TOD)...making these stops...perhaps with the inclusion of affordable housing...smartly developed transit can reinvigorate communities of color. "Light rail is a community builder and enhancer." Younger people and technology are driving these changes. - Denver Urban Spectrum, May 2014
...developers swooped into inner city neighborhoods altering their cultural aesthetics with "minimalistic" homes... The recent pace is mind-blowing... Does revitalization smash our multicultural and cross-economic bridges? ...small businesses were chased from downtown... "I want to see downtown Denver be a place where everyone can live and enjoy despite your background and income level. It should not mirror Manhattan. How can we struggle to create grocery stores in communities of color, but at the snap of a finger we can create money for a downtown store?" "Denver runs the risk of really becoming an elitist city." Anywhere a light rail line and station are built, younger, white-collar workers are swooping in, thus changing neighborhoods ethnic and economic histories. - Latin Life Denver, Summer 2014
There is not...rhetoric...to convince me or anyone...that this behavior is festive, or culturally misunderstood and part of living in West Denver... ...having their homes and property damaged... - Nextdoor Westwood, 6/6
The person with character-conditional prejudice likes order, but especially "social" order. Lodges, schools, churches, the nation... The consequences of personal freedom they find unpredictable... The need for authority reflects a deep distrust of human beings. - Allport
Thursday. I have the day off, and a cold, and it's another day when I have only had six hours of sleep. I take the bus up the street. Where I step off, in the shelter is an elderly guy with a shopping cart loaded with crap. A winter coat, a towel. I move into the shelter to take his picture. Just as I do, another guy with a pack darts into the shelter. He tells me that he has two hunting knives for sale. When I turn him down, he asks me if I smoke. He's 0 for 2. He then turns to the elderly guy. He assumes that the guy speaks Spanish, and addresses him as 'senor.' The guy waves him away with his hand, and tells him in English, "I don't know who you are." The guy with the pack doesn't like this response. He tells the guy, "Don't get jazzy with me. I'll fuckin' slap you silly you pussy. Don't get jazzy with me." I head across the street to the stop for my connecting bus. Behind it is the parking lot of a bank. For the direction of the lot, I hear yelling. I turn around to see what appears to be a pickup with lights behind the windshield, just like an unmarked police vehicle. This is the first undercover pickup which I've ever seen. It's parked behind a hatchback which has seen better days. There is a guy standing at the open passenger side door of the hatchback. Rather than dressed in uniform, he's wearing cowboy boots. I catch the bus, and down the road, we come upon a stop with a guy and his bike, a Mello Yello, and his earbuds in. The driver has to honk
to let him know the bus has arrived. I'm not paying attention when he gets on, but the passenger calls the driver an asshole.
It's another Saturday, a little after 5:30 am. On Saturdays, I wait for my last connecting bus to work on a corner rather than at the train station. From down the street I can hear yelling. At an opposite corner, I can see a guy pulling a shopping cart which has inside a five gallon bucket, as well as something long across the top of the cart. In his left hand is a bottle in a brown paper bag. He's yelling, "Fuck it! I don't care!" The following morning is my day off. Some time before sunrise, I hear a procession of police cars flying directly up my boulevard with sirens going. Later in the day, I read on my neighborhood association's Facebook page that there had been a kidnapping early in the morning. It happened several blocks away, and the victim was released on the corner where I catch the bus to work on most mornings. Monday, I take a cab back to my neighborhood after working a 14-hour day. I get off at a gas station with an ATM. When I come out to pay the driver, a homeless comes up to me to ask for change for the bus. I don't recognize him. He hits up the driver of another vehicle, who reciprocates. After receiving some coins, he reports to a couple of other homeless guys sitting on the curb of the opposite side of the avenue. One of them I do recognize. The following day I also have off. On my way home from the pool, I walk past the drveway of a home. Standing with a dog, next to the house with an American flag over the garage door, is a guy with long hair and a bandana around his head. A police SUV comes past and slows down to scope this character out. After it goes by, he and his dog appear to be on their way.
On my neighborhood's social media website, they are discussing scams in the form of supposed salespeople going door to door, selling new security systems. One neighbor mentioned that he told a police officer he saw, and the officer appeared uninterested in "what has happened in the past, including yesterday." Someone else posted the news from the latest District Police Commanders meeting. Robbers are out on the streets of the district in the early morning hours. And a suspicious person is going door to door claiming to be selling cable service, wanting to know how many televisions are in the house. On Monday, I am out of the house an hour earlier than usual. I stop into the gas station across the street. There is a sign on the entrance, in both English and Spanish. No bathroom. I'm at the counter when someone comes in behind me and wants to know from the clerk, "Is there a bathroom I can use brother?" The clerk replies, "No brother. That's why I got that sign on the door." The guy says he didn't see it. When he's gone, the clerk says, "He didn't see it because he's hauking shit all over his face."
