November 2012

     On the ground, at the bus top outside of work, is someone's mailer which they tossed.  It has a picture of a young woman with her head in her hands.  It mentions something about Obama ruining the economy.  I catch the bus to the train station, where yellow papers are blowing around.  I turn one over.  It's advertising for workers to help Obama get re-elected.
     The next afternoon, I am on the way home from work, and stopping downtown at the bank.  We stop at a corner, where paintings are being sold out of a car.  The saints in my neighborhood:  Zapata, Ernesto Che, The Virgin of Guadalupe, and Al Pacino as Scarface.  Up the street, a couple of middle-aged guys got on.  They are talking about not being able to find a job without a licence, going back to prison, and seeing old friends once they get out.  "He took my beer, slammed that.  I said, 'Damn, that was my beer.'  He said, 'You know how it is.'  He wants to come over and party.  I told him that it ain't like the old days.  I got an old lady now.  He's like, 'That's fucked up.'"  The driver tells the guys to watch their language.  She had also told a passenger getting off at the transfer station to throw her trash into the trash can.  One of the guys notices the woman next to him has a hard hat.  He asks her about getting a job.  The following morning is another Saturday.  At the gas station, next to the stop next to where I catch a bus for a short ride up the street, someone is taking a long look in a trash can next to the front door.

     Michael Novak saw the "new ethnic politics as a direct challenge to the WASP conception of America.  It asserts that "groups" can structure the rules and goals and procedures of American life.   It asserts that individuals...do not have to "melt."  In her speech at...Monsignor Geno...Baroni's conference, Mikulski capsulized her view of America, "America is not a melting pot," she said...  "It is a sizzling cauldron...  Government is polarizing people by the creation of myths.  ...groups end up fighting each other for...jobs and competing for new schools and recreations centers...for tokens..."  Novak writes that "the tactic of demonstration is inherently WASP and inherently offensive to ethnic peoples."  Tim Sampson...said"...you had in the neighborhood an infrastructure...churches, ethnic organizations," long time residents.  "That's infinitely weaker now.  ...if our task is to create the infrastructure of the damn society...that's a hell of a problem."
      Tom Hayden said, "It's the first time the right wing has been able to move from social...to economic issues and start to channel...low-...and middle-income people  into a campaign."  The collapse of the center is producing a view of obsolete social welfare.  By the time of Watergate...New Right theorists and publicists...had decided the Republican Party was probably dying.  They thought of a new coalition, some considering leaving the party behind when Ronald Reagan resolutely insisted on keeping his challenge strictly within the framework of the Republican Party...  There was discussion of forming a two-party coalition of conservatives to seize control of the House of Representatives.  As for the re-election of moderate Republicans, in hopes of achieving a congressional majority within the GOP.  "I really think they're smoking something when they believe that," Weyrich remarked of such GOP leaders.  - Broder
     Two glass coffins were placed in the center of the nave.  "This is supposed to be a saint..."  A special exhibition entitled "The Church is an Organization for the Exportation of the People" showed that baptisms, funerals, religious processions, and...ringing of the bells were used to fill the coffers of the church.  On a red flag which was hanging on a wall were inscribed the words, "Against God, Liquor, and Illiteracy."  ...the central Anti-Religious Museum in the former Monastery of the Passion in Moscow showed...the raping of minors by clergymen.  ..."Beshoshnk" (1935, No. 12) wrote: "...the Priest Koralev came to the Third Fish Smoking Plant of Lenningrad...  He did not wear his priestly garb, nor did he have long hair.  ...sufficient proof by the directorate of the factory to accept him as a member of the workers' association.  No one seemed to think to ask the stranger for his workers' documentation.  Soon the priest was issued ration cards...  When he ...had not been unmasked, he began to propagate his religious views...  Some...were persuaded to take his place at the workbench...when he went to church...  We ask, Where was the watchfulness of the working class of the Third Fish Smoking Plant?"  - Iron Curtain Christians, by Kurt Hutten, 1962
     As we enter the Eighties...the Catholic Church has gone...from being..."part of the colonial system" to being a part of the political self-realization of the Hispanic community.  "...if you were a young executive, they told you; 'We need you to be a part of community life here.  This is part of your job.'"  - Broder
     Our world is characterized by greed and selfishness.  In such an environment, some people find it difficult to be different.-Exodus 23:2  Satan.a rebellious spirit creature is "misleading the entire inhabited earth."  (Revelation 12:9)  He thrives on manipulating humans.  He may craftily manipulate a person's natural desire for material comfort and financial well-being...  Does that mean that we are mere puppets in Satan's hands...?  - The Watchtower, 10/1/12

     It's the Sunday before Thanksgiving.  I'm waiting for a bus home from just up the street.  A young guy comes strolling up.  He has teardrop shades and a Megadeath T-shirt.  I haven't heard from Megadeath in a couple of decades.  The stop is right in front of a big Vietnamese restaurant.  He turns to me and sez: "Goddamn, that smells good."  A drunk I recognize follows him over, and they appear to know each other.  The following day, at the same stop, I am waiting for the same bus with a girl who was on the previous bus with me.  She has a small dog in her black and white tiger-print purse.  She was asking the passengers if anyone had a phone which she could use.  She now has her thumb out for the indifferent traffic.  One heel is in the street, now another.  Someone in a passing car yells at her, "Suck my duck."  When we get on our connecting bus, she asks those passengers is anyone has a cell phone...

     The home has two main media rooms.  There are seven patios on various levels of the home.  In the master bedroom, the 55-inch TV resides in a custom cabinet with a motorized lift, so it can disappear completely...and the 13-foot tall windows are covered by a motorized drapery system controllable by the room's ever-present iPad.  Fireplaces throughout the home can be controlled by iPad apps, as can the water feature in the back yard.  ...a setup in which they could enjoy multiple games simultaneously.  "We mounted thre 42-inch and two 60-inch HDTVs, plus a projector with a 110-inch drop-down screen.  The system has the ability to matrix out five different feeds simultaneously...  The couple has five different  feeds simultaneously...five different DirecTV boxes...  - ListenUp High Definition Sight & Sound

     The Sunday after Thanksgiving, I am in Walgreens.  A girl behind the front counter is talking to a customer, introducing a guy twice her size as her brother.  She tells the customer that, eleven girls jumped her, and her brother kicked their ass.  It's five days later.  I'm out and about on my day off, to the drug store, to the bank, to the post office.  Walking to the bus stop, I am passed by a guy in his sixties in a Winter Olympics scarf.  He asks me matter of factly if I "have any spare change or extra food?"  Food is what one may expect to be an immediate concern if homeless.  It's just that, this is the first time I've had a request for food of any kind.

