...an Internet radio show hosted by Thurlow "T.L." Weed...transformed into a cannabis club under Weed and his wife, Little Tree Oppy. T.L. Weed: "My son and I have launched a YouTube channel, Weeds Garage... ...my Instagram was shut down three times in one month. My content kept getting flagged..." LittleTree Oppy: "...I won't be handling any more rallies. There's a whole new generation that can take that activism torch. ...my time is done." T.L. Weed: The thing about trying to be a pioneer is that after...that rough terrain...you...get to where you're trying to go, you're beaten. ...the emotional side...beat me up more than the business part." - Westword, 11/21-27/2019
...a pedestrian-friendly, outdoor experience, fully integrated with multifamily...hospitality and entertainment that incorporates sculptures and fountains...
Perhaps it is because we are founded on high principles by colonists who knew...they wanted...to make their Western dream come true.
...the classic cozy, small-town feel combined with new and growing neighborhoods. It is now home to multinational corporations... ...some things will always stay the same - its community-focused nature, homegrown vibe and its commitment to history. We are an affluent, family-oriented community, with agrarian roots and a clear vision for the future. - NOCO 2019-20 The Easy Guide to Northern Colorado
"Crested Butte is in a huge investment phase. Certain business owners are excited and others see the change as negative." ...the strain of affordable housing for full-time locals...is exacerbated by a higher socioeconomic class...introduced to the [Vail] Valley... ...the already powerful Airbnb market...competes with long-term rentals. - Elevation Outdoors, 11-12/2019
The far right, for example, believes that giving the homeless beds...in...hospitals, in an invitation to immorality and sloth. They suggest...the homeless...should be given addresses...so that they will no longer be excluded from Richard Viguereie's mailing lists. Another proposal...is to let the homeless continue their al-fresco existence but give them each something decent to wear - a little bubble skirt, for example, or one of the new mini suits from Donna Karan's collection. [And] there is a new plan afoot to institutionalize anyone found on the street mumbling the words "housing crisis."
Give an unemployed and bankrupt person a little help, according to welfare critics George Gilder and Charles Murray, and he or she will lapse into the psychic slough known as demoralization - from which few ever venture forth again to seek honest employment at an hourly wage. ...even [to those earning an annual income only] in the four-figure range... ...the misery of demoralization...is after all only a product of big government...
As the...baby boomers...age, the argument goes, their incomes will rise and America will once again be a...middle-class society. But...the baby boom...can account for a less than one-third of...the income inequality... ...men who became forty in 1973 saw...earnings decline by 14 percent by [age] fifty. ...divorce [is] splitting [family members] into different social classes. Single mothers now account for almost half the household heads in poverty. …"today, the doctor marries another doctor, not a nurse." ...marriage is less likely to offer a woman a chance at upward mobility. ...the economy has been "globalized." ...the American economy has been "deindustrializing"... ...to compete [globally] employers have...cut labor costs... …"no one's going to win because a low-wage society cannot be an affluent society."
...polarization of American society...creates its own dynamics... ...the affluent...avoid contact with the destitute... They abandon public services...which then deteriorate. ...the better-off...withdraw political support for...the community as the whole. The liberal "effete snobs" that Spiro T. Agnew railed against are as rare today as republicans on the Medicare rolls. "The growth of the new urban upper middle class stimulates...low-wage jobs. ...a kind of 'servant class... - Ehrenreich
...School Choice...Gentrification - Park Hill Land - Slavery and Genocide...and on and on, from the beginning of time. ...OPPRESSION...is deeply rooted in...souls... ...oppression can, will and does affect the real estate and development industry.