The essential philosophy of democracy tells us to trust a person until he proves himself untrustworthy. ...those who are more afraid of "swindlers" have higher prejudice scores in general. They feel more threatened by trickery then by direct physical attack. ...it might seem that fear of gangsters...is a more natural and normal type of fear...that...people report. To the prejudiced person, the best way to control these suspicions is to have an orderly, authoritative, powerful society. Strong nationalism is a good thing. What America needs is a strong leader - a man on horseback! - Allport
To the guy driving the car with the super loud muffler who threrw the empty "40" of Old English at my neighbor's front steps...around 1:45 AM, you're on my radar. - "Trolling the neighborhoood," Nextdoor Westwood, 6/12
...as the full tragedy of the Vietnam War unfolded and...Eugene McCarthy challenged Johnson, as humanist values seemed to be resurgent against the rationalist values... - The Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam, 1973
Friday afternoon, after work. I'm downtown at the public library's annual used book sale. It's an odd assortment of "costumed characters" there at the convention center, for a comics convention, and a collection of homeless. A group of students at the book sale appear as if they never come down here. They are asking a security guard about the homeless who are all over the park where the book sale is. He tells them that the library is where they use the bathroom, get a drink of water... Outside the entrance to the library is a guy in a wheelchair, perhaps my own age. His feet are bare, and it appears as if the skin on them are scaly. There is another wheelchair-bound guy who has something wrong with his face which I can't quite distinguish. The following day is a Saturday, when after making a connection I take a 30 or 40 minute ride to work. This is the second Saturday in a row when another driver is training a new one. The new driver tells the other that her class of 15 all agreed that they needed more practice driving before going out to train on a route. He tells her that the transit system has no choice. They need too many new drivers. He also tells her that her class is big, and that a larger class of 17 is right behind her's. On a bus back to my neighborhood after work, I'm sitting behind a young couple. The guy is talking about his attorney, who he claims told him that he can forget about getting custody of his daughter until he gets all his "jail shit cleared up." Once he does this, he was told, he will then "need to spend probably the next two years jumping through their hoops" before even thinking about custody. After this discussion, he then says that he would "like to get the restraining order against me altered." As we roll down the avenue, we pass the occasional marijuana dispensary. He mentions that he is interested in purchasing some marijuana. The girl is pointing out different laces along the way. He says of the last two that they have been closed, including the one across the street from my usual bus stop. He tells her it was closed for failure to pay taxes. He then suggests that he might as well ask someone he knows to drive him to somebody's home "where I can get an ounce for $150." He tells her that, if he pays someone $20 to take him there, "I will be $30 ahead."
The following day is Sunday, Fathers' Day. I'm on a bus to an office supply store. The bus lurches to a halt to pick up someone who suddenly appears from inside a bus shelter at the last minute. Sitting across from me is a drunk with a foot-long healed wound on his leg. I consider taking his picture. I decide that he has no distinguishing features which would identify him as drunk, so I decline. The bus jolts his head into a partition between himself and the driver. A guy next to me asks him if he's okay. he says, "I'm not okay, I got brain damage." He then begins a monologue, which I listen to as I look at him. He asks me why I am looking at him. "You got a case (against me)? You're a white guy. You never help, you just look out for yourself," he drones on. He's right. I never give a penny to any of the drunks or homeless who ask me. I don't smoke, so I never have a cigarette, or even a light. To the extent that this is considered help. I reach for the cord to ring the bell for my stop. He tells me, "Yeah, ring the bell to escape." When I get off, I say "Escape!" He replies, "Yeah, that's right." As I am getting off, someone is getting on. I stop, and he tells me, "Come on." He has to wait anyway for a friend of the drunk, a guy in a wheelchair.
