Perhaps it’s because I generally get around on foot, but I tend to notice bikes locked up around Denver. This one was near the Convention Center.

Not all of them seem entirely practical. I took this picture from the sidewalk of a house on 6th Avenue.

And these bike rims from Curtis Park have outlasted their useful life and now serve as decoration.

Here’s a scene from Capitol Hill in Denver. Note the structure on the far right of the picture.

Here’s a closer shot.

I present to you this photograph, taken near the 9/11 memorial on Capitol Hill. There was a gentleman nearby smoking pot who was probably its owner. I tried to sharpen the focus so you could read the bumper stickers better, but I’m unsure I succeeded.

Now before I start analyzing all the bumper stickers on this VW bus as a way to point out problems with our current political discourse, I want all of you to know: I am a big fat stinkin’ liberal. “Liberal” is the best word in the universe! (Take that, all you liberal-bashers. Actually,

antidisestablishmentarianism

is the best word in the known universe. I volunteered to spell that in front of the class in elementary school and got it wrong. I’m still too lazy to check the spelling in the dictionary.)

My heart bleeds so much it’s a wonder I’m not dead, but as a copyeditor, I also have an ear for inconsistencies.

Let’s start with “If we kill the innocent, we become the enemy.” OK, well, unborn babies/fetuses/children/zygotes are innocent, aren’t they? So are all women who’ve had abortions “the enemy”? That would mark out 30% to 40% of the US female population as the enemy.

The sticker on the bottom left, under “Jail Bush,” is an old chestnut that reads, “It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.” I’m all in favor of the first part. The second part? I think we could simplify our military by restricting combat to the surface of the ground and the surface of the water. All planes would be for fun or civilian transport. All submarines would be for science. Don’t even waste your breath telling me it’s a crazy idea. I already know that. These kinds of attitudes come from having no military in my immediate family.

Living near Boulder, Colorado, I’ve seen the “Coexist” bumper sticker so much recently it annoys me. I agree with the principle, but the bumper sticker seems cutesy.

“War is terrorism with a bigger budget” (above “Coexist”): Yes, at times, that is true. At times it isn’t.

The “If History Repeats…Will We Notice” sticker has Hitler on the left and Bush on the right. Why is it that just when the WWII generation is dying out, Hitler comparisons are suddenly everywhere? Please…stop!

“W is for War Without End”: Remember the Vietnam War? It lasted from the 1940s to the 1970s, in some form or another. Democrats and Republicans kept it going. On another note, I’m in favor of staying in Afghanistan as long as we need to defeat the Taliban. I was following the abusive behavior of the Taliban in the 1990s when most Americans had never heard of them; most of that information came from feminist publications like Ms. (See, conservatives, there is something to be learned from feminists!) I don’t believe in negotiating with the Taliban and I don’t believe in incorporating them into the government (looks like it’s going to be Karzai again). It’s possible that conditions on the ground in Afghanistan make the latter necessary, but I hope not.

The best quote in the bunch is from author Sinclair Lewis: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” That, I agree with. I also realized I have never read him. Here is a quote from Wikipedia: “In his Nobel Lecture, he praised Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, and other contemporaries, but also lamented that “in America most of us—not readers alone, but even writers—are still afraid of any literature which is not a glorification of everything American, a glorification of our faults as well as our virtues,” and that America is “the most contradictory, the most depressing, the most stirring, of any land in the world today.”

And if you don’t share my opinions, here’s someone who will keep you in line:

Yes, I realize Kinga’s is nowhere near downtown Denver, but it fits because I was nowhere near downtown Denver over Fourth of July weekend. In fact, I was near Redstone, which is near Carbondale (pronounced “Car-bon-da-ley”) and Aspen, until late afternoon Monday. And that explains why I have to dig into my store of posts to update a theme from the spring of 2009.

I went to Kinga’s with Denveater and our respective honeys. From the outside, on Colfax, Kinga’s looks nondescript, but inside a series of rooms open up, from the bar with white columns to this formal dining room to a dark fireplace lounge to the back patio.

We began with drinks on the patio: spicy Zoladkowa orange-clover vodka for Denveater, served with OJ, and Zubrowka bison grass vodka for me, which had a more delicate flavor. Todd ordered the Okocim beer, and we shared the zapiekanka, bread topped with provolone and mushrooms and onions and a tangy sauce made from ketchup and possibly Worcestershire sauce.

After the patio grew chilly, we moved a few feet to the lounge and sat at a granite counter, where we tried all four Polish entrees on the menu. The rest of the menu is pretty standard bar fare.

I had a massive breaded pork loin schnitzel, which seemed a little reconstituted but was otherwise inoffensive. The potatoes and the cucumber salad in sour cream impressed me more. Ruth’s Polish meatballs with cheese-mushroom sauce (noticing a theme here?) reminded me of Salisbury steak. Brit had pierogi stuffed with potato, cabbage, and meat.

Todd chose the smoked red Kielbasa, which gave him a stomachache (especially after he ate the leftover one the next day), and sauerkraut. Overall, he prefers the food at Cracovia, another Polish restaurant in Denver that he reviewed here.

