Sunday. I'm on the way to the sister's for an unexpected party. Along the way, I'm coming up one of several long hills. I'm headed through the west end of the metro area. Residential homes out here have additions including plenty of exterior metal and clear plastic. Toward the top of the hill, a woman approaches with a baby carriage, on an empty street on a lazy Sunday afternoon. As she gets closer, I see that she's homeless and her carriage is filled with stuff. At the backyard birthday party, the air is cool and the day is relaxing. I get a new pair of badly needed fingerless gloves and a new seat cushion. I think the last birthday party I had was during the 1990s. Afterward, I'm off to track down a new pair of sandals. Last week, an old pair finally broke. I spend the rest of the afternoon hauling my gifts on a bike ride across the west side. I'm coming down a residential street past a yard with a shell of a trailer. It's missing windows, and has handmade signs all over it announcing that it's someone's home and not free to take. I hit a couple of shops unsuccessfully in a shopping center out here on my sister's side of town before I decide to stop into a Village Inn. I left the house without breakfast. A little while after I'm seated, I hear a guy who comes in. He and a woman sit at a nearby table, with a guy in a motorized wheelchair. All three have grey hair, the hair of the guy in the wheelchair in a braid. The guy I'm listening to had a do rag, and a Harley Davison mask and T-shirt. He's telling the guy something about being able to park a camper out at a lake. After eating, I'm successful tracking down what surely must be one of the last pair of sandals anyplace this summer. Back in my own neighborhood, I'm coming down one of its streets when a young guy on a bike turns a corner. With one hand, he's guiding another bike. He says to me, "What's up, primo?" I have an unknown cousin. There's a considerable age difference between us.
Monday. I need to stop at a supermarket before the rec center, on the way to work. I decide to look for a more direct way to the gym, rather than backtrack to the bike trail. A little while later, I'm coming down a residential block where new mini-condo duplexes are replacing brick homes. Down the sidewalk, a young woman approaches with her dog on a leash. She's in a cropped shirt and her hair is up in a pair of tight little buns on her head. Along with her glasses, she looks as if she's cute and sexy and smart. She gets close enough that I can read the front of her top. In Yale school letters, it reads, "DYKE." A little way past her, I spot a familiar figure in this neighborhood. My impression is this is a woman. She's completely covered and her clothes appear to hang off her body. Her head is hidden in a mask and huge brimmed hat. She steadily walks down the sidewalk. Some ten hours later, I'm coming home from work through a residential neighborhood which appears to be full of young women, all walking their dogs. I grab a cheap dinner at a 7-Eleven on a busy boulevard, and I ride to a park to eat it. It's a hangout for a handful of homeless. In an area enclosed with cinderblock walls are picnic tables and grills. A homeless couple loiters. The guy has a Harley Davidson vest, but I see no motorcycle. I find a spot on a plastic bench. A teenager and a couple kids are all on bikes, and congregate at a spot where the trail meets a street, and is an entrance to the park. They are blocking the way as a homeless guy approaches unnoticed on his bike. The trio is engrossed in banter as he attempts to ask them to move. They relent and he is one his way, saying something about not blocking the way. They reply but I cannot hear. A second homeless guy approaches on his bike. He tows a kind of cart on wheels. It appears to be for transporting an oxygen bottle, but it has noting on it this evening. The following morning, I'm out on the trail to work. A cyclist behind me announces that there are four others approaching from behind her. The last one brings up the rear. He's in a cycling jersey, again with "triple bypass" on the back. This is either a heart surgery survivor, or it's the name of some kind of bike race.
The city was overrun with false prophets and savage messiahs, as well as double agents and police informers. Strange creeds and mysterious leaders developed overnight followings. Inexplicable communiques were issued from the underground. The sacraments of blood and guns... This was the churning froth of ...rage and counterrevolutionary cunning from which slithered the Symbionese Liberation Army in late 1973. The SLA was born in...a behavior modification program...in Vacaville, the California prison system's medical facility. ...a reputation [for] mind control experimentation. And...run by a man [who] had...worked for...a CIA-controlled firm that built...interrogation chambers... One of the few inmates with whom [he] developed a special bond was Donald DeFreeze... ...the convict began his own prison course... At Vacaville, DeFreeze reinvented himself as Cinque... ...transferred to Soledad Prison... On his first night, Cinque...scaled...the twelve-foot fence... ..in Berkeley...Cinque soon began building his own underground liberation force...the Symbionese Liberation Army. The SLA leader mesmerized his followers...He strutted around various SLA safe houses...naked and fully erect... Cinque and his women formed the power nucleus within the group. "I crave the power Charles Manson had," declared Cinque... But in contrast to Manson's girls, they came from solid, middle-class backgrounds. ...traumas - assassinations of popular leaders, imperial war, and brutal acts of government repression - were crimes against the national conscience. This is...clear and concise summary of the radicalization process... A thick air of doom and drama hung over the youth ghettos of San Francisco and Berkeley. But nowhere...more pungent than in the subterranean world of the SLA. - Talbot
...to woo capitalists to Singapore, Prime Minister Lee...forced through a new Employment Bill...which, for a socialist state, was tantamount to a small counterrevolutionary move as far as workers were concerned. ...trade unions were banned from negotiating... "Our best chances lie in a very tightly organized society," Lee had earlier mentioned. ...some observers [felt] that Singapore was demonstrating [both] tough self-reliance and colonial-minded dependence on others.