     ...fascism...considered the creation of Protestant "subjectivism"...  The Russian Orthodox Church became an important factor in the Pan-Slavic movement and in Communist world propaganda.  In July 1, 1949, the Vatican published a decree against Communism.  The Holy Office had decided that Catholics who had...published Communist literature, or made contributions  for these purposes, or had spread and read them, would no longer be admitted to the sacraments.  - Hutten
      "We're all in this together.  I mean, it's the exact same profession.  All trying to seek beauty, truth, and justice...to save the free world from Communism...and make these United States a social paradise..."  - Broder

     After work I am at the train station.  I see a long, neat line of people, perfectly organized and standing in front of a train ticket kiosk.  One by one, they are each staring at it as if they have no idea what to do with it.  This is why the line is so long.  These are not the 9 to 5 riders who are here day in and day out.  These are the ones who never ride the train, except for occasions such as tonight, when there is a Christmas parade downtown.  Their slow progress ensure that there will be room for myself on the next train home.  On the train is a guy who says, "My brother drives a bus.  They can pull you off the bus for a drug test at any time."  At the station where I get off is a similar line in front of the ticket kiosk.  People you would never otherwise see at a train station, except on Fridays to go downtown for dinner and drinks.  On the bus home from the station is a grey-haired woman.  She is speaking to someone on her phone, telling them about problems with her cable service, when she says, "I'm goin' gay.  I'm fuckin' serious.  I'm serious.  I'm serious.  I'm lookin' for someone to fuckin' love me for who I am.  I love you baby."
    

October 2012

        It's my day off.  I'm at a bus stop across the street from where I live, waiting for a bus just up the street to grab a bite and get some film developed.  Sitting on the bench is a normal looking young woman.  From across the street, hobbling through noon traffic on a weekday, is a local drunk.  He sits down next to the woman and begins talking to her.  The two obviously know each other.  He saying something to her about returning home, I only vaguely am able to make out his hoarse monotone.  She appears to become emotional.  When the bus shows up, I get on and hear commotion at the front as I am taking my seat.  The driver hits the brakes and puts the bus into park as I fall into the cushion.  The drunk has come on to grab a plastic trash bag from a bunch next to the driver, saying, "'Scuse me 'scuse me..."  The driver gets out and points his finger an inch from the drunk's face, telling him, "That's the second time you've done that today.  You do that again, and I'm gonna kick your ass."  The drunk shrugs with his mouth open.  With that, the driver takes his seat and we are on our way.  I can't tell if the drunk took an empty bag for his crap, or grabbed a bag with trash in it.  He pulls out a brochure announcing proposed schedule changes for this coming January, offers it to the girl, and smiles at her.  Did he engage in some theatre to try and cheer her up?  She looks at him with distrust.
     A couple of days later I am walking up the street to catch an even earlier bus than usual.  At 4 a.m., a teenaged guy is walking across the street.  It's the first morning this Autumn in the 30s.  He has his coat open and halfway off.  As we pass each other, we both stare at the other one.  The next morning at 5 a.m., I am at a train station with a guy who sounds as though he is singing drunk.  We get on the train and fly through the first snow of the season.  He's sitting on a seat before he changes seats.  He's in constant motion.  He's going through his pack for several minutes.  He looks up several times with a puzzled expression on his face.  He's endlessly moving his head back and forth.  Then his expression is pained.  He takes something out of his back pocket, puts it in his pack.  His upper body over several minutes is one constant non-stop series of movements back and forth and all over.  Most of it is digging in his pack.  He makes a happy face and swings his head back and forth.  Someone he appears to know gets on and sits across from him.  He begins monkeying with a wire (I-pod?).  He stands up, moves his pack around his waist, moves it again, moves it a third time.  He crosses his legs as he talks to his friend, making gestures with his hands and smiling.
     The next morning is another Saturday, and a different pre-dawn train.  In front of me is a sleeping guy with sunglasses.  It's spitting snow, and will be all day, never getting bright enough for shades.  Next to me is a middle-aged guy in a hoodie with an American flag patch on the right shoulder.  Behind me is a man with a black handlebar moustache and a cane.

     At one time, a city's cultural identity was tied mostly to what...(symphonies, opera, ballet companies, theater companies) did, and they mostly performed the canonical works of Western Europe and North America.  We tend to...easily curate for ourselves through technology based on our own idiosyncratic tastes.  - Westword Fall Arts Guide (2012)
     ...drives a Lexus, is married to an attorney, has two children attending private schools that require uniforms, wears high-end designer suits and custom shirts, attends charity dinners for the arts, travels frequently...is an avid cyclist, invests in an art gallery, has a personal trainer, has had cosmetic surgery, uses a Nordstrom personal shopper for clothes, and has Frette linens for the home.  - American Drycleaner, 9/2012
     Most Denver residents might be taken aback at the thought of opening an establishment where occasionally it can be a bit like Sesame Street, with the occasional strange character strolling by...
     Almost all end-time predictions have...a way to be saved.  Those who have consciously prepared...will survive and even prosper.  They will be able to adapt, accept and move beyond the trials and tribulations of the purification.  Working on self-purification now...to position ourselves to flow beyond the hard times.  This year's prophesies are planetary, not nationalistic.  The end of time is a cross-cultural myth...  - Out Front Colorado, 9/19/12
     "We're going to be at the epicenter," he says, "We believed in the city of Denver enough to mortgage ourselves fully...and we're still here, and that bet is still paying off."
     "...that's why it's such a true, fabulous urban space, recognized nationally as the best in the country.  If you just stand out there and take it all in, it's really marvelous.."
     ...Mayor Michael Hancock...telling Westword that some of the people who formerly slept on Denver's streets and sidewalks have returned to their  homes and families as a result.  Lucy...has opted instead to move further from the public eye...  "I mean, I'm certainly not shopping."  - Westword, 10/4-10/2012