At some point, I wondered aloud why a Polish restaurant would be named Kinga’s (I thought the name sounded African), and Todd informed me Kinga was a first name, no doubt belonging to one of the owners. It seemed a very laid-back family-owned place (even our very good waitress was family), a suitable stop  to work off late-night munchies after bar-hopping on Colfax.

Cinco de Mayo in downtown Denver was the third festival I attended last Saturday, after International Migratory Bird Day in Boulder and the Colorado Chocolate Festival at the Merchandise Mart on 58th. True to my intentions, I had several donuts in Boulder, multiple samples of ganache at the Chocolate Festival, and two tacos midafternoon.

On the 7 from the Merchandise Mart to downtown Denver, we traveled from suburbia-cum-industrial-areas through what I think was northern Curtis Park, with its stately old houses a little run down, to Uptown and ultimately to Colfax. The bus driver detoured around fenced-off Civic Center Park, where Cinco de Mayo took place, and offered to let me off in the middle of Lincoln Avenue, but when I peeked out, a large truck was charging down that lane. I decided I could wait.

The first thing I noticed about Cinco de Mayo was how packed it was within that encircling fence. The second thing I noticed was the large number of families. At times, the crowd came to a complete stop, strollers paused, and there seemed to be nowhere to go but straight up. Then the dam burst and we all pushed on through.

My first order of business was trying to get a crowd shot to add to one of my Squidoo lenses that details Denver’s ethnic demographics. Have you ever tried to get a crowd shot that includes 7 white people, 2–3 Latinos, and 1 African American? Without posing people, that is? In any case, I noticed that the crowd at Cinco de Mayo was much more diverse than the typical crowd on the 16th Street Mall.

Then it was time for some food that didn’t involve sweets. I thought Taqueria Jalisco looked promising and stepped up to order two tacos for $3, which is pretty cheap for festival food. I got to use some of my limited Spanish while asking for 1 barbacoa and 1 adobaba. The green chile and pico de gallo weren’t as hot as I’d feared—in fact, a great deal less—and the tacos lasted me until dinner time.

Vendor booths circled the park, so I started at Colfax and Broadway and ended up back there more than an hour later, having passed belt buckles and several hundred knock-off Coach bags and a girl playing tennis in between booths and mobiles and Mexican flags and more food booths and an entire section of nonprofits until I found this woman with the sombrero traipsing along in front of the Capitol. It was quite a feat to keep up with her; she navigated the crowd as if she were water and it was a streambed.

In the center of the park, festival sponsors had set up house, beyond the garden beds waiting for flowers and in between the cover band Wide Open and the large band in the Greek amphitheater, which I’m going to guess was Los Profetas del Norte or Los Nietos. While watching the latter at a safe distance (for my ears, that is), I saw a trio of boys all dressed up in Mexican cowboy boots and matching belts and cowboy hats. I have to say, Cinco de Mayo gets people into their best shoes.

In fact, more people dress up for Cinco de Mayo than just about any street festival I’ve ever seen. And then there was this woman, the dance instructor, who has a lot more guts than I do in the wardrobe department.

The only thing I regret is that I missed the Mariachi Mass on Mother’s Day. Now that might get me back to church again.

I thought I’d finish up my Capitol Hill theme with another motley post.

Polish Heroes: Those Who Rescued Jews
The first floor of the Capitol housed a photographic exhibit about the Righteous Among the Nations from Poland, those Polish citizens who rescued Jews during World War II. More Poles are numbered among the Righteous than citizens of any other country, but then, Poland had more Jews than any other country in Europe.

What I remember most about the exhibit was the statement that after the war, some Poles became angry when their neighbors revealed they had harbored Jews. Even though the danger had passed and there was no longer [an unknown] death threat hanging over their heads, they were still upset with their neighbors for risking the lives of people in the neighborhood.

A Diverse Legislature?
Colorado is the only state that has two black men in charge of the state Senate and House. Peter C. Groff is president of the Senate, and Terrance D. Carroll is speaker of the House. Neither one was raised in Colorado. Before Groff was the president of the Senate, that chamber was led by a woman, Joan Fitz-Gerald, who lost the Democratic primary to Jared Polis in the race for the Boulder House seat.

The tour guide told me Monday that either Groff or Carroll has taken a post in Washington and will be leaving soon. She didn’t say which one.

A Division of Labor
There are people who work at the Capitol polishing brass. That’s all they do. They start at the bottom, work their way up to the top, and then begin over again.

The floor is made of marble quarried in Marble, Colorado, near Aspen. The stone on the pillars is rose onyx from Beulah, Colorado, whose coloration has not been found anywhere else in the world.

***
I’ll be returning to Capitol Hill for updates, as well as to the other neighborhoods I’ve already visited. But in May I’m heading into downtown Denver, the part called “upper downtown.”

As we gazed up into the Capitol rotunda, the volunteer tour guide and I had a very American conversation. She was telling us that when the Capitol dome was built, those who were willing to climb the 99 steps to the top landing, above the third floor, could see Wyoming and New Mexico.