The old protective and paternal family and patron ties will only...break up as independent and individual opportunity becomes more apparent, and that takes time... ...the absence of social discipline and political stability...established social patterns and...precolonial Filipino mores...
...the Thais have always been strongly guided by the precepts of their natural religion, Buddhism. ...the world as a moral whole, in which elements of power, virtue, and value are neatly counterbalanced, the human world is...but one of many... ...American servicemen...five thousand a month from Vietnam shuttled in and out of Bangkok... The city by 1967 had become the liveliest, the loudest, and probably the most licentious city in Southeast Asia. ...heavy and odorous with traffic, and at night the city heaved with the sound of jazz and was ablaze with neon lights. - Shaplen
He was trying to say that the teams he's been a part of, he hadn't necessarily seen, firsthand, racism. (In the NFL), you've got some guys that grew up with four or [sic] five brothers and sisters in the same room. ...another teammate...from a nice neighborhood, had his own neighborhood, never had to worry about what he was going to eat... ...some white guys...went through it also. "Why wasn't this the reaction when the news first started?" These things have always been happening. So, when [Colin Kapernick] tried to put the league on notice, I don't understand why it wasn't received or taken the way it is now... - Mile High Sports, 7/2020
On the horse trail toward work, earlier this week, the guy with the long horn sheep has them out for a walk. Wednesday morning, I'm climbing a last steep hill in the hidden neighborhood. Coming down the street is a lady on a horse. She leads a pony on a rope behind her. When I arrive at work, my coworker begins to reveal a tale of the drama surrounding her son's life. He had a best friend and his own son's mom who he knew in high school. Six years ago, his son's mom found herself in an altercation with another young woman. He attempted to break it up. His son's mom dared him to hit her. My coworker tells me, this is "the wrong thing to say to him." He knocked her teeth out. He ended up in prison. His son's mom ended up moving in with his best friend. My coworker says she's getting to old for her son's drama. I can't say that I know where to begin with this story. I worked with her son in law for more than a year, at our location downtown. I listened to his stories, about being taught that you should ask someone nicely, three times, before punching them in the face. I watched him argue with customers. She goes home when I arrive. When I have less than an hour before the store closes, I suddenly hear a male voice next door. He sounds as if he's complaining. I take a look outside. In our parking lot is a Fire Department squad vehicle from the station just up the boulevard. On the sidewalk in front of the business next door is a guy on the ground. Three paramedics are holding him. He has a pair of handcuffs on one wrist. A couple of police cruisers arrive. Officers are out n body armor. The guy is off the ground, and I presume in the squad vehicle. A smiling paramedic high fives a smiling officer, who has his arm around the paramedic. The owner of the business comes over from next door. She tells me that he's drunk. How she knows this she doesn't say. He laid down and went to sleep, so she called 911.
I have the following day off this week. And I have a reservation at the water park. They will be open, it turns out, through next week. Today has yet another grey and gloomy sky-encompassing cloud overhead. The swimmers who have the reservation after mine are surely the ones who will enjoy the sunshine, once this cloud goes its own way. Out on the trail, I roll past the same spot which always appears to be occupied, as of late, by various homeless people. Today, a guy sits on the ground off the trail, a line of trees behind him. He stretches his arms. Behind him is an office chair. An orange vest is draped over the back. Just past him, I hear voices coming from the busy street beyond the other side of the trail. I see a couple of guys and a woman walking from a side street. One of the guys and the woman each have a walker. They do not appear to need them to walk. I suspect they plan of eventually filling the walkers with as much as they may hold. I wonder if they are headed over to the office chair guy. I arrive at the water park as the sound system is playing a song by a favorite band from the 1990s, Lush. Was that decade 30 years ago? Am I 55 years old as of last Sunday. Do I now have a urologist who says my prostate is "not really enlarged," and his nurse who says it is? Yes, yes, and yes...and yes. Welcome to my body; a matter of semantics. But my ass digresses. On the way back home, I stop at a super Target for more diet iced tea mix. I spot a couple with their kid outside, all sitting next to a red Target shopping cart. I detour over to Chilis for a meal before rejoining the same trail back home. The cloud of death has indeed advanced to the horizon, and the sun is finally out. I'm glad I took the time to put on sunscreen before I let the house. The couple must have had a head start on me. Along the same stretch of trail as the office chair guy, the couple is pulling one stolen Target shopping cart, and pushing another down the trail. The first is full of stuff. The second has their kid in it.