     It's another Monday.  I'm out the door and across the street to the bus stop.  A few yards from there, in front of the gas station, standing in the dark are a couple of women.  A white van pulls up and drops off a guy, who they appear to know.  One asks him if he has a lighter.  The next morning, I leave the house a bit late, and catch a slightly later bus up the street.  Many of us get off and cross the boulevard to the stop for the crosstown bus.  This early, there is hardly any traffic.  We approach the stop through the middle of the street, all of us walking in a line, a kind of human wave assault.  Most of us are in black hoodies.  On the bus, right above the windows are public service advertisements on thin cardboard.  One of them falls onto the floor.  From the bus to the train, where I get off the train, there is a guy on each side of the platform.  One is headed northbound, one southbound.  Both are wearing knit jackets of man-made fiber.  Both are holding travel mugs at their waists.  The morning after, I am at the same bus stop across the street from where I live.  At 5 am, it's 41 degrees F.  A young guy goes running past the stop, into the gas station before coming out to catch the bus.  I never see anyone run anywhere in this neighborhood.  He's wearing a T-shirt which reads, "got milk?".  On the bus, I hear a middle-aged guy speak to the young guy in what I think is Spanish.  The kid mentions something "tripping me out."  When we get off, the kid runs across the street to the crosstown stop with his plastic grocery bag from the gas station.  I stand across the street from the deathburger to watch employees walk up to the locked door, and have to knock on the window to get someone to let them in.  I watch this for fifteen minutes after they are supposed to be open, until I have to catch the bus crosstown.

     ...the next ones in a leadership succession...  They saw the premature close of what their parents had called "the American century"...  They have embraced a good many heroes, and discarded most of them.  "...people can't have an anti-government mood for a prolonged period of time.  The government is the servant of the people, and there should be some measure of goodwill..."  ...his answer, I'm afraid, came unintentionally close to parodying Doonesbury's parody of Governor Brown...  "Thinking for the year 2000.  Where does America fit in?  ...the planet is filling up with people and technology...  I think people want leaders to discuss the big picture..." he said, the words tumbling out at an accelerating pace, "How do we maximize quality of life...consistent with...other people in other lands?"  We were mow far removed from...worries about...social programs...  "...if the person is right for the historical period ahead, the people will listen."
     "In the Sixties and early Seventies, many..." former senator W. Scranton said, developed "a tendency to love diffusion.  The idea was that if I'm different from anybody else, therefore I'm good...  They got terribly turned off...  But now I think they're digging back in...rather than being revolutionary from the outside."  His son, W. W. Scranton III, said "In my father's...and my grandfather's generation...any kind of personal concern they were always uncomfortable with.  I think this generation saw that the world couldn't be fixed that way."  President Carter remained aloof from the fervor...over the Vietnam war...  The alterations in the sexual and social relations...the structure of the family, the church and community.  ...Carter evoked the traditional values of a disappearing America.  He was welcomed by many as a...churchgoing...businessman, with a devoted...wife, linked by history and the networks of an extended family to his land, his community, his nation and his God.  - Changing of the Guard, David S. Broder, 1980

     It's Friday morning, 5 am at the train station.  A middle aged couple is waiting for a westbound bus.  The guy has on his yellow and black Steelers coat, and he has a yellow and black pack.  I hear what I think is the sound of a soda can being crushed.  This is exactly what he is doing, crushing cans against the ground, and putting them in a clear Ziplock bag.  I get on the train, which stop at a private university.  Standing at a bus gate is a big, young guy in a T-shirt which reads, "MAN UP."  Period.  A bit down the line, a guy gets on.  He's wearing a generic football jersey.  His arms are crossed, as if he is cold.  His red face has the weatherbeaten look of the homeless.

     ...to the emerging leaders is an acute self-awareness...as broad as having grown up in one of the frontiers of American society; the Sun belt...or the kaleidoscope called Suburbia.  ...their destiny in their race or in their gender or in their condition.  ...meant something different in the period of...the 1960s and '70s from what it had in the 1930s or '40s.  ...in this nation...we function as parts of identifiable clusters or networks of peers...bounded by geography, history or common loyalty.  ...those networks of young people, forged there in the 1960s and '70s, will shape our politics, government and society increasingly...until the end of the century...when they, in turn, will give way to those who are barely teenagers today.  In moving from city to suburb a family is...asserting a desire to throw off...political disciplines.  ...choosing a more homogeneous environment, where there are few clashes...  "...the very difficult transition of Fresno becoming a major American city.  ...as I go and talk to high-school groups and college groups, I sense a very negative attitude about government, and I think that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."  - Broder

     I step off the bus at the train station.  There in the lamp lights, I can see, spanning most of the distance from the back door to the front one is an advertisement.  There are photos of a woman running through tall mountain grass.  She's in shorts and a pink windbreaker.  A guy is on a mountain bike.  Young women are in a yoga class.  Another guy is in snowshoes on a snowy trail.  At the end is a girl on a swing.  It reads, "New homes from the high $200s to over $1 million.  Green Living + Economical Living."  I step off the train at another train station.  A bus pulls into the station.  On this one, on the opposite side, is a message the size of one on my bus.  This one reads, "Move out of your mom's basement.  Riders save $10,000 a year."  In 20 years, this guy will have enough to begin living green.

     As a 10-year board member of Visit Denver, I'm very aware of the competitive nature of tourism...  ...we have to constantly invest millions...to create and preserve positive images.  ...Colorado's venerated reputation may be soon overshadowed by the marijuana industry.  Remember, this is NOT your father's 1960s marijuana...  - Washington Park Profile, 10/2010
     ...Centennial Statehouse, received the Jury Award for Best Documentary Shrot Film at the TriMedia Film Festival earlier this month.  ...has been screening across the state of Colorado all summer (I never heard of it) telling the story behind one of the great architectural treasures of the American West.
Rosa Linda's Bombarded by Hate Mail  Rosa Linda's Mexican Cafe would like to apologize to every one we may have offended concerning Mitt Romney, and the article in Westword.  We did not refuse him service recently.  That is false.  - Denver News, 10/10 - 11/10/2012

     It's my day off, and I'm on my way home from the bank.  I needed to go there before I figured out  that I actually didn't have $150 less in my account than I thought I did.  On the bus home, a kid got on behind me who didn't have fare.  Starving, he says, on his way to a job interview.  In a seat, watching him and smiling in sympathy, is a young woman in a tube top under her coat.  Her young daughter is next to her.  I hear the young mom on her phone.  It sounds as though she's speaking to her mom.  She's talking about...the girl's father?  She saying that "he wont be in forever..."  ...(jail, that is?  or worse?)  After speaking some Spanish, she them mentions something about a psychic.
      It's a cold pre-dawn Saturday.  I'm coming from the deathburger, toward the bus stop.  Before I cross a side street, I can see a car coming.  It sounds as if it has a flat tire, as if the tire may be dangling.  I hear a rattling.  A small hatchback turns the corner.  Its right front tire is completely missing.  I watch it driving on a bare rim as, having come from as far as I can see down the street, It continues on as far as I can see down the boulevard.