There are too many tall buildings in the way now, she added. I agreed with her. I said that I wished buildings would shrink again. And then she wondered why anyone would want to work way up in a tall glass tower anyway. She didn’t mention September 11, and I have no idea what the Belgian woman on the tour thought. But I got the point.

At the beginning of the tour, I told her I had lived in Colorado almost 22 years before touring the Capitol. I’ve been there a couple of times for Pro-Choice Lobby Day, to lobby my Catholic state senator, a father of seven, about making Catholic hospitals inform rape victims about emergency contraception (not prescribe it to them, just tell them it’s available). I was unable to convince him that a Catholic hospital should put public health above religious tenets.

He’s done some good things as a legislator. He helped pass a law forbidding Colorado police from immediately confiscating property that may have been used in a crime; they have to wait until the suspect is convicted. (There was a movement this year to overturn the law. I’m not sure if it passed.) But his social views drive me up a wall, so when I think of him, I tell myself, He’s term-limited.

I didn’t run into my senator on this tour, but I did walk past my representative. I’ve talked to her once or twice, most recently at a meeting about Colorado’s economic situation. She cut her eye at me as if to say, “I know you from somewhere.”

The tour guide informed us that last year, a man was shot in the Capitol. He showed up at the governor’s office claiming to be the emperor of Colorado and then pulled out a gun. The police shot him. Now the public cannot go in and out the main doors of the Capitol building. The three of us stood behind glass and gazed at the park created to honor Colorado’s war dead and Civic Center Park and and the City and County Building, where the mayor’s office is located (in that order).

Then she took us into the chambers themselves, where nothing much was going on. The House has electronic voting; the Senate is too prim for that. Only legislators are allowed to walk down this aisle in the House chamber. The public has to go around.

I thought about how interested I was in politics in my teens and twenties. I was in the political science club in high school. I wrote to my senator about becoming a page. I studied government in college.

I still care: I meet up with my reps from time to time; I send emails and the occasional letter on paper. But I hate going door to door, so I don’t want to canvass in person. When I was a girl I wanted to be president, but now I don’t wish to run for office.

Although the work of legislators affects every aspect of our lives, much of the time, their efforts seem not to touch us. It’s as if we’re looking at each other through glass.

The Golden Triangle has Gateaux, but Capitol Hill has Le Bakery Sensual (just west of Little India at 6th and Grant).

It’s the kind of place you go to get tit cakes—or cakes displaying “any other part belonging to a man.” Or silly gifts for bachelor and bachelorette parties.

The cakes in the cooler lacked the finesse of some I’ve seen at other bakeries. But then, that’s not really the point.

What I want to know is, why isn’t it “Le Bakery Sensuel”? Or “La Boulangerie Sensuelle”?

***

Speaking of phallic symbols, Cigars on Sixth sits kittycorner across 6th from Pablo’s Coffee (at Washington). Clips on Sixth is conveniently located inside. A barbershop inside a cigar shop…seems awfully Freudian to me.

***

If you’re out in the hot spring weather looking for an oasis, visit the Herbery. Steve Katz called it the “cactus store” during our recent conversation at Pablo’s. I walked in and marveled at the lush plants on the floor and the succulents and cacti in the windows. There was barely room to walk, but I didn’t want to—I wanted to take 5 plants home.

When the owner appeared, I told him, “I’ve always wanted to stop here.”

“Story of my life,” he said, adding that situating a store on 6th Avenue may not have been the best choice. People drive by at high speeds and don’t stop at a place called the Herbery, probably expecting it to be an herbalist’s shop (as I did) or a place to score some pot.

At this point I remembered Denver Infill’s idea that Denver should remove 1 lane from every downtown street. A startling idea, isn’t it? If it were applied here, at the bottom of Capitol Hill, if 6th Avenue suddenly became 1 lane narrower, more people would have the opportunity to peek in the windows of the Herbery as they stalled in traffic.

Seems like the kind of thing the government would do after people gave up driving for busing or walking. Since the United States has been building around the car for the past 50 years (at least), removing lanes seems like shock therapy.

But it would integrate streets into the neighborhood, making them less like dividers, less formidable to cross.

A chicken and egg, question, I guess.

The Fillmore Auditorium
1510 Clarkson Street
Clarkson and Colfax
Capitol Hill, Denver
303-837-0360

Last Wednesday was the closest I’ve ever come to rock stars.

I suppose at a concert or two I’ve been as close to the stage as I was to Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz, when I was driving into Uptown Denver trying to find parking near Colfax, and he came out from behind a bus and gave me a flashback to the day in high school when I hit a girl on a bike who’d just done the same thing on a busy street in Kansas City.

One of the other band members had already crossed. Wentz stopped and waited for us, and I waved him on. He looked very skinny in his tight black pants. It was a good thing Sex was there to identify him for me, or I might have thought he was just another concert-goer.