Saturday. I'm home after work. I head over to the new Mexican place for dinner. I come inside before several families arrive. It's getting busy fast and the wait staff is struggling. The new crew in the location of this longtime previous Mexican establishment appears green against the former seasoned crew. I get a menu and wait for someone...anyone...to take my order. More than one large family wait for their own orders to be taken. This must be a good sign, a busy place in a county under virus restrictions. Three young guys come in and take a seat at the table in front of me. They never order anything. I wonder if they are picking up? One of them gets up to use the bano. He bumps into my chair. Soon they are gone. Instead of waiting for a waitress, I go up to the register to order. A guy who speaks English tells me that the hamburger listed and pictured on the menu, is no longer on the menu. I order a torta. I sit and read David Talbot's wonderful book about San Francisco I'm on a chapter about the old SLA. It's a story which includes Randolph Hurst, a circus of underworld street characters, a housewife FBI informant who eventually attempted to assassinate President Ford, a prison psychologist who had worked for a CIA Vietnam torture program, all swimming in a story which reminds me of the movie Zodiac. I check on my dinner. It finally arrives. The previous establishment would have hand made a corn meal kind of pita pocket. This places uses a wheat bread bun. I'm almost done with it as I hear someone tuning a drum kit. A Mexican band is getting ready to crank up. This ain't three guys with an accordion and a viola. This is a full band. I put away the book, pay my bill, and head back across the street.
Sunday will be my only day off for the time being, instead of also having Thursday off as well. And I can use the money. I pay a visit to my friendly Vietnamese beautician and barber, Mrs. Thuy, who tells me (she's in the know) that the previous Mexican place moved just a couple of blocks away. Later on, just before I go to bed, I hear more music coming from outside. I step out to see if it's just a passing vehicle, or our neighbor next to the townhome complex. Cruising traffic is backed up on my street. The fire station across the street has dispatched an engine. And I see bales of smoke rising from the approximate location of the bus stop where I used to wait for grocery shopping. I go back to bed. The next morning, out at my corner, I see no evidence of a fire. Hours later, I'm out of work. Mondays we are open the latest during the week. After a stop at the supermarket along the way, the only chain with a product I use, it's early evening when I'm off the trail and climbing a long hill on my side of town. Up ahead, I spot someone walking their bicycle in the street, on their own way uphill. When I reach this cyclist, he appears to be a decade older than myself. He's got small circular mirrored sunglasses. He says to me, "You must be used to (this hill.)" I'm impressed with him. The following morning, I'm back climbing the hill in the sleepy neighborhood along the way to work. A guy comes up from behind me. "They call this hill 'the Widow-maker,'" he tells me. And again, hours later, I'm headed toward home after work. Only this afternoon, I'm approaching an underpass. This time, it's a much younger guy who comes up from behind. He's on a skateboard, and taking the exit of the trail. As he passes me, he tells me he likes my sandals. It tries to rain, but instead it's a windstorm, and I'm fighting a headwind. I'm under the bridge and past a long wooded curve, across the river and headed for what I refer to "golf course #2." At the south end of this course, under a tree next to the fence, is a guy under a sheet. He's trying to light a cigarette and shelter his lighter. Just yards from where he lay are guys in colorful Polo shirts and shorts, playing golf. It's not long before I'm off the trail, up the long hill and onto a last long street toward my boulevard. The camper which has been parked here since the Spring has an SUV parked behind it. The two rear doors are both open. Clothes are piled on the ground, and more still pack the back seat.
On Wednesday, I rejoin the bike trail from a detour to the gym, where the trail passes through a short tunnel under an avenue. Cruising through the tunnel, I adjust my shorts, and I suspect an oncoming cyclist believes that I don't see him. Before he passes me, he loudly says, "Beep beep!" The following morning is my doctor's appointment. We cycle through my issues. Prostate? No cancer, check. Did my testosterone cream directly result in my elevated PSA levels? No, all men's prostates enlarge and the levels may even go back down, check. Blood pressure? My sodium intake has been reduced, check. Sunscreen? Once in the morning ain't good enough, a second application required before going home, check. I can't remember why she mentions her dad. I ask about him and she tells me he was a family medicine specialist in their native India for 35 years. Doctors make the worst patients, she tells me. She examines him and give her recommendations, to which he replies, "Oh, I know, I know." I tell her, "Hey, as far as I'm concerned: if you haven't been to medical school, you're NJFS." She waits for me to explain this. "Not Jack Fucking Shit," I reply. I get a laugh out of her. Her demeanor is still, and when she laughs, she does so she throws her head back with a jerk before quickly returning to her centered posture. Not quite Buddhist, perhaps, in spite of our greeting each other with folded hands "namaste." Again, her joy in this sneaks out before she immediately returns to her doctor mode. I ask her if her dad, if not her favorite patient, is perhaps a resource. She tells me she used to watch him with some patients. He spent a lot of time simply sitting and listening. When his patients were leaving, they would tell him they felt better just having talked to him. "Ah," I reply, "old fashioned medicine." She agrees.