...a banker's view, the right men making the right decisions, stability to be preserved. These were men linked to one another, their schools, their own social class and their own concerns than they were linked to the country. ...the president should take care of rail strikes, minimum wages and farm prices, and they would take care of national security. - Halberstam
"...I was under a lot of pressure to 'reach the American dream' or 'become more American' because it would help me 'succeed in life.' ...my decision to attend a predominantly white institution was instantaneous." ...with the decision to join a traditional as opposed to a multicultural fraternity, hoping to give his social status a boost and facilitate his integration into white culture. "I definitely had to find different ways to relate to them and make a name for myself in the fraternity. I was once called the token Hawaiian and that I represented diversity." ..."microaggressions" contribute to the covert institution of racism... "I began pushing away my cultural identity... My Otherness became a punchline..." ...at the University of Denver..."Higher education has provided me with a context to examine and work toward disrupting forms of oppression, specifically racism, sexism, and classism." - Asian Avenue Magazine, 6/2014
...my education was...designed to...force me to confront my demons... ...helped me access the raw pain of my experiences as a transgender man...challenged us to reexamine our assumptions... Thank you for inspiring me to take pride in...how the intersectionality of my identity frames who I am and what I can be. ...by fighting stereotypes of black trans woman. - Out Front, 6/4/2014
This is a urban age. And the United States is undergoing...urbanization. - The Urban Complex, by Robert C. Weaver, 1964
...we noticed...how vibrant Denver is in comparison to some of the other cities we have seen - to say nothing at all about the growth that is happening in Denver, not just downtown... We have many more resources for homeless individuals than many other parts of the country. I now understand why so many homeless come to Denver from other states.
...everybody meets to share their stories. Participants are referred...by...organizations...such as...The Gathering Place... ...a former participant gives a witness as to how their life was before and after Christ's involvement. Kathy F. (who did not provide her last name)... "...when I went to the retreat I didn't feel homeless. Because homeless individuals have pretty much lost everything, they can tend to have a closer relationship with God." "There was no pressure, just God's love." On the last day of the retreat, a participant fills out paperwork that includes a place to write a letter to God and reflect on what she learned.
...many addicts do not connect the addictive process to the various mental health issues they contend with... What is ironic is that many of these people are not even aware they have mental health issues... - Denver Voice, 6/2014
"Viso Divina" (Latin for "divine seeing")...invites one to gaze at an image and ask what God might be trying to say...not about asking what the artist intended or what an image "means." Such questions are set aside as they arise - as we...step away from mentally processing what we are looking at. We are invited to be surprised and even transformed as we attempt to see with our heart rather than our mind.
...what we do best is treat our guests with respect and dignity... One of our guests even told us...that she knew if she could get to St. John's, then everything would be all right. Who are these women who stay with us? They are young, they are old, they are funny, they are scared, they are resilient...who had not eaten in two days. Another showed up with only two towels...for a coat. Some feel forgotten. Many feel despair. Being homeless is exhausting... They often say how unbelievable it is that perfect strangers are willing to help them. ...they are often made to feel as if they do not belong. But God never intended for there to be an "us" and a "them." - Open Door, June/July 2014
Monday. As I approach the entrance to the deathburger, I can see through the glass, Mr. Footlong Goatee is on a long seat on his back. At the entrance is another guy who I have seen here once or twice before. He is standing with his back to the building. He is just staring out into the parking lot, out into space. When I spot an employee inside emerge from the kitchen, I step into the space between himself and the entrance, to tap on the glass. Only when the emploiyee opens the door does he break his trance. The following morning, my other brother's birthday, there are a couple of guys at my usual bus stop. I see certain passengers here on certain days, and on other days it's as if they have vanished. The one I've seen before looks as tough he works construction. He asks the other, "Do you pay child support?" The other answers, "Hoo, yes. Fourteen years. One more year (to go.)" It's another morning when I'm working on six hours of sleep. After a day of filling in for a driver, and driving back and forth across the metro area, I'm exhausted. After work, I find a seat on a train home and close my eyes. I'm listening to a girl talk about her boyfriend to someone sitting across from her. "Yaaa. His job now is moving furniture, so his arms are like all muscly. He's so tan he's like black now. I'm this five foot two white girl he's this six foot four guy with a black tan..."
Channel 7 is on the corner along with police and a CSI van. Does anyone know what's going on? - Nextdoor Westwood, 6/17
Hump Day. Train station. 5:30 AM. On the train platform, I can smell someone having some pot before heading off to begin their day. As the dawn breaks, smoke from Arizona forest fires is visible shrouding the distant Rockies.
The Detectives just left. I guess a homeless person got beat up pretty bad. "Might Die" as one of the detectives said to me. He also said, "When you have a governor who don't want to build more homeless shelters. This is what happens."
Shelters wouldn't have prevented this.
I think that's a bit unfair... Denver is...homeless friendly...