In fact, I wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for Sex. She picked the band so that I could get a glimpse of the Fillmore (formerly Mammoth Events Center). It was a big place, though it seems much vaster in my imagination. You walk in after getting frisked and carded by any number of people and either head down a set of red-lit stairs to the main level or stay on the top level that rings three sides of the hall.

Since it was an all-ages show, those of us who wanted to spend $7 on beer (or, in my case, a small gin and tonic) had to stay upstairs. They wouldn’t let me take my drink cup downstairs to fill it with water, even though they could see it was empty. I had to buy a bottle of water for $3, which I later refilled with water from the bathroom faucet.

I really enjoyed Cobra Starship, who started playing soon after we arrived around 7. Lead singer Gabe Saporta was dressed like he’d teleported from the 1980s and did not take himself seriously at all, which was fun. Cobra Starship had a female keyboard player—the only woman in all 4 bands—and a good sound mixer. The crowd was into them.

I have less to say about the next two bands since, quite frankly, their music bored me. But two of them were the occasion for our second close encounter with rock “stars.” We were hanging out and drinking by the recycling station, which happened to be right by a staircase descending into the depths of the Fillmore, and two really skinny, black-haired, tattooed young men raced by toward the stage. One of them was Trace Cyrus (brother of Miley Cyrus from Hannah Montana) of Metro Station, the second band of the night.

Metro Station and the next band have blended together in my memory. All Time Low’s idea of working the crowd was to say, “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!” and then urge the crowd to say it backward.

“Are we twelve?” Sex asked.

Actually, some of the concert-goers did look about twelve. Most were in high school or college. And then there were a few people “our age,” but I didn’t feel totally out of place, the way I did at the very last Nirvana concert ever (also in Denver, but I can’t remember the venue).

The Fillmore definitely knows how to get bands in and out quickly. I never once felt that a band was taking too long to set up, but I did get tired of standing after a few hours. There are hardly any seats in the Fillmore, the better to create a mosh pit or a great big dance floor. Some people sat in chairs along the left side of the auditorium, and some sat in groups on the floor.

Sex told me Fall Out Boy would put on a good show, and she was right. They came on in suits, guarded by “Chicago cops.” Lead singer Patrick Stump’s Newt Gingrich wig gleamed as he launched into some song I’ve never heard before. I did recognize “It’s Not a Scene, It’s an Arms Race” and “Thanks for the Memories,” so I’m not completely hopeless.

At one point, they played a cover of “Beat It” by Michael Jackson. That was weird.

Fall Out Boy had a wall of video screens that they used to open the set and illustrate their songs. During one song the guitars started flashing white in sync with the lights behind them. But my favorite video was of the guitar player changing out of his suit into another outfit. That got the crowd going.

I’m not sure why the band did two shows in Denver. We went the second night, and twice as many people could easily have fit. According to this review in Westword, they didn’t sell out the first night either.

Little India
330 East 6th Avenue (6th and Grant)
Capitol Hill, Denver
303-871-9777

Maybe it was a mistake to walk down Sixth Avenue from Broadway east to Downing at lunchtime. I was hungry but had no idea what I really wanted for lunch. Something will strike me, I thought, which turned out to be a prophecy.

As I stood at the corner of Sixth and Broadway, I drank in the smell of grilled food, even if it was from the Burger King. I decided against Il Vicino, where I’ve had dinner at least once (apparently it made no impression on me), ignored the chain restaurants at The Shops at Sixth and Broadway and Broadway Central, and turned my back on the mountains.

I took a good long look at Daphne’s Greek Café (a western chain established in San Diego in 1991); Racine’s, which had an awfully nice patio; and a sushi joint whose name I didn’t write down. I kept walking. It was the sign for Little India, tucked up behind a unprepossessing building, that finally convinced me to get out of the sun scorching the top of my head.

(Women who are losing their hair should have enough sense to wear hats, but I cordially dislike them. I think it’s time to buy a wig. I suspect it would be as uncomfortable as a hat, but at least my hair would look better.)

Little India on 6th was the first location in the Denver area; others followed at 15th and Champa and on South Downing. When I walked in, it took my eyes a minute to adjust to the dark, cool interior. The restaurant was busy, so unfortunately they seated me by the front, next to the buffet. If I’d been paying more attention, I would have asked for a two-top against the back wall. At least I didn’t have to walk far to get my food.

I took advantage of the buffet, which is to say, I ate a lot: 2 servings of saag, 2 of chicken tandoori, salad, mango custard, and several pieces of naan. The saag was rich and spicy (the best I’ve ever had, I think), and the tandoori was salmon-colored and smoky. The chicken curry was nothing special. My server at Little India did not bring fresh naan to my table; it was piled on the buffet, and then a mad rush followed. It would have been better fresh.

Pet peeve: every Indian restaurant I’ve visited covers its buffets with an incredibly low hood. Is an Indian buffet meant only for short people? Or people with very long arms? Am I supposed to stick my head under there? That would seem to defeat the purpose of the hood.

Other than my struggles with the hood, and the table right next to the buffet, I managed to enjoy my lunch and read my book about magical cats. The staff were gracious about letting me take this picture of the bar (there are many more on the animated website).