It's after work and I'm rounding the long wooded stretch of the trail home. The entire trail shadows the river all the way into downtown and to where it intersects another river. On this bank, along the trail, runs a street named Platte River Drive. I've been riding this trail, off and on, as far back as 2005. I've never been on the other bank along this stretch of the river. For some reason, I decide to look across the bank as I have before, where I've seen the occasional tent down on the riverbank. I just happen to look this early evening. I see a long line of campers and tents all clustered along a road on the other side. I get up to where I've crossed a bridge over this river countless times. Then, for the very first time, I turn down a trail along the opposite side of the river. I'm headed back toward the cluster camp. The trail runs through a small park before it connects to a cul de sac. Beyond the cul de sac, past a couple of cement berms upon one of which is spray painted "fuck parks and rec," is another road named Platte River Drive East. I follow the road down to the camp. I've never seen such dilapidated campers. There are a couple of camper shells on the ground, in which someone is obviously living. Trash bags are lined up along the river side of the road. There appears to be a water treatment plant on the opposite side of the road, where the camp is. The river has been low this summer. Grass and bushes grow on the exposed bottom. In the afternoon it smells. The summer has also seen cloudy afternoon skies. And this week, fire smoke appears to have joined the scattered clouds overhead as the sun shines orange through them. This feels like the camp of the dead. One brand new pickup has a generator in the bed, hooked up to one camper which appears as if it came from a junkyard. A dusty, skinny, vacant figure sits expressionless in a camp chair under an open tent. I can't see any eyes behind her glasses. Tents hang from ropes combined with bicycles in between campers. I turn around for home. A homeless woman comes down the middle of the road before she slowly moves out of the way of traffic, which also must make its way past an approaching homeless guy on a bike, pulling a bike trailer with who knows what inside. The camp is a short walk from where the twin campers were parked in the lot next to the playground. In the small park, between the street and my familiar section of the trail, is a shirtless thirty-year-old guy. His skin is red from the sun. He stands staring at a tree as a colorful kite lay abandoned on the grass. Just beyond this scene is the golf course, where I watch a guy teeing off.
On Friday, for the first time ever, I ride all the way down the street on the river bank opposite the bike trail, and past the death camp. Walking on the river bank side of the road is a young woman in a bikini top, denim shorts, and goggles such as Johnny Depp wore in Willy Wonka. She keeps jerking her head around, expecting to see I know not what. A couple of lean and wiry homeless guys are out on bicycles. On the reverse trip some hours later, I'm rolling past one camper. A middle-aged woman is climbing into a back door as a young guy says to her, "I'm in tears because I'm in so much fuckin' pain." Another young shirtless guy with a mohawk is headed down toward what's left of the river. At the end of the street, a woman in a house dress is using a pole with pincers on the end to pick through a small pile of trash next to her own camper. I decide to make this part of my regular route to and from work. The following week, I will see the occasional individual here who does not appear as if they are homeless. I will see someone shaving another campers head with an electric clippers. And I will see stacked home water heater tanks laying around, and flatbed trailers filled with assorted junkyard items, including a screen door. On Saturdays, my shift begins two hours earlier than during the week. I hear on the radio news of a heat wave across parts of the nation. At 7 am, when I leave the house, it's 60 degrees F. I'm now going to and from work past the death camp. In the morning, I notice yesterday's kite up against one of the tents. Coming back after work, one of the campers is riding his bike the direction of oncoming traffic. This is what the cars which pass along here must put up with. Sunday I have an early swimming reservation, 10 AM. I'm on the bike I use for the weekends. It was brought back to life by my new bike shop. The tech told me he took his own initiative and adjusted the shifter somehow "to make it easier." Well...now it won't stay in gear. Any gear. I psych it out to the extent that, it appears it will slip out of gear into no gear (which I didn't think was possible) until I quickly up shift to the highest one. Then the gear will catch again, until it slips out again. I may have to wait until Saturday to take back in to the shop. On the way back down the trail home after my swim, I climb a hill to a super Target shopping center. A small strip of shops next to the trail used to have a bike shop. I don't see it. I go into a couple of the shops and I'm told it's no longer here. Actually, for the moment, I'm only looking for some oil for my chain. The shifter repair will, as I said, have to wait. I head over to Target. I don't find any oil. One guy wants to make me a deal on a new phone carrier. I ask where the bike chain oil is. he directs me toward someone who is already with another customer. I ask a young woman about the oil. She checks automotive with no luck. She suggests a fishing shop in the center. I ask why. She replies, "Well, people ride their bikes to go fishing, don't they?" Then I'm out in the expansive parking lot. Because the bike will slip out of gear whenever I stop for a stop sign. I must do ridiculous circles as I shift back into high gear and then downshift again. Until the next stop sign. I'm also dealing with perplexed drivers. I never find the fishing shop. I do, somehow, make it out of the parking lot and back out on the trail. I decide to find dinner at the remaining Mexican place down the street, the same company as the one which used to be across the street. There, I speak to a waitress who tells me that the "new" Mexican place across the street is under the same ownership. Coming back up the street, the sun is going down in a haze of fire smoke. It reminds me of the scenes I've seen on smog on the west coast. With the Vietnamese and Mexican businesses on both sides of the street, the hot rod pickup truck traffic up and down the boulevard and the MS-13 graffiti, I imagine that I'm in Los Angeles. Outside a liquor store, a gaggle of locals sit around a card table in a parking space. Mexican hip hop comes out of a speaker in another space. Except the temps are ten or twenty degrees cooler.