Being a retired Denver police officer...working foot patrols and undercover operations in Five Points… Over the past nearly 30 years, I have watched and seen neighborhoods go through gentrification here in Denver. ...to the point of seeing women of all races walking their dog at 10 o'clock at night...gentrification has taken hold in the Five Points area. ...Five Points, Curtis Park...are now...referred to as the RiNo District. The next big area in the Denver Aurora market [subject to] massive transformation is...Montbello, Gateway, Green Valley Ranch, High Point and Reunion. - Denver Urban Spectrum, 11/2019
"Know that the people in Iran are now completely free, so far as the laws of Islam permit. They have economic freedom and social justice. I myself destroyed slums and shanty towns with money from this foundation." But the Foundation of the Oppressed, as the largest holding company in an oil-producing country of 65 million people, had huge real estate cash, and other assets. It was a state within a state, in which it was impossible to determine what was going on. ...the Foundation of the Oppressed represented a new kind of economic organization, in a new kind of emerging state...better suited to the porous borders and political chaos of a region [of] weakly governed mafia fiefdoms in Central Asia... Islamicists ...in the Moslem world, are like scholars on a long sabbatical, wasting a precious critical moment - paid for by oil - pursuing inquiries that led nowhere. "We studied much as we did a thousand years ago," the student told me. "After class, we divide up into small groups, like this one, and discuss what we have learned." How beautiful...it seemed. ...such an approach to political and economic problems left them unsolved, tyranny often filled the void.
...I had dinner with a...woman [who] worked in [the Iranian] government...and had studied...American Literature. She wore a black "chador"... She told me she had devoured Edgar Allen Poe...Daniel Defoe..."Robin Crusoe"... She mentioned Henry Miller and Tennessee Williams. …"Huckleberry Finn." [She suggested that life in America was physically more dangerous, as Iran has far less crime.] "Maybe we're spoiled and sheltered here. It's just that living in Iran is so safe and secure." ...I guessed that she was not so much trying to convince me of revolutionary Iran's social superiority as...herself. How could somebody...aquainted with...Miller and...Williams be so naïve as to believe revolutionary Iran was...better...for a reflective individual than America? I would...meet her parents...the economic chaos after the revolution had wiped out...their savings. What...they had left was being spent to educate...their children. ...this woman's parents were less willing to lie to themselves - and to me - than she was. - Kaplan
It's the morning after Halloween on the first of this month. I'm standing in line at the downtown deathburger homeless central. A guy steps in front of me. He tells the guy behind me that the guy in front of me is his brother. Then the guys turns toward me to ask me what I'm ordering to eat. I'm as certain as I can be that this is the first time in my life that a complete stranger, in any restaurant, has asked me what I am going to order. I tell him that I don't know. We go back and forth on this simplest of facts before he informs me that he "was going to bless" me by purchasing food for me. I decline his self-professed grace. There is movement more mysterious than is dreamt of in philosophy here in this place. I've spent this fateful morning fruitlessly searching for another non-existent search engine address, all before approaching the back door of where I work. There is no encampment of homeless tents, bicycles, and trailers this morning. There is only a single young guy with stubble on his chin and a cigarette dangling from the left corner of his mouth. He appears to be sporting homeless gear. And he is sweeping part of our small back parking lot. He meekly asks me how I'm doing. I ignore him...until I spot a couple of plastic daggers stuck through the metal slats of our back stairs. I slowly lift them up and hold them in front of me, smiling. (Is this a dagger...or two...I see before me?) Now the guy is worried. He tells me that he has no idea where they came from. "You know, Halloween and all..." his quiet voice offers by way of explanation.
A week after the following day is my turn to have Saturday off. Late in the morning, I am off the phone with my new advisor with the state heal care exchange, having just enrolled in a plan for the coming year. I grab a bus to the supermarket. Along the way, the driver put down the wheelchair ramp for a couple of passengers with wheelchairs. They disembark before a middle-aged woman steps from outside onto the ramp. Her eyes appear puffy. She asks the driver for a bus transfer without offering any fare. He declines. She then asks for a day pass without offering any fare. He laughs and waves her off the ramp. She tells him, "This is a joke." She makes reference not to her own life, but that there really is no free lunch. She returns to her seat in the bus shelter. To her right is her bedroll. To her left are three other people who are not waiting for this bus. I assume that none of them are going anywhere. When we depart, I mention to the driver that I noticed a square bottle of Johnny Walker in her hand. To me it appears half empty. To herself, perhaps, it's half full. He tells me that he does this route on Saturdays. He mentions that this stop and the following two are host to people sitting and drinking all day long. When I return from shopping, I am across the street for a late lunch at the Chinese place. My next door neighbor was a supply officer in the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam. He and his wife had a strange son, who appears to spend his days wandering the sidewalks of this neighborhood. This afternoon, he is wandering the length of this building. Today, for the first time, I watch him eat food out of the trash.