Unfortunately, by the time I walked four blocks down 6th to Pablo’s (see the end of this post), I was desperately in need of a bathroom. I’m not certain it was any particular thing I ate. It could have been the coffee I had in the morning (even decaf will sometimes upset my stomach) or the huge amounts of food I ate at lunch.

All I can say is, thank God for Pablo’s.

***

P.S. I’ve been to Little India before, and I’ll go there again if the occasion is right. I’ve had too many sensitivity incidents with my digestive system to blame it on the restaurant at this point.

Bones is, at heart, an economical restaurant. It doesn’t waste much time on signage, for instance. I was walking down Grant thinking it was on 8th and had to call the people I was meeting to get new directions. When I did get to the intersection at 7th, nothing presented itself except Luca d’Italia, Mizuna, and the Lancer Lounge. I asked the guy with the spotted dachshund if he knew where Bones was, and he said he’d never heard of it. Presumably a man walking a dog comes from the neighborhood, so that boded badly.

Finally, with trepidation, I approached this door. You can’t tell from the picture, but “Bones” is painted above the door in tiny type, and in larger type to the left of the door. It’s a small place, about the size of D Bar Desserts. At 5:30, it was full.

Turned out that I was supposed to have been there at 5, which I would have known if I didn’t go on email strike on the weekends.

Turned out that the same man, Frank Bonanno, owns Bones, Mizuna, Luca d’Italia (all on the corner of 7th and Grant in Capitol Hill), and Osteria Marco in Larimer Square (Luca and Marco being the names of his sons). He’d probably buy the Lancer Lounge if he could and turn that into yet another restaurant. Or expand one of the others, since Bones and Mizuna are both small.

To me, running so many places implies an economy of effort. A person that busy has to know exactly what to do and when to do it, or the restaurants all come crashing down.

Yet he still found time to come by our table twice in the three hours we were there, and even signed my grease-stained one-page menu. If he devotes the same level of care to his staff as he does to his customers, his restaurants must be great places to work.

Our waitress took good care of us too.

And the food, Beth?

Oh, yeah. Since I arrived half an hour late, Denveater and our other dining companion had already started, but they were kind enough to leave me a steamed bun with suckling pig (shaped like a taco rather than a traditional pork bun), a beef eggroll, and some bone marrow, which was a treat for me. My first thought was to compare it to pâté, but its texture was less firm than most pâté, more like silky blobs of cooked fat, and its flavor was more meaty. I can see why Denveater loves it so much.

Also, there’s something about sticking a knife into the bone and prying out your food.

My favorite, though, was the black cod tempura. The batter was more delicate than your typical tempura from a Japanese restaurant, and on the first bite, my mouth filled with a light fish flavor. The jalapeño added the right amount of heat.

Almost everything I ate at Bones, with the exception of the eggroll and the steamed bun, was wet and soft and fatty. I did wish the escargot potstickers had been crispier on the outside (and I also wish I had focused a little more carefully).

But then, wet is appropriate for food at a noodle bar. My egg noodles with duck leg confit (meat cooked in its own fat) and oyster broth were delicious, but I had to take a break for a while because I was so full. The duck was lovely, but the oyster broth didn’t really register with me.

In case you can’t tell, I’m in over my head here. It’s been so long since I’ve had either escargot or oysters that they taste new.

If I stick around Denveater long enough, I’m sure I’ll get used to them, since she loves oysters. She was entertaining us at Bones with stories of how she got from “I don’t care if it’s good. I just want to eat” to the food writer extraordinaire she is today. Be sure to check out her (future) blog post on Bones, especially her take on all the namazake (unpasteurized sake) that we drank.

Did I say, at the beginning, that Bones was economical? Well, we got the bill. Considering all we ate and drank, it was a fair price. But if you go there, don’t let the low prices fool you. They add up pretty quickly.

On a good day of exploration for this blog, I rediscover places I’ve been before. It feels like pieces of a puzzle falling into place.

Like the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which I first saw last spring on a tour of the Alamo Placito neighborhood with Phil Goodstein (whose tours I recommend). We were there on Sunday, and all these black women were coming out of church in blindingly white dresses. It was stunning.

(I tried to peek into the church today, but all three doors were locked. The mailman caught me coming out the gate but said nothing about it.)

I met up with myself in memory than once today. At Pablo’s on 6th, I ran into Steve Katz, one of my teachers from graduate school at CU, and he graciously sat down and talked to me. He told me that he had almost left Denver when he retired from the University of Colorado, but he decided to stay because it’s a culturally vital city. He thinks most areas of New York City, where he grew up, are declining more than they are revitalizing, but Denver is on its way up. There is a lot to do here, and you don’t have to plan months and months ahead to get tickets to the ballet or plays.

The trouble with meeting your grad school teachers is that they inevitably ask, “Are you still writing?” And I honestly answered “Yes,” telling him about the novel I began last year and then laid aside and then took up again when I got the oh-so-original idea of doing the synopsis before writing it (which is a first for me). But the truth is, I had a long period after the turn of the millennium when I wanted to stop. Or maybe I just wanted to rest and spend my time catching up on reading. I think now I should have done just that, instead of rewriting and submitting my collection of stories until I got burned out in 2005.