The current zoning code was adopted in 2010, with...some...language...that dates back to the 1950s. "...we support...people's ability to live...accessible to transit, jobs..." "I'm worried because Denver is changing. I want those changes to reflect the beautiful city that it can be." - Denver Herald, 8/6/2020
.a path...to be more economically resilient. More customers living and working downtown...through economic cycles. Spaces that are smaller, flexible, and more affordable... Offices and homes near transit and bike paths. - Englewood Citizen, 7-8/2020
"Make housing more affordable and make more options available... ...prevent more people from losing their homes. ...making it easier to reuse existing buildings, creating more historic districts and ensuring new buildings fit in with surrounding neighborhoods."
...after 38 years, Racines [restaurant] is closing for good. In December 1983 the group opened Racines... "It didn't matter. Construction people, theater people, business people. ...I'm not sure anybody even knew what a gay person was." It remained a favored spot for power lunches and after-work beverages. ...politicians cutting deals alongside reporters meeting with sources... ...another location...the group of friends would own. Dixons in Lower Downtown opened in 1997. "...the Democratic Convention (in 2008). The energy downtown. I've never seen it like that..." - Denver Herald, 8/13/2020
Pasternack's Art Hub, the Lakewood home of several galleries priced out of Denver, is on the market. Since 2017, Pasternack's Art Hub, a Lakewood pawn shop turned cultural center, has been home to orphaned cooperatives and galleries that could no longer afford rent in Denver... [The owner wants] to focus more time on his family's remaining pawn shop...making money there so he can eventually retire ...perhaps even...hitting the road in an RV...full time. The pawn shop business...is making most of its money these days on guns. ...as people panic over social unrest, efforts to defund the police and firearms restrictions. - Westword, 8/27-9/2/2020
Requiem For My Boulevard
Racines was one of my late mom's favorite places. I go to bed around 9:30 PM these days. I drift off listening to my basement window rattle from the bottom end of the sound systems from traffic out on the street. It strikes me as a hoppin' evening. A 20 minute walk straight north of where I live is an intersection of two major arteries. I used to catch the bus to work there every morning until some five years ago. It's been a part of my neighborhood since 2007. A little more than an hour after I hit the hay, at that intersection up the street someone will shoot and kill someone else, and wound five more in a revenge killing. Or so I will be told at work. Two of the wounded will not survive, raising the death toll to three. Why the time has come now, that I have stumbled into "the know" about one of these back and forth street murders, is no more clear than anything else about this testosterone cauldron of a boulevard. The next morning, I get up and go to work. The woman who works the morning tells me about the shooting. It's the first I've heard of it, and it's just about twelve hours after it happened. She shows me video on her phone, from someone else's phone. The first video shows a guy pointing his arm followed by the sound of a number of gunshots. he may have emptied his clip or his chamber. The next footage is from a passing vehicle. A second guy standing in the first footage, in a red T-shirt, is now laying in the street. I'm told it's his girlfriend screaming and pulling him by his right leg out of the street. He leaves behind a pool of blood as big as his body. This afternoon, I will hear on a local news report that he was pronounced dead at the scene. At work this morning, here's the story I'm told. Last year, I worked downtown with an employee who had a son who was shot and killed in a park, again not far from where I live. Last week, I'm told that another of her sons was in the same park, when he and others were shot and wounded. Then I'm told that the word is, guy in the red shirt was the shooter. Presumably, he was shot last night by a friend of one or more people hit and injured in the park. The woman I work with knows this because her son, who is transitioning out of prison, was friends with the guy in the red shirt. After work, I'm on my way home. I detour to a supermarket for a couple of vegetables. I'm attempting to make it through a green light. Coming off the sidewalk, there is a patch of gravel. My wheel slips and I'm down on the ground, before I pick myself up and roll into the grocery parking lot. I'm locking up my bike near a homeless guy. He's leaning against the building, where all the homeless guys here lean. He asks me, "Hey man, how's it goin'?"