The following evening, I am back here for dinner. There is a line out of the door. When I eventually get inside, I'm behind a teenaged guy and his girlfriend. The guy has a gold necklace and a gold watch which appears to have a band encrusted with a layer of what appear to be diamonds. The girl is half his size and almost looks like his little sister. But apart from half her hair dyed green, her ego comes out through her voice. This place sells food by the "scoop." It's a favorite place of the manager of the place where I work, who describes it as a kind of machine where the employees know exactly what they are doing. The girl orders one egg roll. This place only sells them in pairs; two egg rolls makes a scoop. For $1.79. No "diamond" watches on any of these employees, mostly women, although I've seen them all wear pink hats promoting breast cancer research. She is told this by a middle-aged woman behind the buffet bar. I hear the guy mumble something about "No need to be rude. Trying to start shit?" I assume he is speaking to the woman. Could he have been talking to his girlfriend? The girl with half her long hair the color of Astroturf rocks it back and forth when she replies, "'Cause I only WANT one." On Tuesday I'm out of my front door with the bike. Slowly walking the condo complex parking lot is my next door neighbor's son. A middle-aged guy who sets off my homeless alarm approaches him from the street. He's in a black hoodie, blacks pants, and has a bright red backpack. He asks my neighbor's son for the time. My neighbor's family is one of several Vietnamese, and they don't speak English easily. The guy has to point to his wrist several times, dating himself before smart phones. The son eventually replies, "Nine." The guy heads toward the back of the complex. I follow him as he stretches his legs. He turns to me and asks me the time. I remind him that the son already told him the time. "Yeah but he's all drunk," he replies. "It's probably nine," I respond. He makes his way back the way he came, turning to pass behind the back gates and garages of one end of the complex.
At the beginning of this week, I am on my way to work through an underpass where I notice a work crew on the bike trail. They are cutting down trees along a small section of the river along the bike trail, right nest to the underpass. The crew is doing this why, so the homeless can't hide down here? On Wednesday morning, I'm out of the door on another morning. At my corner is an infamous white bicycle. These are placed at points among the metro area where cyclists have died out on the road. I'm unware of a cyclist's death on this corner. Some eleven hours later, I am coming up the last long hill in the neighborhood across the boulevard from my own. I'm on my way home after work in the dark. Dead ahead of me, I can tell there is another cyclist. There is a blinking tail light. Whoever it is, is hauling ass uphill. I can't keep up. I'm only recently seeing other cyclists on my way back and forth to work, before I hit the bike trail. Friday evening after work. In the neighborhood between my own and the bike trail, I used to see no one else on a bike. This evening, I see six separate cyclists. Encroaching Caucasians?
Last month Bayaud Enterprises launched...a first-of-its-kind trailer that will provide private showers in Denver's homeless population. "I consider being...a charitable nonprofit, a privilege." "It's not just a government response, it's not just a nonprofit response, it's not just a for-profit response, but...a community wide response to people in need."
Although...currently in housing, she said that the feeling of homelessness hasn't left her yet. "I don't know if that will ever leave me." She wants to start what she calls the "Strategies of Survival University." "Something happened when I turned 70. I consider myself a teacher."
I hate telling people what to do for a living. ...putting a spin on tired titles is the thing to do these days to reinvent the wheel. We have industry deputies, online influencer's, couples consciously uncoupling... To be blunt - I am a Financial Planner and Advisor. I'm sure you already have a preconceived idea of what that means... ...it's probably wrong.
...I...became...the...first Democratic Socialist to serve on Democratic City Council. …(cycles of economic crisis are a built-in feature of capitalism), thousands of homeless people and those at risk of homelessness [will] bear the brunt of the storm. Without adequate bolstering of community services [they] will slide further into poverty while [others will need] support that will be unavailable. The [city] budget is grossly top-heavy [when] investments in our people are needed. A...Denver Office of Economic Development...marketing and communications specialist...makes...$143,000 per year. Fifty-seven mayoral appointees make a combined $7.8 million... Of those, 20 alone are in the mayor's office, pulling their salaries from other department budgets without a clear liaison function. The City of Denver now spends more than $1 billion on employee salaries... Using input from our constituents... We're calling for...more social workers, more housing and rent support, and more employment programs for our friends and neighbors experiencing homelessness.