     ...White House...occupants were not that emotionally involved...in particular causes.  Most of them were not marching in...protests of the Sixties...  Bert Carp said the salaries offered by private business...mean that "most people like me are going to be lost to government by the time we reach age forty."  - Broder

     It's a couple of days before Halloween.  I have a long walk to the train station.  I am thinking about the lives of the people I see on the streets of my own neighborhood.  So often they appear so unconcerned about anything, solely aware of their own confined existence.  A couple of Sundays ago, I was on the bus to the grocery store.  A young guy was describing the neon beer signs he got for his home windows to a derelict guy.  The derelict guy, because he "has three kids," has no choice but to "hustle all the time."  It's a striking reason, making street hustling appear as a kind of prison rather than some kind of lifestyle statement.  I heard an author on CSPAN describe the economy of the 1980s as a time when a credit bubble, together with moms entering the workplace, both defeated inflation.  I live in a place where the street people have been transported from the 1970s.
     On my way home, I stepped off a bus at the train station.  Lurking at the elevator was a guy in a golf shirt and slacks, and his son by the hand.  In a voice like a whisper, he asks me for a dollar.
     Halloween 2012.  A quarter to 8 PM.  At the train station, waiting for the bus home.  There are a couple of random passengers dressed as "costumed characters", as the sci-fi con puts it.  When I step off the train, a guy dressed as a witch, with a shovel handle, is looking around the train to the other side.  "Hey Brandi, did you get on the train?"  Three drunks wander by, sharing a cigarette.  I recognize a short, middle-aged and weatherbeaten guy who has a hat too small for his head.  A couple of guys in the parking lot are tossing a football back and forth.  The local football team is on top of the western division of the league.  To the east, a harvest moon is rising.

September 2012

     It was the perfect backdrop for telling Denver's story: how downtown had added 15,000 housing units, how the city had banded together to fight chronic homelessness...  From an economic standpoint, people saw...that we're a much more...happening city.  The city never needed the secret holding cells it had created in north Denver...  John Hickenlooper...  Tapped last week by CNN as one of the rising politicians who could be "the next Obama,"...  - Westword, 8/30-9/5, 2012
      A white guy walks into a movie theatre...massacres a bunch of his own people...  ..."White on White Crime."  You ever heard that term?  Neither have I...  Notice, when a black youth shoots up a jazz festival, his entire community takes the blame...  Social scientists draw connections between gangsta Rap, single mothers, and crack sales..  Elected officials talk about getting "tough on crime" and uprooting gang violence.  ...and soon everyone is talking about the resurgence of "black on black crime!"  - Denver Urban Spectrum, 9/2012
     I'm at the bus stop on Labor Day, a stop between where Obama stepped out into a football stadium four years ago and where he visited a neighborhood high school a year ago.  Am I living in his neighborhood?  I'm just gong up the street to pick up some photos and some diet green tea.   At the stop with me is a guy in a Denver Broncos football jersey.  I see so many people in Broncos gear around here panhandling that I wonder if the Broncos donate some of their merchandise.  This weekend, downtown is usually a mess of a mass of people.  I heard on the local news that a couple of people on the pedestrian mall got into a frickin' knife fight.  But here's evidence of why we are a "world class" city.  Speaking of that stadium, Saturday or Sunday of Labor Day weekend is a college football game between the University of Colorado and Colorado State Universiy.  Going on for the duration of the weekend is 1) an annual sale at a downtown sporting goods outlet, which customers begin lining up for as much as ten days before.  The city attorneys' services were requested to find a way around this "world class' city's brand spanking new overnight camping ban.  What to do, what to do.  Nothing this happening city can't handle.  Now move along, nothing to see here.  2) There's is also the annual downtown Taste of Colorado festival, which among Denver's outdoor summer festivals has somehow become its most popular, and takes place in the same park where the homeless have slept overnight, between the capitol and the state house.  At the other end of downtown, there may be a music festival, possibly in yet another sporting goods outlet parking lot, I can't keep track of these things.  The confluence of visitors to these events creates...a knife fight I guess.  The guy in the jersey at my stop wants to know if downtown is a mess.  I tell him only if his bus has been detoured around the festival.  He says that he has to catch a bus downtown tomorrow.  That's interesting.  Tomorrow, everything will be back to normal.  Why is he worried about this today?  When the bus shows up, he asks the driver if she is going downtown.  Not today. but he can transfer to get there.  He asks about another route which goes downtown during the week.  But on Sundays and holidays, it doesn't even come to this stop.  So what is this guy doing here, or at any stop, today?
     Train station.  Waiting on a train in the dark.  Staring at the back of an empty warehouse across the tracks in the short distance.  It must be the Home Depot.  A big garage door is open.  Light spills out from inside.  I can see big orange metal shelving inside.  A forklift drives inside, and I watch as the door slowly closes with automatic definiteness.  Thursday, 5:30 AM.  I've never seen anyone ride a motorcycle in a cowboy hat until just now.  On the train, I'm looking out my window at a parked cargo hauling train which we are passing.  The scene is pitch black, except what appears in a flash through the spaces between cars.  A slowly shifting perspective of individual streetlights.  Superimposed on this is the reflection coming through the opposite window of a different pattern of lights.