This place has been a festering boil for a while. (The property where this assault occurred.) - Westwood Residents Association Facebook page, 6/18
...American elective politics...is...a great humanizing force, particularly for the strong, for those who already have advantages and resources. These men can manage to...absorb...a feeling for the country, a certain respect and almost affection for its foibles. - Halberstam
Last summer... I gardened at the Governor's Mansion. We call it "the G-M." I was living a dream from my girlhood, a dream about my life in a big house. In that dream I was myself the political power... "Oh, look," one youngster announced, "There's somebody who works here!" ...hymn tunes followed me... "All my hope on God is fou-ou-ou-ound-ed. What with care and toil he buildeth...We are still wee-ee - ding the-e- ca-a-bbage patch!" In a hungry city, where one in four children is considered "food insecure" (a strange term that means a child...has plenty of Coke and Cheetos to eat)... Can't American ingenuity feed people "at the speed of business"...? We have nowhere to spend in air and sun, with water and soil, no way to remember...gardens of Eden, Gethsemane, of Heaven. God with us in the Garden. "Immanuel." And we sing. Quietly, please, for God prefers mercy. Perhaps we are about to garden in a new season of social justice. - Open Door, June/July 2014
Thursday. Deathburger. 5 AM. I watch a guy come in. He sits down. He gets up and leaves. I see him when I get to my usual bus stop. He's talking to someone else there, telling them that he ran into a friend and that they grabbed a six pack. "Wooo, we got a buzz..." He says that he "got in trouble with my old lady. I didn't come home one night." A couple of other guys show up. One tells the other that he has a long walk to catch the bus up the street. His bicycle was stolen. When he contacted the city about it, he was told that "There's a courthouse where all the lost bikes are." The guy who didn't order from the deathburger says he works at an auto mechanic shop. "Yesterday there was a girl there. She wanted me to come home with her."
It was a glittering time. They literally swept into office... ...these were brilliant men...who acted rather than waited... ...no time to wait, history did not permit that luxury... Everyone was going to Washington (D.C.) ...it was going to be great fun... We seemed about to enter an Olympian age... ...the better to define a common good. It seems a long time ago now, the excitement which swept through the country...that the government had been handed down from the tired, flabby chamber-of-commerce mentality... Day after day we read about them, each new man more brilliant than the last. - Halberstam
...DENVER'S MUSIC SCENE It's a cherished music-festival tradition: You...pick the bands...plot your day and ultimately throw the whole thing out the window. "...you just met someone who is new to the Denver music scene. What piece of advice would you give...?" "We already have enough banjos and MacBooks here." "Get yourself some sunscreen and keep drinking water." "...don't be one of these people who just moved here and is excited to 'put Denver on the map.'" "Do whatever you want." WHY COLORADO? "Colorado is certainly a place that the masses are paying attention to." "...no one is a dick." "The perks, man. So many perks. Basically free meals everywhere...handshakes from successful businesspeople..." "...really righteous people." "The metal scene in particular is a tight-knit group of individuals." INFREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS You can bring...your (empty) water containers. You cannot bring your flag. "How many wheels can my shoes have?" Absolutely none. "How can I convince that cute music-dork dude or dudette with the fictional-animal tattoo that we have tons in common?" ...say something...about how many bruises you got while dancing at the last The Dang Dangs show. It Takes a City ...Denver is an island in a sea of metropolis-free plains. ...a scene that is benefiting from the side effects of a young, growing population. ...Denver's growth has made it harder for DIY venues to find a home here. ...has resulted in higher rents, and the booming pot industry has created more demand for places that might have housed such venues... - Westword, 6/19-25/2014
Another Saturday at 5 AM. The weeks this month are blowing past. At the bus stop across the street from where I live is a regular passenger, listening to another guy who I've never seen. The other guy is comparing the lack of arrest powers of security personnel versus those of police officers. Up the street at the deathburger, a guy walks in. He's in a Goodwill T-shirt, and has a ponytail and a bottle of Vitamin Water. he saunters into the men's room, saunters out a bit later, and asks an employee about the menu. After using the facilities, he declines to purchase any food and leaves. I catch the bus to a stop from which I walk to the corner. I watch a guy across the street, hobbling along. He's the skinniest guy I've ever seen. Regardless of his shoulder-length grey hair, I am willing to bet that, rather than his appearance in the breaking dawn of eighty or ninety years old, he's actually decades younger.