[One] Black American West Museum...board member...hopes to preserve the stories and culture that make up the Five Points community. ...one of the first women to practice medicine in Colorado...lived in her home office there until she died in 1952. [This is] a building that could have been lost if not for the local community. ...the surrounding community...rallied...contacting...the museum [and] then-city council-member Hiawatha Davis. With...Historic Denver...the house was relocated... [After raising] an additional $100,000 to renovate the house. The Black American West Museum opened in the house in 1989. Over the years, as Denver has grown, people have been priced out of neighborhoods throughout the city. ...Five Points was one of the few places where black families could own a home. Now [the board member] has noticed that more and more new developments keep calling themselves RiNo, even though they're located in the Five Points neighborhood. Development in the area has...meant that people who once thrived in Five Points are leaving, but...buildings that once made up the area's history are being replaced by new ones. - Life on Capitol Hill, 11/2019
If you don't mind drinking with fundies (trust, hedge or equity; trust us, they've got one), this lush and secluded lounge [has] leather recliners...cognac, live music by standards singers in high season... ...the roaring fireplace may actually be funded by all the cash you're burning...
This underground...speakeasy [is where] there's no hiding the sexy. ...the dim and swanky cocktail temple [has] the Sazerac, or have your mixologist create something...
In different hands, this RiNo hotspot could be too cool for school... ...caviar is piled high atop Pringles. - Westword, The Edge Winter Guide 2019-20
Basketball. Football. Hockey. Motorcycles. Skiing. Rock climbing. It's all here. The people who live here are "gamers." If there's something to do, they'll do it. The same person who watched the Broncos on Sunday...skied on Saturday...watched the Nuggets on Friday...took a motorcycle ride up Deer Creek Canyon on Wednesday...watched their kid's soccer game on Tuesday...watched the Avalanche game on Monday night...an elk hunting trip over the weekend. Sound familiar? We do things. …"living" - we hike, we bike; we throw, we catch, we cast; we ride ATVs, snowboards, Harley's and horses. I saw a Harley-Davidson pass a Cannondale, a Cannondale pass a jogger, and I passed a Subaru and a minivan, both of which were going too slow.
It's about the community, the relationships, the experiences, the stories and the passion. You get the warm city commute with the straightaways, the chilly canyon cruises and highway marathons all in one. You can't visit hole-in-the-wall restaurants, enjoy backroads and sights that most Coloradan's don't know about - unless you're in the motorcycle community. You can...see someone with a Bar & Shield - by wearing it, having a tattoo, or supporting a sticker - and immediately have something in common with a stranger. It's about...what the bike does for you, and who you are once you twist that throttle. - Mile High Sports, 11/2019
[Of] the interior dome of the Sheikh Lutfullah Mosque...the calligraphy and conch work...appeared to have no borders...no depth...no perspective. This was a frightening beauty. It reflected authority without wisdom of balance. ...such an overabundance of the "word" that language itself seemed to lose meaning. ...the victory of culture over politics.
He led us to...a smudged picture of the late revolutionary firebrand Aytollah Beheshti, killed in a bomb blast in 1981. The banality of the site devastated me. The tower of Qabus...reassured [one] that man is not alone in the universe... ...dynamic and harmonious against the moving clouds, [the tower] expressed simple awe...rather than the forced cries of the proletariat...in the smudged portrait...at the park's gate. The Islamic Revolution may have been an early reaction to the problems of population and urbanization, but fundamentalism had failed in Iran, if not yet in parts of the Arab world.