When I get home after work, I'm on Facebook when I see a new post on the page belonging to a group of my neighborhood residents. The post was from last Thursday. It's a short press conference with the city police chief, a couple of city council members each representing mine and an adjacent district, and a resident of my neighborhood. This is three days before Sunday night's shooting, and the resident mentions a shooting of five people in the alley behind his home. Again, this is the first I've heard of it. All speakers want to make clear that they support a cruising tradition on my boulevard. The endless afternoon rumble of engines up and down the street. All but the Caucasian council person mentions being former cruisers. I'm sure that they all are fully aware of the jackrabbit starts at lights...from the middle of the street...braking and sliding to a stop in parking spaces. It goes with the river of broken glass and occasional discarded syringe. The guys who put new tubes onto my bikes should come out here and see for themselves. My own city council rep says she does not condone traffic blocking a space on the boulevard so vehicles may do doughnuts. Is this another way of saying that there ain't a goddamned thing she can or will do about it? Clearly, cruising is a delicate topic among this amiable collusion of bedfellows. She also mentions the desire for social justice. What did Robert McNamara say to the commander of the US naval blockade of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis? The president was attempting to navigate an entirely new field of political communication between nuclear superpowers. I feel as though last Thursday, in a hamburger joint parking lot with customer orders coming over a speaker, both the state house and the city police got together with a neighborhood resident in a Black Flag cap (which wasn't me) to display some good old government-tested and community service-approved advice. All they had to say was don't blame the cruisers for any mayhem or "dangerous behavior which may lead to loss of life", be nice to each other, and help out the police. It was as unspecific as it could possibly be. I wonder where this upbeat community posse is when the sun goes down? How about the pairs of wandering Catholic monks from the university sixty blocks north, who like to come down on the bus and walk around here? Three days after this get-out-the-hugs photo op, the bullets flew and the blood ran on Sunday night. After the post of Thursday's press conference, I watched a local new report about the shooting. Monday afternoon, a man and a woman stand of the corner where a guy in a red shirt was shot and killed, in front of a bus stop next to a bank parking lot. They hold signs and implore passing traffic to "stop the killing." The woman speaks to a reporter about her life in our neighborhood. "I was a hot mess," she says, "breaking in to houses." I can't claim to understand her life. Not in this lifetime.
Dance Of The Campers
Saturday. On the way to work, some time after 7 AM. I'm rolling past the death camp. A woman with her face void of any color sits in a black motorcycle jacket on a camp chair. On the way back, I see the hood up on one of the campers. The engine is completely gone. I can see bicycles all the way through on the other side of where the engine would be. On Sunday, I have yet another reservation to swim. The only one available was the 4 - 6 PM. On the way back from my swim, again I pedal past the death camp. Though the sky is still full of fire smoke, either from the Poudre Canyon fire or other fires in California, the line of campers doesn't appear as stark as I first saw it. It's such an odd deliberate gathering of strung up tarps, full camping tents, and framed open tents such as seen at outdoor summer festivals, almost in an attempt to make one great covered space. There is a sameness to some camp residents; there are two women, both in tube or bikini tops on this 90 degree afternoon. One appears either elderly or weathered beyond her years. She's picking through one of many piles of random objects. And the camper vehicles, each one has at least one bike parked next to it, apart from the piles of bikes both collected together and scattered around the camp. A younger woman is coming down the road walking a bicycle, as others at this camp do. Back on the bike trail for the short trip back to my own side of town, a couple of updates there during the previous week. The camper, which was missing from the street next to the open field, has returned. And on one of the last streets home, a second camper has vanished. Another second smaller one is now parked behind the remaining one. Also, there appears to be accelerated road construction on my very own boulevard. New medians are going in, making it no longer possible to cross the middle of the street by bicycle. I understand that this is supposed to reduce the speed of the traffic, which the police chief and others told all of us to stop complaining about.
Monday. I'm opening the store today. My coworker needs today off...and I need the money. This weekend was her boyfriend's birthday, and she explained to me, "there's parties all weekend." This means she will be in no shape to come to work today. But I'm out on my bike with not enough sleep at 5 AM. Hey, it's just like old times. Actually, once again, it occurs to me that I used to come this direction to work, just about this same time, fifteen years ago. Only it was a couple of years before I was living on this side of town. I don't remember the last time I covered for another employee for her reason. I shouldn't be out on the street, especially the streets of my neighborhood, without lights. But I'm riding tactically, to avoid traffic which may not be able see me. But the sun is on its way up as the early morning moves along. I spot a home with an old TV antenna on the roof. It has Christmas lights arranged in a light blue cross. It's perhaps 5:30 when I'm approaching the death camp. From behind me comes a motorized scooter. In the dim streetlights, the rider appears to be yet another thin and grey shaggy haired guy. Does he have...a top hat on his head? He tows a makeshift cart perhaps fashioned from a wheelchair. In the cart is carboard. Rounding the bend in the road with the camp, there a single tent with light inside, The flap is open, and as I roll past, i can see no sleeping bags or inhabitants. Just a single bicycle upside down. It's surrounded by all the many other bikes outside the tent.