     Denver has continued to really blow up this year.  Breakfast joints seem to be all the rage.  ...a little bit of national recognition as a serious food town...  I'm sick of hearing people say that Denver lacks great restaurants.  ...the day, my mood, where I am and how much time I have - all that.  I love having two great new breakfast spots in my neighborhood , neither overrun with hipsters or douches.  And we're seeing cool things like old motor homes being lifted onto the rooftop patio...which has a great view in the city.  ...you can go around the corner to the absolute worst strip club in Denver, Dandy Dan's...  - Westword Dish, 9/12

     Maybe Dandy Dan's is the worst.  I don't know.  I haven't been in a strip club since I was 21 or 22.  A place in Tulsa I think, called the Stables Lounge.  The funny thing about that was, it was 1987, and what was being called the Iran-Contra scandal at the time was the subject of good old fashioned televised congressional hearings.  Inside, at one of the tables, was a guy who appeared to look suspiciously like former congressional investigative committee guest General Secord.  But I digress.  I catch the bus most mornings just yards away from Dandy Dan's.   This fine late summer morning is my day off, and I am on my way to the gas station across the street.  At his usual post is a panhandler.  A passerby says to him that he saw him forty blocks up the street.  He replies, "I get around."  Later in the day, I come out of a small grocery store nearby.  A guy goes by and says, "How's it goin' man."  He has a tall can in a brown paper bag.  As I am coming up the street toward the same corner, I see a middle aged guy with a cane is being helped across the middle of the boulevard by someone who appears to perhaps be his son.  The guy has on a T-shirt for a local wrestling tournament.
     I'm at the bus stop on another Saturday, for a short ride up the street, and then to a connecting bus to work.  It's 5 AM and before sun up.  On the bench is a woman I haven't seen before.  She wants to know if I have a cigarette.  Up the sidewalk comes shuffling a drunk, someone who the woman on the bench knows.  As he arrives, he says, "Alright, which one of you wants to sell me a cigarette?"   She begins berating someone she refers to as "she" and "they".  "Where's she at?  She has a cigarette.  They're drinking beer.  You've been drinking beer too.  She's after my son."  The drunk asks her if she wants him to "go back up there (and panhandle for money)?"  He begins to softly sing to her to calm her down.  There are three more of us waiting for the bus.  He asks each of us if we have a cigarette, the last one with a "hey bro, hey homie."  None of the three of us smoke. On the connecting bus is a kid in sweats and a hoodie.  He has Eurospecs, a goatee, and is cradling a bottle of Powerade.  We are headed down the drive to the train station.  The kid gets up to ask the driver something, and I hear the driver tell him, "The train station is straight ahead."  At the station, on a ticket kiosk is a flyer for a yard sale for an organization called ADAPT.  It appears to be a disabled organization.  Their logo is a stick figure in a wheelchair with its arms in the air.  Above the figure it reads, "Free Our People."  I grab a train and get off down the track.  On the other side of the platform is a guy with a bike and a hoodie which reads "YALE".  He points at me and yells, "You over there!  Have a good Saturday!  Enjoy!"  It's a quarter to six AM and still dark.  I hear a girl's voice, but when I look toward it, all I see is a sleeping guy on a bench.  I realize that it's coming from the roof of a parking garage.  There are a couple of girls talking to each other.  It's otherwise quiet on this early weekend morning.  I rode the time train down with a regular passenger, a guy with mental issues.  When I get down to the bench under the girls, the mental guy comes strolling up.  He's also talking, but to himself, and punctuating his complaints against vague enemies with "fuck" and "goddamn', and "bullshit".  And he speaks loud enough to hear.  The two girls grow quiet before I hear them leave for other diversions.  Am I having a good Saturday yet?  I get up to toss some dental floss in the trash.  I wonder if he will react.  he gets up and looks in the trash can near him.  When the bus comes, he gets on, and says good morning to the sparse compliment of passengers.  A middle aged guy in sunglasses and headphones in the dark morning.  He says to one guy, "Hey buddy, what's up?"  The guy is asleep.  He sits down and says to the driver, "Turn on the heater for us please sir.  Thank you."
     After work on Saturday, I head over to KFC to get dinner for my mom.  Right outside the window is a guy who appears to be homeless, dressed up as a bike rider and with a mountain bike.  It doesn't appear expensive, but except for a bit of mud it looks brand new.  Everything is shiny, the paint, the brake cables, the chain, the rims.  The tires appear to be right from the store.  The next day I am at a deathburger for breakfast.  A guy comes in with a shoulder bag which has a strap made from an old clear plastic bag.He orders breakfast, sits down, pulls out a book to read.  Just like me.  The following day, I am at the bus stop at the supermarket, waiting for a bus home.  Coming across the middle of the street are a familiar couple.  They are asking those of us few waiting for the bus for spare change.  meanwhile, some guy with a beer can in his hand is digging through the trash.  Later on, I am in a deathburger for lunch.  Some guy is borrowing their cordless phone. He is speaking in a stilted and loud monotone.  "You're my friend.  You're my friend.  Even though we're not together anymore, you're my friend.  And I have a friend in the hospital with serious injury.  Goddamn it.  Fuck.  Hey, want to hear Nickelback?  Fuck it.  You're gonna hear Nickelback, 'cause you're my friend."  Nickelback is coming through the speakers.  I say to the girl behind the counter, "You're my friend."  When he's done, he hands the phone back to the girl at the counter and says, "Thank you kindly." He walks out to the parking lot and asks a question of someone in the driver's seat of a little silver Mazda pickup, before he goes on his way waving one arm in the air.  Sitting next to me is a guy in a white cotton tank top and a name tattooed across the back of his shoulders in Gothic script.

     A new week begins with a quiet early morning.  A moth lands on my knee.  An omen.  After work, I am waiting for the bus with a woman who is telling her friend, "Fuck yeah, it's Temperpedic!  You got a choice between a couch and a Temperpedic.  It's a Temperpedic surface."  A couple of days later, I am called into work on my day off.  I'm at a different stop, later than I usually go to work.  On the corner is a guy in handcuffs.  Standing at a short distance is who I presume is his girlfriend.  I hear him say, "I need to get me to a bonds man.  Baby, why you do this to me?"  The following morning is another later start.  I wait to cross the street next to a blonde in a little car with a ski rack.  She's in Eurospecs and has a Starbucks.  This is perhaps a more optimistic omen.  When I get on the bus, I'm watching a middle-aged woman reading a book titled "Taming Your Gremlin".  Someone in the street is working directing traffic through a construction zone.  I don't see a safety vest on her.  At first, it appeared as though she was flagging down the bus to get on.  It makes it look like a bystander is directing traffic.  The end of the week is the second day of Autumn.  Early in the morning, I get off the train to work.  On the platform I see a big group of what I think are college girls.  As pass by, I see that they are middle-aged women dressed in colorful running gear.  They are no doubt headed downtown to the Rock n Roll marathon.