I told him I was tired of copyediting, and he said it must be tedious. It wasn’t when I started, of course, just as he liked teaching when he started in the 1960s.

But he said he’d never gotten tired of writing. That was good to hear.

In honor of April being National Poetry Month, today I present a picture-essay of Poet’s Row, a street on Capitol Hill (on Sherman, between 10th and 11th) featuring 9 old buildings named after writers, not all of whom are known as poets. I noticed that the Robert Frost building is up the street from the Beauvallon in the Golden Triangle. I see a similarity in the style of the window gratings, but can that one detail be used as the basis for a poet-to-building comparison? In other words, do you think there is any way in which Robert Frost’s poetry resembles this monstrously beige building? Poets.org calls Frost (1874–1963) “a quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken, in the psychological complexity of his portraits, and in the degree to which his work is infused with layers of ambiguity and irony.” I’m not sure I would call the Beauvallon modern, but I could accuse it of having layers, I suppose.

Frost died in January 1963, several months after I was born. He is one of my youngest sister’s favorite poets.

It may be charitably guessed

Comparison is not her quest.

from “Two Leading Lights”

I had never read that particular poem before, and I found it somewhat sexist, which reminded me of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s (1804–1864) complaint about “scribbling women” taking away book sales from more deserving writers. Searching for that phrase on Google led me to this site. Of the 15 stories turned into radio plays there, I’ve read Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and “The Yellow Wallpaper.” While writing this post, I listened to “The Stones of the Village” by Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875–1935).

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) called Hawthorne’s 1851 novel The House of the Seven Gables “the most valuable contribution to New England history that has been made.” Of himself, Lowell said, “I am the first poet who has endeavored to express the American Idea, and I shall be popular by and by.” (Those of us who are writers certainly know that feeling.) Whether Lowell’s first sentiment is accurate, I don’t know, but quintessentially American poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892), who has no building on Poet’s Row, called Lowell “not a grower—he was a builder. He built poems: he didn’t put in the seed, and water the seed, and send down his sun—letting the rest take care of itself: he measured his poems—kept them within formula.” Is it inappropriate that the doorway of a “builder” is dappled with the shadows of leaves?

Russell is known as the author of the 1848 book-length poem A Fable for Critics, which I have not read, but I can imagine he would have a few things to say about my silly juxtapositions here. Amy Lowell, his descendant (1874–1925), made him a character in her 1922 poem “A Critical Fable.”

“Hero-Worship” by Amy Lowell

A face seen passing in a crowded street,
A voice heard singing music, large and free;
And from that moment life is changed, and we
Become of more heroic temper, meet
To freely ask and give, a man complete
Radiant because of faith, we dare to be
What Nature meant us.  Brave idolatry
Which can conceive a hero!  No deceit,
No knowledge taught by unrelenting years,
Can quench this fierce, untamable desire.
We know that what we long for once achieved
Will cease to satisfy.  Be still our fears;
If what we worship fail us, still the fire
Burns on, and it is much to have believed.

Of all the writers on Poet’s Row, I would prefer this blog post be judged by Mark Twain (1835–1910), because at least that would make me laugh: “Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.”

Does anyone else think it appropriate that the doorway for Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) has no number?

Saturday night Todd and I were due for some fun, after he spent Friday night at a hotel undergoing testing for sleep apnea, while I shoveled the deck and painted my toenails. I tried to spice up the night with a little Jude Law in My Blueberry Nights, but the disc was hosed.

There’s been a lot of local buzz going on about a film called Ink, shot in Denver and produced by a couple of Denverites. The theater at Starz was packed—not a regular occurrence—and the assault began.

Good versus evil, storytellers versus incubi, that is—and the film’s effects versus my eyeballs. I’m not a huge fan of cinematography that’s hard to watch, like The Constant Gardener (How could anyone make me not want to watch Ralph Fiennes?), but Ink was definitely worth the retinal torture. (The third paragraph of this review describes it better than I can. And you can watch the trailer here.)

The first half of the movie was a nightmare version of my explorations of Denver, never knowing what you’re going to find around the next corner. Why is this black-robed Druidic figure dragging this gleaming blonde child behind him? What does he want? He tells us, it doesn’t quite make sense, so we keep following along.

Like the Pathfinder, my favorite character, the movie is at first annoyingly self-absorbed and then reluctantly revealing. Most of the characters inhabit the dream world and only pop in to visit us at night, when they give us good or bad dreams. The Pathfinder was the most liminal of the characters, blinded but able to change physical reality by tuning in to the beat of life. His scenes alone were worth the price of the movie.

After all that metaphysicalness, I wanted to stay out, and we drove to the Red Room, on Colfax on the edge of Capitol Hill. I was expecting something a little gritty, like, say, Lion’s Lair—it wasn’t, and it wasn’t swank, either, like the Oceanaire, although the burgundy-colored booths looked nice from the top floor. The bar itself was impressive, but the patrons were mostly college kids or twenty-somethings, and not even enough of them to fill the place by 11, when we left.