After work, I'm on my way home, but there's a single product I need, which I can get only at one particular grocery chain, and there's one on the way home. I'm on a familiar detour, all for low fat cheese. At this supermarket, outside, where a single random homeless guy usually leans against the wall, there are two homeless guys. One is telling the other that he was just inside, and one particular manager was giving him the evil eye. I lock up my bike as I listen to this. At the checkout stand, I mention this to the checker, who tells me that such guys come inside and shoplift. I go back outside. The two guys are still yakking. A homeless young woman exits with a cart full of groceries. One of the guys offers up his own stolen shopping cart, mentions how far he's pushed it. The young woman takes her groceries out of her cart and places them onto something like a walker. She is pushing it into the parking lot when it falls over. One of the guys goes over to help her pick them up. Then he appears to be taking his own 12 pack of sodas over to her. He drops them on the ground and the cardboard box breaks, and then they have 12 extra sodas to pick up. The other guy speaks to the first, as if the one who dropped the box was upset. He tells the other, "Breathe..." A third homeless guy comes along to also help. How many homeless does it take to put spilled groceries onto a walker? Not log thereafter, I'm rolling past the death camp. It's on the curve of what has come to appear to be a service road, and I have to keep checking my rearview mirror as well as keeping my eyes open for homeless potentially running out from between campers. The place is like some kind of anti-amusement park. On Tuesday, having awoken with more sleep, I'm again cruising past the death camp on my way to work. I make it past before I see a young woman walking toward me. In her half-shirt, she appears as if she may be a cam member. When I'm close to her, she asks me if I've seen a "kid on a scooter?" Is this her son? Her boyfriend? I haven't. I wonder how far a kid, living in a homeless RV camp, can go on a scooter? After work, I'm coming back past this very spot. I believe I see a new pile of stuff amidst the vehicles and tents. It's a pile of what appears to be office chairs. There is also a flatbed trailer full of what appears to be street light poles. Late in the following afternoon, I'm coming back past this same spot. From behind me comes an Englewood Police cruiser. It parks next to a camper. In front of it is another police cruiser which is stopped in the road. These are the first employees from any city department I've seen here since my daily vigil past this place. I'm down the road before I see anyone exit the police vehicles. This morning, I came down this road, and passed a middle-aged guy pulling a wagon. He appears to me to be living at the camp. He waved at me as I passed him. I see him again on this road just now. He's walking the other direction. His wagon is gone, ad he carries a backpack.
Last night, I came home from work nd checked in with Facebook. I saw a post on the page for my neighborhood. A resident came upon a post from the sect of a gang who had one of its members shot and killed recently, up the street from where I live. He threatens the lives of his rivals on my boulevard, declaring that they will be "sprayed" with his bullets. His short statement strikes me as lacking in emotion or bravado, eve any anger. He's just laying out, coldly, his simplest of intentions. It's ironic that he mentions at the end how his own sect has "lost so many." He doesn't mention his rivals: how many they many have lost. At his own hands. I recount that it was some time during the 1980s when I first began to hear pleas for an end to gang violence. It's an old story. You don't put away your guns, why should we? Something about peace has never been an option. And so neither has life. Rather than that, they prefer a good looking funeral. 'Out on the street, it's all about the attitude...baby girl.' And here's this homie's post mentioned on my neighborhood's page, which usually hosts residents' questions about how to best win police cooperation. One recent comment states the opinion of the police "doing nothing as usual." The police chief did recently have a brief press conference in a hamburger shop parking lot. He asked for the public to lay off the street cruisers. That was three days before one Sunday night's multiple shootings, including a stray bullet killing an employee of Children's Hospital, picking up a friend from an auto parts parking lot a five minute walk from my door. Now cruising has suddenly been reduced to a single lane, until next month or until further notice. Whichever news station's report comes first.
This morning, my coworker tells me about her passing through the intersection where the retaliation murder took place, just up the street from my home. She saw a vigil. She also shows me phots and videos on her phone. The photos are of her son, just out of prison, who had a chance to go to the funeral of his friend. One of the guys killed up the street. The twenty or so guys with him at the funeral are all decked out in shorts, T-shirts, red bandannas, and ball caps. She tells me that moms at such funerals also dress the same way. She also shows me video of her 3-year-old grandson. He's listening to video of his recently released dad, her son, rapping on a TV monitor. The grandson is doing his best hip hop moves. He picks up a toy machine gun and says, "Pop pop pop!" On the way home after work on Friday, I notice that two big RVs are gone from the camp. Saturday. I'm headed to work past the camp early in the morning. I originally thought that a line of trash bags, always on the other side of the road, were meant to be hauled away. I see a guy picking through the contents of one bag, dumped on the ground. A young guy on his bike tells the other guy, "Well I'm gonna try and fix up this bike." On the stub of a broken tree limb, of a tree in camp, hangs perhaps ten bicycle tires. back on the trail, lines of weekend cyclists pass by in their spandex outfits. Coming through an old money neighborhood just off the trail, the intense green of the grass and leaves together with the morning shadows are psychedelic. Summer is on the way out. The manicured lawns and patio furniture with cushions always pull my thoughts back to my youth, when I used to live in a place like this. After work, I'm cruising past the camp. A young woman sits inside a tent with a big America the Beautiful banner in front of the entrance.