According to the homeless community, this is the 5th homeless killing in recent weeks. Some of them are VERY scared and worried and feel like the police are not dealing with the situation in a way that makes them feel safer. I know this particular (homeless) man (who was murdered). - Westwood Residents Association FB page
...$1.8 million in extra funds for the Denver Police Department...would allow the DPD to hire ten additional police officers to patrol downtown...($900,000 of this money is earmarked for increased arrest and detentions costs for an estimated 330 additional arrests). - Westword, 6/26 - 7/2/2014
Tuesday. I am catching a ride to work this week. I'm in the gas station across the street at ten after 4 am with a guy in a transit system uniform. He's telling the clerk that today is his first day driving a bus route by himself. His routes are away from here, but he tells the clerk that he wants to drive the route that goes up and down this boulevard. Of his neighborhood friemds, he says that he wants "to watch them all faint" when they see him behind the wheel.
"Mother...believed that there are...classes in society... We sometimes kidded her about it, bit it was assumed in the family that none of us would want to become bus drivers." - Halberstam
...2 - 3 Hispanic male suspects in their late teens or early 20s...on foot. ...they have a younger child come to a local homeowner's door asking if the homeowners have seen their lost Chihuahua. Before returning to burglarize the homes. - Nextdoor Westwood, 6/23/2014
Hump day, ten after 4 AM. Gas station. As I approach the entrance, a panhandler I've never seen occupies the resident panhandling spot here, the south side of the trash can. In a gravelly voice, he asks me for spare change. Inside, the clerk is talking to a delivery guy about panhandlers who "will walk up on anybody, little kids..."and ask for change. "If you say no, they'll sucker punch you, try to rob you. You tell them to leave, you tell them you'll call the cops, they say, 'Call the cops ! Fuck you bro! This is my neighborhood!' What are the cops gonna do? They think, 'What's this snitch motherfucker want?' So I fight with them."
So great are the consequences...heralded by the present rise of the urban complexity of..."strip cities" - vast areas of urban development stretching sometimes for hundreds of miles and encompassing cities, towns, and metropolitan areas...that...often gives one the feeling of looking at...a new stage in human civilization...the cradle of a new order in the organization of inhabited space. - Weaver
After a short workday on another Saturday, I'm downtown for lunch at a bagel place. I can see out on to the pedestrian mall, which is host this weekend to some kind of handmade art fair. Booths line the median between the lanes where the mall shuttle runs. Groovy pedestrians are going to and fro. It's a beautiful day, with no heat and a cool wind. Along comes a skinny guy. His pants are cinched tight to keep them from falling off his thin frame. I watch as he heads toward a patio table, from which he picks up an unfinished fountain drink in a plastic cup. Drink in hand, he labors down the sidewalk. It's a not-so-new stage in human civilization, a not-so-inhabited space. Speaking of which, a trio of teenaged girls wearing matching grey shirts shows up. The shirts read "restored." I suspect that they belong to a Christian "youth group." I head out and wait for a shuttle. Along the sidewalk comes a guy with grey in his hair, wearing sunglasses and an old bomber jacket. He's just moving along with the foot traffic. When he passes, I can see a big hole down the back of his right pant leg, through which I can see a second pair of pants.
Monday. 5 AM. I'm inside the deathburger as yet another guy without access to indoor plumbing comes in to use the men's room, and then walks out. This one doesn't even pretend to be interested in the menu. At my usual bus stop are two young lovers in each others' arms, and another guy on the bench looking glum. I take the bus to the train. At the next train stop, a father and son get on with their bikes. The son asks the father if they "can go to the movies after this?" I wonder why a father and son are out on their bikes before 6 AM, and what the "this" is which they must do a good four hours before any matinee begins. The father has salt and pepper stubble which matches his crew cut. He's wearing a grey tank top and long black shorts. We all get off at the same stop. I watch as they rush to grab a crosstown bus. I heard him tell his son which bus they were going to take to the movie with their bikes. These guys have a long, strange trip ahead of them. When my bus shows up, it has a few minutes for a layover. When I flash the driver my pass, he replies, "Mmm-hmm."
It's up to us - it's our responsibility - to make our words pop off the page...to make the reader say, "Even if my microwave catches fire, I can't "not" read this next "graph."
You join...a legendary wordsmith...who really knows how to get Denver talking.
...these...icons... They run this city. The modern columnist must be omnipresent and must be multi-faceted. ...must be able to become relevant on Twitter - short-term reactions - and...in print or on the website - long-term reactions. ...the key is providing readers something that the dude on his couch can't. ...you have to separate yourself, become a brand, grow a following... Stave off irrelevance. - Mile High Sports, June 2014