The Red Room changed ownership a year or so ago, and I think it hasn’t quite found its groove. Or maybe the time to go there is happy hour and the drink to order is a martini, judging from the selection of vodka. The reviews on Citysearch mentioned chefs coming over from Nine75 and Epcots Living Seas Restaurant, which might account for the “tenders” (huge pieces of chicken) battered with Frosted Flakes. They looked spiky and scary but were sweet as could be, though the batter definitely didn’t want to hang out with the chicken a second longer than necessary. I ate most of the fries while arguing with Todd over whether they were hand-cut.

And then the band started channeling Stevie Ray Vaughan and we hung over the railing and swayed back and forth. Two women danced in front of the door, and the drummer had a great time.

Car sharing finally comes to Denver! Occasional Car now has two Honda Civic hybrids available for rental by the hour, in two separate locations on Capitol Hill.The company hopes to place other cars around Denver in the next few months.

Now if it would only come to Broomfield…yeah, right!

Last Saturday, Denver reminded me of the separation of church and state and the way religion changes families.

Walking down 14th Avenue on Capitol Hill, I passed several houses of worship near the Capitol building:

1. The First Church of Christ Scientist, which looks like a large temple and has a green dome on top and an inscription on the front that reads: “The eternal God is thy refuge.” It is right across from a credit union, which involves another kind of veneration.

2. The Scottish Rites Masonic Center, kittycorner from the Capitol.

3. The First Baptist Church, which is across a street from both.

The Christian Scientist structure was so stately, I wish I’d taken a picture of it. My father was Christian Scientist. I can’t think about the religion without thinking of how his family prayed over him after he got polio in 1927 at 9 months of age (not that there was anything else to do for polio in those days) or the family legend that his devout mother found out about his father’s bigamy from the Kansas City papers.

(My grandfather was a minor politico for the South Side Democrats, who supported Shannon, a rival to Prendergast. That’s why his extramarital shenanigans ended up in the paper—the editors were trying to embarrass political rivals. The “south side” was the white neighborhood in the 1930s and today would be considered pretty far north, around 40th Street or so; KC was racially divided between north and south instead of between east and west as it is today.)

My father didn’t convert to Catholicism until after he married my mother, but that didn’t scandalize her family because her parents were some kind of Protestant that I can’t remember.

My mother got to the bosom of the Catholic Church by a circuitous route. Her maternal grandfather committed suicide (another family legend: he tried to feed his wife ice cream laced with arsenic, but she refused it). Suicide was a much bigger scandal in 1915 than it is today, so my great-grandmother packed up her three daughters and moved the two eldest from Connecticut to an orphanage in/near Waterloo, Iowa, where her mother lived. The baby she took with her to Kansas City, where she got a job and where her other two daughters eventually joined her.

One of the sorrows of my life is that I never talked to my grandmother or great-aunt about their years in the orphanage. Or if I did, I’ve forgotten what they told me. I don’t even know how long they lived there, but my great-aunt converted to Catholicism, and because she was my mother’s godmother, my mother was raised Catholic.

Whew. No wonder I’m conflicted about religion.

Here’s a rather mysterious church. Apparently heaven is smoke-free.

City, O’ City
206 East 13th Avenue (next to Watercourse Bakery)
13th and Sherman
Capitol Hill, Denver
303-831-6443
Open until 2 am every night
Bus directions:take the 0 from Market Street Station to Broadway and 13th; walk east to Sherman

On an extended mosey up 13th Avenue to see the off-Colfax regions of Capitol Hill, I came upon City, O’ City. As soon as I stepped through the door I got a big welcome and went to sit at the bar.

I had heard this place was a hangout for the Capitol Hill crowd, but it looked far too laid-back for that. It was also fairly empty on a Saturday. And I soon realized it was a vegetarian restaurant, which I hadn’t expected at all. I must have decided in my head that it was a wood-paneled, dark, very masculine kind of place that served large helpings of meat.

I ordered one of the specials, a Garden Pie, which sounded intriguing. While dreams of quiche filled my head, I sipped my cup of Jasmine Pouchong tea, one of their top-shelf selections at $2.53 per mismatched cup and saucer.

The 10-inch Garden Pie was not quiche, of course, but a pizza unlike any I’ve ever had before: no cheese, drenched in the reduction, and covered with small pieces of arugula and tomatoes and asparagus and onion. When my waitress in the low-backed dress put it on the bar in front of me, it was steaming. Amazingly, despite the reduction everywhere, the crust was still crisp through the first and even the second pieces (I ate three and had to leave the rest because I didn’t want to carry it around). It was not elegantly presented, but for a salad on pizza crust, it tasted good and provided a lot of nourishment for $9—enough food for two people, or even three who wanted a light meal.