     ...we can comfortably use the word "Recovery" when describing...the economy.  Being smart and feeling optimistic about the foreseeable future should go hand-in-hand.  Real estate is no longer a bad word...  The results of the Gallop-Healthways index were based on "Future Livability" with their metrics being based on factors including  1.) accessibility of water, 2.) recreation opportunities, 3.) obesity rates, 4.) and smoking habits.   Their "standard of living optimism" saw life getting better, nationally, over the next five years.  Colorado was proudly able to boast the #3 position.  The Vacancy rate in Denver through the second quarter of this year, has visibly dropped (year over year), and are now standing boldly at 2%.  - Denver News, 9/10 - 10/10, 2012
     You will get sick on the streets.  I mean a lung infection that drags on for weeks.  A lung infection that rises from your lungs into your ears and makesWhy don't my boots keep me warm?  You really want to hear a voice call down from Heaven and tell you that everything is going to work out your head feel as if it were sculpted out of concrete.  You go to a doctor who flatly refuses to treat you because you are homeless!  You go to interviews barely able to hear because your ears are blocked with mucus.  You have no money for the bus to get back to the shelter.  It is an eight-mile walk.  You have three hours.  If you don't make it back, you are going to spend the night out in the cold.  You have to find a job or get out in the next two weeks.  You go to a church...to get a bus pass...  ...they want to call the company where I would be interviewing to verify...the interview.  If they call...I definitely don't have the slightest chance in Hell of getting the job.  You start the long six-mile trek up the hill.  Why can't the sun come out?  .  - Denver Voice, 9/2012

     It's another Monday.  I'm on a later bus than usual, working an odd schedule.  Three passengers are all wearing black leather jackets, one a senior citizen.  In a few minutes I will see a forth downtown.  Another passenger, a middle-aged woman, is whispering to herself, looking out the window with a puzzled expression on her face.  She suddenly decides to begin quizzing the surrounding riders, in a voice which sounds as though she would otherwise be imitating someone annoying.  "Are those shoes leather?  Are they comfortable?  Do you have good feet?  You must.  I would never (wear those shoes)."  Someone sits down next to her.  She asks, "What's up with satellite phones?Makes the world more dangerous, don't you think?"  She asks about the city's football team.  More and more people begin answering her questions.  A discussion begins about the team.  She then asks someone if they have a job.  This get a laugh from one of the passengers.  She says that she wishes she had a job.  She wants to be a bus driver, except she admits that she gets lost, and she believes that as a result she would get fired.  I think I hear her ask who the president is.  She mentions a name other than Obama.  Then she quietly says "shit.  They just try to kill poor people."  I change buses by the state capitol.  I see a gaggle of what appear to be middle school-aged boys on a field trip.  They are collected at a corner.  They all have white T-shirts and caps on.  All except for one of two tallest boys.  One of these is wearing a British cap and a different shirt, the cool guy.  The other one is smiling at something his friend is saying.
     On my birthday this year, my sister got me a membership to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver.  In the mail today, I have an invitation to one of their gala fundraisers, for the upcoming season's exhibition program.  Tickets begin at $300, with the top table reserved for $50,000 contributors.
     The following Monday, I am on a different route and a later bus than usual.   A woman is telling the driver about losing her kids to Social Services.  This driver is the one who honks at the cars which pass her.  I don't hear her do any honking this morning.  She says that her kids still consider her their mom.  The driver mentions Jesus.  Another pair of women get on, one telling the other about her relationship with her son "falling apart."  I am now listening to two simultaneous and mutually oblivious conversations.  "...broken promises crush kids."  "I'm not in it for negotiation.  Doctors don't know, schools don't know, parents don't know.  First cousins by my side.  Changin' her name.  Givin' her my biological name.  She wants her name changed."  "I'm doing my volunteer work."  "Like a kid in a candy store, you know?"  "I did three abortions.  That shit gets too hard on me."  "Her oldest was tellin' me to get fixed."  (laughter)  "Make a sound choice?"  "That will be special for you then."  "Just pray over it."
     It's 12 hours later, 8:15 PM at the train station.  I am waiting for a connecting bus home.  A car drops off a drunk.  He pauses in the headlights to pose with his liquor bottle, pretending to take a drink.  He's in a plaid shirt which is too long and his jeans appear to be 'slung low'.  He looks as though he is my age.  He's wandering the train platform.  He says to another transit system passenger, "Hi there.  Are you okay?"  He continues to wander in the dark...