"This used to be a modern city, but now for the first time, there are cows wandering in the streets and squares. These peasants have taken over." She reminded me of the Egyptian official...who had told me that human rights was a joke and that Islamic terrorists were just a bunch of "painters and plumbers." These people had given up on the world. I came to Turkestan expecting [the] cultured Moslems [of] Iran. I found...remnants of large Russian, Greek, and Jewish communities being wrecked by drunken roughnecks. ...having...to do with local economic and social conditions, the detritus of communism. It reminded me of...poor Romanians [with contempt for] the ethnic German bourgeoisie in Romania and...the...poor Africans and the Arab bourgeoisie in Sierra Leone. ...driving out the very role models and financial motors that they needed. [Russian professionals left Uzbekistan by] the tens of thousands... The Uzbeks are extremely proud... But their ethnic pride, like...other Turkic peoples in Central Asia [and Iran] never conformed with statehood. ...Uzbeks...must rebuild, even reinvent, a national past [confounded by both ancient mythology and communist suppression.] Had the peoples of Turkestan been middle-class for several generations, with two cars...a microwave...and mortgages [then,] Moslem fundamentalists [wouldn't be] fighting ex-communists. Twenty thousand have died and tens of thousands...have fled into Afghanistan. [One particular Uzbek] nationalist party...knows that half the population is under sixteen, and sees civil unrest in the future between Uzbeks...
...a male singer took long drags on an unfiltered cigarette, crooned, "I'm in hell." The microphone [was] turned up...too high. ...women wearing bedroom slippers and fake satin gowns. Tables were cluttered with salami, cheese, stuffed vegetables, filthy ash trays, and vodka bottles. A group of professional female dancers took the stage. ...their eyes vacant and dilated. At a table...a group...in their early twenties...dressed like American teenagers from the 1950s. At another tale...heavyset men, in gaudy three-piece suits and wearing gold rings, talking loud. "They are discussing...the best country from which to hijack a plane, if one wants a big ransom. Such conversations are common." - Kaplan
The Woman's Bean Project [exists for women to] help them [with] lack of transportation, no high school diploma, inadequate child care and criminal records. Most women are referred by previous participants or through probation and parole officers, halfway houses or homeless shelters... After six months, they begin a supported search for outside employment... "Addiction...a teen mom who dropped out of school. Maybe low skill levels and a spotty work history... ...we're trying to focus on...skills that are about being...an adult in our community. ...when you change a woman's life, you change a family's life." - Westword, 11/21-27/2019
The Question of Being Hardcore
It's the Saturday before Thanksgiving. My turn to have off work. I'm at a stop for the bus to the supermarket. Along comes a middle-aged local on his bike. He's bundled up on this chilly morning, and looks like nothing if not some kind of refugee. He asks me if today is "Friday or Saturday?" Monday is the start of the week of Thanksgiving. I notice crews cutting down trees along the river bank, where I take the trail through an underpass. I wonder if this is to expose any homeless enclaves, or perhaps to make the trail more visible as far as oncoming cyclists and pedestrians. This has been one snowy month, with our second travel advisory. In the evening, flurries begin drifting down. On the way home after work, they just begin to collect on the ground. The following morning, perhaps a foot of snow is on the ground as more blows down. I'm out of the door shortly before 9:30 AM. The ride downtown is usually a little less than an hour. I walk to the corner before I can begin to attempt to ride. It's slow going, but I can make my way if I stay in the tire wipes. Not much traffic out. It's quite strange to see my otherwise testosterone-fueled boulevard nearly empty of diesel-engine traffic. I make it to the bike trail, under and then up onto the bridge over the river, and then the one over the interstate. I must walk this distance due to snow accumulation, as well a steep climb from under the train bridge. I elect to take this otherwise quicker route to work. Once I'm at the intersection at the top, I can follow more tire wipes in the street mostly void of traffic. I'm a few blocks along before I happen upon a city bus. It's stuck perpendicular to the street, with it's nose out in an intersection. There is just enough room for the occasional vehicle to sneak around the front of the bus. As I roll past, the last passengers are disembarking to the snow-covered road. I few blocks later, I cross a thoroughfare and turn onto the sidewalk, which has less snow. A passing driver has his window open. On his roof rack is a travel case for skis. He puts a big thumbs up out at me and says, "You're hardcore." I expect that's better than a citation for riding a bike on the sidewalk. I walk through the door to work one minute late.