Sunday. For half of the day, namely the morning, the sun is out. Only a thin veneer of fire smoke stands between the waterpark and a sunny day for a change. And the 10 AM - 12 PM slot has an opening for me. I'm in the pool before a single damned cloud appears in the sky. I take some turns down what they call the "drop slide" into the deep end. My final turn, I forget to take off my sunglasses. I realize this when I hit the water and feel them come off my face. And of course, everything is much brighter. Well, they are old and even broken. After a swim, I'm headed for the camera place across town. I arrive on a major boulevard, and I stop into a 7-Eleven for a new pair. For $11, I find a pair of the lowest quality manufacture which I've ever seen. They also appear obsolete by more than a decade. They're perfect. I opt for this pair, instead of the one with the loose lens. I've gone to the camera place from work, but never from the waterpark. This will be a new route. At this point, I feel as though I've been in almost every neighborhood in the metro area. Which of course isn't true. Right after I have "new" sunglasses, a couple of streets up, I'm at my new bike shop. I need more chain oil. Of course, they don't have what I've been using since I returned to riding almost five years ago. They recommend a wax-based chain lube. I hope these neo-hippie freaks know what they're talking about. If this crap fucks up my chain, I'm going to post on Info Wars that this bike shop has children inside abusing pizzas. Then it's not much further that I spot a breakfast place. It's a beautiful sunny mid-day for a swim and a ride. It's noon and I'm looking to grab a bite before I make the rest of the trek. I've never been here before, but so many of these places feel familiar anymore. I remember a couple of decades past, I went looking for an art gallery on this boulevard, only to enter the address and be told that it was gone for three years. This place is called the Breakfast Queen. I first ask a waitress if everyone asks the question I am about to put forth, and then ask her if they are owned by another breakfast place called the Breakfast King. Breakfast King is a bit further north and one street west. Yes, they get the question all the time. No, they are independently owned. My food ain't fancy, but I like little places like this. And they're open for dining. Service is fine. After I eat, I'm outside refilling my water bottle from a canteen. I listen to a middle-aged guy at one of the restaurant's outside tables. He is non-stop commenting on his youngest son's choices from the menu. His older son has hair and growth of beard which makes him look homeless. The dad sounds as if he thinks he's the bomb. The waitress who comes out to take their order apparently is his daughter. She asks her youngest brother what he wants. The kid is looking at his phone. The dad criticizes him, not as a dad would sound, but more as some kind of hip teacher. "Your on your phone while your sister is taking your order..." She interrupts, "Guys, guys..." She does it once more before she gets the order. I'm off to drop off film. It doesn't feel like a long ride before I'm on familiar streets, and soon at the shop. My tall, photogenic hippie goddess is not there this afternoon. It's an icy girl who reminds me of a high school senior, but I'm sure is older. She emotionlessly asks the fewest questions before letting me know it will be 2 to 3 weeks before it's processed. I'm curious why. "The processing lab has no AC," she replies. No air conditioning? I wonder if the repair guys are sequestered? Though it strikes me as an occupation which would be essential. The film processing employees should try working in a dry cleaning plant. in August.
Monday. The month is going out with strange omens. On the way to the gym, and then work, I stop at my neighborhood supermarket for more protein powder. I have a coupon. This morning is 55 degrees F. As I lock up my bike, a guy comes strutting along. He's in an overcoat and has a huge afro. I run in and find my powder, and I'm out. I'm unlocking my bike when I see him with a canned beverage. He asks for a cigarette from a woman sitting in her car with her window down. I recognize her shirt, she's an employee of the store. I don't hear her response, but it appears she has no cigarettes. He replies, "Jesus almighty." He cuts a lone figure as he struts his way through an empty side of the parking lot. I prepare to shove off. I look again and he's disappeared into oblivion. Soon, I'm on the trail and approaching the road with the homeless RV camp. A couple of Denver Police cruisers are parked with lights on at this end of the road next to the trail. A pickup truck from the Hazmat Decontamination Unit is also here. Two officers and two guys in sanitization suits. I roll past the camp. More RVs and some of the tents are gone. The pile of office chairs are now on a flatbed, next to the light pole which I notice is cut in half. The lower half is here, complete with the walk sign. When I get to work, my coworker has yet another Facebook post on her phone. It's from the guy I worked with downtown, the cousin of her son in law. He shares a post from a guy who claims to have a friend in the Denver Police Gang Unit. The friend of this guy claims to have told him that there is now a "full on gang war" on my boulevard, between MS-13 and the Bloods. He says that MS-13 is targeting bystanders. He doesn't share any insights from his experience as to why. I have seen MS-13 graffiti on my corner ("SUR 13" in Spanish.) The guy who originally wrote the post recommends to all his friends that they "steer clear" of the boulevard upon which I live. How do ya' like that? What a way to end the month. I don't think the presence SUR 13 is going to convince my mortgage company to forgive my mortgage. I'm sure they would suggest I call my homeowner's insurance company. ("Are you covered for gunfire? Have we got a plan for you!") Right. Well, I'll end with this. I need more low fat cheese, available only from a particular grocery chain, where I am headed after work. I just can't stop purchasing individual groceries at different supermarkets. I'm once again headed through the same intersection with the eternal patch of loose gravel. I take it slower...which makes no difference. I slip and go down just as I did before. When I do get across the street, there is yet a different random homeless guy where they always perch, against an outside wall. This one sounds like a classic drunk. He's speaking random unrelated sentences every minute or so. "I'm from right here. My children. Don't throw up on me." I run inside, grab the cheese, and run out again. He's still reading off a mental list of random statements. "I'll just wait until I get an answer." Okay. Works for me...