Sometime during the second piece of pizza, my leg began to go numb. I sat at the bar so I could talk to the staff, but I think a table would be more comfortable than the wobbly black-and-silver bar stools. The music, described as “down tempo” on the website, was funky and vaguely new age by turns. Behind me sat a young woman in a white beret, reading; another skinny young woman in black leather leggings came in to order some coffee.

One of the servers, who had corkscrew brown curls and was wearing a shiny red-and-black-checked shirt, told me that Watercourse Foods had been here until a couple of years ago, and after it moved to a new location in Uptown Denver, the owners opened City, O’ City in the old space. Right next door is Watercourse Bakery, where you can get gluten-free baked goods.

So the name has changed and the menu has (mostly) changed and a wall was knocked out, but the vibe is the same. Politicos come by for lunch or a drink and sit down with their opponents and relax. Then they go back to the Capitol and resume their battles. But it’s not just lobbyists and lawyers: the young artists who attend the Art Institute of Colorado at 12th and Lincoln like the cheap food too.

So what is City, O’ City, besides a place with a funny, vaguely poetic name? A vegetarian restaurant? A pizza joint? A coffeehouse? A bar that stays open until 2 am?

I suspect it will require more investigation.

I heard him before I saw him, the man ranting in the wheelchair. At first sight, he looked old. Knotty white hair dirtied by gray surrounded his ruddy face and covered his chin, as if he were a ragged version of the Green Man already worn out by the first day of spring. He guarded one side of the Chinese joint at Colfax and Penn, and I couldn’t make out his words, the enemy he railed against—only his frustration. Gray pants hung slack below his right knee: the lower part of that leg was gone. A veteran. Perhaps a diabetic. Perhaps a worker injured on the job.

I was late for my haircut in the shinier part of Uptown. I didn’t linger on Capitol Hill, did not approach him, but I remembered that on

This same corner, a year ago a stranger asked me to have a beer.

On Saturday I began my exploration of Capitol Hill, but other things kept intruding. Like Denver’s St. Patrick’s Day parade. Everywhere I walked along Colfax (the northern boundary of Capitol Hill), I saw teenage girls in Ugg boots and cute green shorts and miniskirts. (Ugg boots are apparently the new uniform for teens, which makes me glad that I’ve only ever bought Ugg clogs.)

Even one old lady in sweats, who was pushing a stroller doubling as her suitcase holder, wore a green elf’s hat.

I wish I could have snapped a picture of the pedicab babe whose green feather boa floated behind her in the breeze she created, but even though I waited around for her to come back by Tattered Cover and was prepared to bribe her for a picture, she must have gone another way. At least she smiled at me. I got this guy’s head instead.

Of course, every journey needs the proper send-off, so I stopped at Indulgences, Etc. (otherwise known as Belvedere Belgian Chocolate Denver and located on Colfax between Sherman and Grant) to get their buttercream truffle and a Curaçao-filled bullet-shaped thingy that exploded in my mouth. In a good way, with orange flavor and sugar crystals and chocolate. I had to restrain myself from trying all the free candies they were offering. Reminding myself how I wanted to lose 17 pounds didn’t help, but the presence of several staff gossips did. From what I could hear (and yes, I did strain my ears), someone who works there flounces around a bit too much. Clearly, all Denverites need to gird up their loins and buy chocolate to un-grump the staff and bolster the revenues. Or they could buy pastries. Or drinks (non-alcoholic) and the glasses they come in.

After I’d cleaned all the chocolate off my fingers, I checked out Capitol Hill Books and found the book by Patricia Dubrava that opens with the poem I posted Monday. I was tempted to buy the two books by Marilyn Krysl (one of my favorite poets, and a local too), but I had to save money for lunch. Plus I have at least 25 books in my office waiting to be read, and then there are all the classics I’ve neglected lo these many years…

Thus chastened, I ventured through the forbidding door of Jerry’s Record Exchange and was assaulted by a wall of smoke. Wait, I thought, isn’t there a no-smoking law in Denver? I didn’t dare to ask the man in a blue cap (Jerry?) if that was so. Instead, I meekly inquired if he had “Cardboard Box” by the Blue Aeroplanes, only remembering later that it was a song (the album is Beatsongs). He had 5 of their albums, but not the one I wanted. Amazon, I guess. Or Wax Trax (also in Capitol Hill). Or I could try the going-out-of-business sale at the Virgin Superstore on the 16th Street Mall, but go there for a 1991 album? Seems like a waste of time.

If you’re a vinyl collector, or you want an out-of-print CD and you don’t mind that the looks-like-plaster wall covering is peeling off in places, by all means check it out. I think Record Exchange exemplifies the kind of place that used to exist up and down Colfax. They’re getting prettied out of existence.

This end of Colfax, just a few blocks from the Capitol, is a stately street, with a lot of old buildings. Go east from Pearl to Downing (the eastern boundary of Capitol Hill) and you see the beginning of 1970s “redevelopment” (read: fast food restaurants).

When I was cruising Colfax Sunday morning on my way to Fluid Coffee Bar, I had to detour around a cop car double-parked. A couple of officers were arresting an old bearded man at 9 in the morning. That’s Colfax.