Overnight, it's 3 degrees F. A coworker will tell me it was 1 degree at 5 AM. In the morning, I decide to take my bike on public transit. It's on these days I wear my ski pants and winter coat. The pants are made for ski boots, with cuffs wide enough that cold air will blow up the legs. I keep them cinched around my ankles with a couple of handy clip-on pet collars I purchased for just this purpose. I walk to my corner, where yet another driver in the street has his window down. He's behind another car at the red light. This morning's streets are a blanket of ice. When the light turns green, the first car is making a left very slowly over this skating rink. The driver behind yells through his window, "Hurry up!" I yell at this driver, "Your window is open. And it's winter." Which it won't be for several more weeks. But it's only warmed up to what feels like no more than the teens. A guy is on the sidewalk with a snow shovel. He's witness to all of this, but I'm not sure if he speaks English. The driver behind decides not to make an illegal turn through the intersection into the other lane, to pass the car in front of him. Staying behind it, he yells, "Fuck you." It's rare, even with snow on the ground, that I am prevented from riding the streets. I walk most of the several blocks to the boulevard intersecting my own. I stop into my old deathburger for a bite of breakfast. Across the street is a shopping cart piled high with blankets. At the counter, I smell urine. Behind me is a guy with a big beard. He's in a winter coat and has his hood on. He stands waiting with his mouth open. The cart however belongs to a woman in her sixties. I saw her here for the first time, the last time I came in earlier this month. She sits at the same booth, head full of long curly black hair, mascara, long colorful skirt, and bags on the seat. She appears as if some kind of tundra gypsy. I sit behind her and eat as I watch her get up and collect her bags. She slowly move out through the exit and picks up a cigarette butt from the window ledge. She begins to slowly walk back and forth past where my bike leans against the window. She walks out of view, and when she walks back she has the butt lit. After it's been smoked, she heads for her shopping cart.
I eat one of my two-for-four-dollar-breakfast sandwiches and head out to my bus stop of old. Most of the ten years I worked for my old company, I caught the first bus of the day here, not long after 5 AM. I met many a ragged and abandoned character here. Now, I come here merely for the occasional trip. The bus and I arrive around the same moment, and it hauls us to the train, which drops me right next to my gym. I find a clear sidewalk which runs along a new condo complex. On the other side is an alternative high school. I cruise past a women who is both dressed and also sounds as if she's head of the condo management. She's telling a handyman about the sidewalk. "You can see how treacherous it is." Unless, you happen to be hardcore... The following day is Thanksgiving, and I am returning from across the street where I enjoyed a pre-Thanksgiving snack. Sitting on a cooler, in the parking lot of where I live, is a neighbor. I see him outside from time to time. I don't know if he's the guy who was recently frisked here by the police, one evening as I was returning from work. This afternoon, he's lighting up a smoke. He eyes me and says, "Happy Thanks-giving." I'm in the house and must turn around and head out to my sister's place. The streets and sidewalks remain covered in ice, slush and snow. As this is the first holiday I've gone to the sister's without our mom, I'm taking my bike. I ride and walk, ride and walk. I turn up one street which ends. I cross a small field of foot-deep snow with my bike. Down a street, up a hill, and down another street. Coming down another hill, I happen upon a young guy who can't get any traction with his truck up the ice covered incline. He appears not to want to leave his truck and a car is parked directly behind him. He doesn't want to slide into it backwards. He asks me if I (a guy riding ice covered streets, on Thanksgiving Day, on a bicycle) will knock on the door of the home, in front of which the car is parked, to ask them to move their car out of the way of any potential danger. Sure. After all...this is, in fact, the story of my life. Another bizarre circumstance manifesting itself directly from the combination of random unique details of my way in this world. I've never been down this street before. And it ain't the imperial kingdom of Highlands ranch where local sports heroes live, nor is it the swingin' sockin' stylin' condo-lined avenues of downtown. It's my neighborhood. And the home is tiny, shaped like a mobile home, with a wooden ramp from the front door to a side gate. There is no gate on the chain link fence along the front yard, which is buried in two or three feet of undisturbed snow. I open the gate as far as snow will allow, ascend the ramp, and knock on a worn wooden front door. There is no storm door. I hear multiple dogs bark. The door opens a crack, and a guy looks at me warily. Once he quiets his dogs, I'm able to be heard explaining the driver's predicament. He appears to understand immediately, and thanks me. As two car owners attend to their respective vehicles, I'm off...on a bicycle. Over snow berms, piles of slush, and hiking through snow.