August 2012

     On TLC, HGTV, Food Network, even ABC I see stories or characters about LGBT people...  I don't think you can run a queer television company the same way you do a mainstream media station.  How is a...middle-aged...gay man living in New York City going to be able to decide programming for a young...working lesbian...or a...Trans man...?  - Out Front Colorado, 8/1/12
     "We're creating a sense of place," said...Marketing and Communications Manager of Downtown Denver Partnership.  ...it is the lunch of your dreams.  ...Thai cart owner Utumporn Killoran...usually sells out well before 1 pm, with long lines of customers...   ...A Taste of the Philippines...receives a lot of traffic from conventioneers, families and suits...  She discussed the frustration of dealing with  "campers,"...the homeless population in downtown Denver.  She hopes downtown Denver is addressing this issue.  "They take over the street before the (kiosk) closes and camp under the shades of the kiosk from weather"...  - Asian Avenue, 7/12
     At my local deathburger is a display, which at first glance appears to be some kind of "drawing" (or wagering) for prizes on the 2012 Summer Olympics.  If the U.S. wins, the players get a prize.  I thought that one of the prizes was a trip to the Olympics, but the display remains up toward the close of the games.  Upon closer inspection, the trip is simply to London...  On the weekend, I am waiting for a bus to do my weekly grocery shopping.  At the bench are three middle aged guys.  Two are bald, and the third is responding to the conversation with the same "yup", in a constipated voice.  We all get on a bus filled with other middle aged men with buzz cuts.  I sit across from one in a T-shirt which reads, 'There's room for all God's creatures, next to the mashed potatoes and gravy.'
     In the late afternoon, I must go and ask for a ride to work from someone i work with.  She's not my usual ride.  She lives next to a big park.  It's full of kids playing in some kind of enormous football tournament.  Families are everywhere.  It's a beautiful summer early evening.  My ride lives next to the family of someone else we work with.  This one is in the yard with her mom, her cousins on the lawn.  I speak with them in Spanish.  I go next door to ask if I can et a ride.  Her adorable daughters, and one of the nieces from next door, all look at me through the glass of the door.   They both come out to play with a huge ball.  I don't want to leave this extended gathering of family and friends.  It reminds me of when i was but a child myself back in the early 1970s, in places such as Houston and Toronto.  What a wonderful scene this is.  A couple of mornings later, I am on a train with a guy in a Harley Davidson T-shirt and an unlit cigarette in his mouth for the entire ride.
     Thursday is my birthday.  After singing and a cake at work, I am waiting at a bus stop for a hop up to the next stop.  A man and his little daughter sit next to be on the bench.  He's a salesman for Herbalife, in a buttondown shirt and tie.  Meandering from the other direction are a couple of middle aged drunks.  The grey-haired one keeps going, taking wide steps to stay upright.  It's odd to watch him, because it's almost as if I am watching some actor portray a drunk.  The other one sits in the bus shelter.  Suddenly, half a minute apart, the one in the shelter yells "shithole!" twice.  We all get on the bus when it comes, and he remains silent for at least another stop.  As the week goes on, I am on a bus from working a closing shift, at a store on the edge of a wealthy neighborhood.  A little ways up the boulevard, an elderly guy gets on in an apron with a print of oranges all over it.  I don't see the name of a juice company anywhere on it, but he's wearing it under a rawhide coat and leather hat.  This month has begun still in the 90s.  He has a walker with a cloth bag over each handle.  One of the bags has a print of sock monkies.
     The next morning I am across the street from my usual bus stop, the medical marijuana place, which has an insurance office in the right part of the building, has vacated the left part to a place with a sign which reads, "we buy gold."  A cra pulls up to the light.  Instead of rap music, I hear "Blue Eyes Cryin' In The Rain."  At the local deathburger, at 5 AM, at two tables are seated four teenaged guys and a girl.  A big girl in a dress and sandals is wandering drunk in and out, holding the handles of her purse in one hand.  They all are laughing at her as she stops, stares at them, and wanders out again.  It's been a summer of much posturing between here and downtown.  By seventeen-year-olds in red shirts and caps.  By middle aged guys in sunglasses and strutting young women with moused perms.  By everybody and their grandmother with blue inked tattoos on their necks, arms, and calves.  Are extras for a gang movie vacationing here?  Sometime last month, I began to see other passengers instead of the regular riders on my usual morning bus.  There's a guy with clean white leather running shoes.  He looks as though he may be a cook.  Yet the cuffs of his slacks are tucked into his untied shoes.  There's a guy who works for the water department, a guy in a hunting cap, a guy who may be Chinese in blue tinted glasses every morning before the sun comes up, a guy with a foot long beard.  Who the hell are these people?  When I get off my connecting train, I can see down from the platform above a guy in a cowboy hat with no shirt down at one of the bus gates.  A woman hands him a western shirt and he puts it on.  On the train home is a middle-aged guy who has a lot of trouble speaking.  It sounds as though he is trying to tell another guy about Jesus.  I can't tell whether or not the other guy speaks English.
     The beginning of the following week, I am back again at my usual bus stop.  A young guy in shorts and a tank top sits down and asks me when the next bus comes.  He's neither dirty nor skinny, with sizeable biceps.  I tell him that the next one eastbound will be here shortly.  He then asks how far is a certain boulevard south of there.  And then he is off into the night.  On the bus is a skinny young guy with a Whole Foods cap and a T-shirt with a cartoon of a unicorn in the forest meeting a horse with an orange traffic cone on its head.  Sitting on the train platform after work, there is a middle-aged guy next to me spitting on the ground.  I am downwind from his spray.  He is wearing a T-shirt from Shape Magazine, celebrating a power walk.  It reads, "Helping women make healthy choices."  And then it's the end of yet another week.  Friday morning.  I go and watch to see whether the opening crew at the local deathburger has unlocked the doors on time.  It's across the street from a Walgreens, with a sign in red light.  In the dark it casts a red glow below, illuminating the corner in a bath of crimson.  It may be hot in the day, but it's just 68 degrees F before sunrise.
     When I board the bus, sitting in back is someone not merely other than a regular rider, but someone who must be from some exurb of the city.  No visible blue ink tattoos.  I listen to this conversation with her co-worker.  "We have to check in with our callers every three minutes.  Let's just say Katie is grateful to be my boss.  She's cool as shit.  Strict as a motherfucker.  I need this job more than anything.  Do you know Nate?  He's the other tall white boy with the kind of funky hairdo."  She just said "white boy" on a bus full of middle-aged restaurant and construction hispanic workers.  "And they're fucking awesome.  So you're gonna like my side.  My side is a little bit crazy.  Dylan is special."  Her co-worker responds, "He's like that counselor from school who would steal you out of class once a week."  We're off the bus and on the train platform.  The girl is tapping her cigarette pack, packing the tobacco. "Yesterday I had the most fucked up call," she tells her co-worker, "and I don't know if y'all are talking about it.  Those fucked up calls, man.  I was not getting a break."  I learn that her first name is Betty Jo. "I was trying to get two hot-seaters.  The TLs are so busy, we're supposed to keep our calls under three minutes.  She was like, 'Yeah, you guys need to do teams or whatever.'"  TLs; 'team leaders'?  Perhaps they are cold callers for sales leads.
     Even the regulars are going wacky.  A regular passenger on my connecting bus to work brought on a plastic grocery bag with sunglasses.  He's an elderly guy, and he told another regular passenger, "I can't wear sunglasses anymore."  The following morning, I am making a long walk to a train station long before any connecting bus begins running.  I am walking behind and across the street from a guy who has a head which is a mass of grey hair and a grey beard.  He is stumbling along ahead of me, at 3:30 AM, stopping everyone who comes by for a handout.  He gets a cigarette and a light from a girl young enough to perhaps be his granddaughter.  As he gets it to his lips, he stumbles backwards off the curb.  The following morning, I am about to step onto train station property.  It's across a street onto which an interstate ramp exits.  A guy in a black shirt and pants, what i can only describe at 4 AM as a big black pirate hat over grey hair tied in a ponytail, and glasses comes around from the bridge over the interstate and walks away from the train station.  When I get down to the train platform, he is there shortly after me.  The morning after, I am in a 7-Eleven next to the train station.  He comes in after me.  Also inside are a clerk and a couple of police officers.  He makes his purchase, fumbles with a coin and drops it, and gives a little laugh.  I walk ahead of him to the train.  Even though he has some trouble, he takes the stairs down.
     After three days of not enough sleep and no time to go over to a co-worker's home to ask to get a ride in the morning, I'm waiting for a bus to take me to lunch at a little place up the street.  There are three people in the shelter.  A fourth comes by to hang out.  One of the three jumps up to go into the liquor store next door.  He comes back with a bottle in a plastic bag and the three pass it around.  In the restaurant, at one table are a couple of teens.  They are not eating or drinking anything.  They appear to have a little of the gangsta style and attitude, just a bit.  At another table are a middle-aged couple.  The wife has a hairdo.  After the couple finishes eating, they get up to leave.  The husband has a T-shirt which reads, "Thank god I'm from 303."  (As in our area code.)  I've seen 303 tattooed on people with many other tattoos in simple blue ink, including all over their shaved heads.  The teens jump up and follow the couple out.  Bodyguards for an old 303 member?
     The following day I have off.  After spending lunch with the family to celebrate my mom's birthday, I am close to the cemetery where a friend is buried.  After visiting her grave,  I wait for a bus home.  Stumbling along comes a drunk in black cowboy boots, jeans, a black Harley T and a camouflaged cap.  On his cap is a little American flag on a toothpick.  He joins me in the shade with the standard drunk greeting, "Hey bro."  I've decided that these guys are frickin' everywhere.  What the hell is he doing way out here?  We are out front of an old air force base redeveloped into a vast housing community.  He's looking for the White Horse Bar.  He says he wants to hang out with his Native American friends, and that "all the Native Americans go there."  I've heard of it, I can see the sign.  I just can't remember where it is.  He pulls out a small card on which is written the address.  He's on the right street, he just doesn't know which direction to go.  Also written down are three bus routes he is to take.  The last one is the route for this street, so he's made it this far.  Guessing from the bus routes on his card, he came from somewhere downtown.  He opens his wallet to put away his card.  I can see that it has no money in it, but does contain a second tiny American flag on a toothpick.  He tells me that he lived here until he went to Arizona in 2004.  During his absence he claims that he "spaced out" his knowledge of the streets of him old town.  "You know how that goes," he tells me.
     When our bus shows up, he asks the driver where his bar his.  The driver tells him that, without a cross street he wouldn't know.  One of the guy's two transfers is current.  He sits and talks to a lady, then to a young mom and her daughter, holding the card in front of her and asking her if she knows where it is, then to another guy.  To the last passenger he relates a story of being approached by a police officer, who he shortly thereafter refers to as "the sheriff."  The officer asked him where he lives.  He told him, "Right here under this tree."  The officer asked him how much he had to drink.  He claims he said to him, "Uh, a gallon of water, a forty ounce (bottle of beer), and a fifth of whisky.  Why?  What do you want me to do about it, pee in your face?"  He then claims that he told the officer that he would "have his hide.  He's lucky I didn't scalp him."  The guy listening to this got off, and he was quiet after that.  He didn't appear to be looking for the address during the whole trip, but after his tale just sat there texting on his cell phone.
     A full week later, I am in the gas station across the street late in the morning.  A guy comes in wearing a black leather vest, shorts, some kind of leggings and a chopper belt buckle.  His pack is outside.  He's with a younger police woman.   He tells the clerk that he used to live with the officer's mother.  She purchases something for him to eat and drink.  They hug goodbye.  She leaves in her police car, and he collects his pack and food.  I stop back in during the late afternoon.  Standing at the counter as a line of customers check out is a middle aged guy with a couple of hospital wristbands, 1970's hair, sunglasses and a mesh shirt.  The next morning, I am crossing the street from where I live.  Crossing a few yards away is a guy who is talking to himself, saying something about everything being fucked up.  He has gone past a business with a fenced in lot.  In the lot is a barking dog.  He tells it to shut up.
     The next day, I am at a bus stop after work.  I have been at work since 5 AM, and I had to close another store.  Everyone at work has been complaining how hot it is.  It's been warm, but I think they exaggerate.  It's a beautiful late summer evening, in an entirely different kind of neighbourhood than my own.  I am surrounded by themed restaurants.  A guy comes out of one place, texting on his phone.  He goes back inside and comes out again, still texting before going back inside again.  Lights are coming on under restaurant awnings.  Behind one lit awning are the Rockies outlined in a pink glow.  A different guy comes out of the same place.  He also appears to be texting on his own phone.  The first guy comes out and follows the new guy, who looks back and points as he says, "Fuck you Larson."  This collection of restaurants strikes me as a gathering place for cruisers, where young guys stop to offer rides to waitresses off work.  A couple of guys roll in on dirt bikes.  I watch as middle aged women say goodbye in a parking lot.  This is all very familiar to me.  Though it's been some decades since I lived among these rituals, I grew up around such dynamics.  A prematurely grey-haired guy with a perspiration stain down the center of his back, running shorts and maybe a black knee brace.  These are my roots.  No one here with tattoos on their necks, much less covering their forearms.  In any one direction are mansion-like homes among forests of trees.  Surely this is Mitt Romney country.  To be submerged in a place such as this is to know the white race, as Hawthorne discovered the native American  Rest easy Larson.

     The following day I had off, and had a descent sleep.  It's the next morning, and I step into a deathburger.  In one corner is the first customer of the day at 5 AM.   I've seen him in there before, in the afternoon with an old AM radio with an antenna.  This morning, he has some coffee creamers and some napkins.  He has his wristwatch in his had, and he is furiously cleaning it.  He looks at me when I pass by.  When the bus comes, a guy gets on and asks for a new bus transfer.  Drivers don't hand out transfers without a paid fare.  He tells the guy, "No, you need a good transfer."  He begins digging in his pockets before telling the driver, "Wait, I'll find a good one, you'll see."  He'll see?  He then says he's only going three blocks and he'll walk.  On the bus I see another "303" shirt.  I don't think that this is a specific gang, but rather an attitude.