My food critic friend Denveater loves oysters, and I’ve been bugging her to take me out and introduce me to some. Sunday night we stopped briefly at Ocean Prime in Larimer Square but decamped when we discovered they served 1 type of oyster. One seated at the bar at Oceanaire, we ordered a happy hour chef’s choice plate of 8 oysters. Some of the oysters on the menu were new even to her, which made me happy.

As we waited for our first dish to appear, I made a fateful decision: I would take my photos without flash, in order to avoid having blindingly white plates in my pictures. All the pictures in this post were taken at 6400 ISO, mostly because I could. But then I had to go home and unleash Noise Ninja on them. As I was editing them, I thought, “Why am I taking pictures at such a high ISO, then using Noise Ninja to remove noise, and then sharpening them? It’s silly.”

First up, Chef Creek from British Columbia. As Denveater said of West Coast oysters, it was a bit sweet, mild with just a touch of brininess. The Riptide, from Massachusetts, was my favorite of the four types. It was saltier and had a more robust flavor. It’s also prettier, though I don’t know why that should matter.The second East Coast oyster came next: Alpine Bay from Prince Edward Island (shades of Anne of Green Gables!). It was less salty than Riptide but definitely had more grit. I liked it too.The Nootka Sound oysters, again from British Columbia, were my least favorite, with a less distinctive taste. After all, if you’re going to toss something rather slimy down your throat, it should have some flavor. Denveater thought the Nootka were a little chewy.

Of course, we didn’t stop with oysters; we took full advantage of the happy hour food and wine menu. We started with deep-fried asparagus, which were a little undercooked. Then we moved on to beef sliders, soft and oniony.

It may have been lowbrow, but I wanted to try the cornmeal-friend oysters and fries. Apparently, Sunday is no-carb-left-behind day.We finished up with friend green beans, which were perfectly cooked. The bacon-flavored aioli was just spicy enough. I’d give them the prize for best snack, though the fried oysters were good too; I especially liked the textural contrast. This was my second meal at Oceanaire. I went there two years ago for Denver restaurant week and enjoyed the food and drinks then as well.

I had a wonderful evening in downtown Denver Thursday night. It was cool out but not cold, and the streets and bars and restaurants were full of animated people. I got off the B at Wynkoop and 15th and sped over to Translations Gallery between 17th and 18th on Wazee. I had been there the day before to see their photography exhibit, but the artist statements weren’t up yet, so I went back Thursday. Mark remembered me and came over to tell me that I had refocused his attention on the artist statements, especially on the kind of equipment they used (which was my primary interest).

One of the photographers used large-format film cameras (Bryan David Griffith); 2 others digital, a fourth used multiple exposures, and the last made prints from film, including a homemade film using arsenic.

My favorite Griffith image was of a pine tree against the sun shining through fog; the rest of the print was dark. It seemed to open up the more I looked at it.

Jillian introduced me to Diane Huntress, who photographs buildings in the Denver area and then cuts and pastes them together so that, at first glance, it appears she looked up through the camera and took a shot. Thus details of buildings combine to form an abstract composition. Other artists were Cecelia Feld, Alex Benison (the photographs on the website as of Thursday night were not the large prints shown at the opening), and Izah Gallagher (the artist who made some of her own film).

After talking to Diane for a while about how she had taken pictures of the Rio Grande building on Blake and the Union Station sign and juxtaposed them, I ran back to 16th Street and down to the Tattered Cover LoDo. There Jeremy N. Smith was talking about his book Growing a Garden City, which describes 15 people involved in the local food movement. Smith complimented Denver on its innovative approach to urban gardening. I’ll be writing more about that on my other blog, Restoration Nation, in the next few days. So keep checking the link in the sidebar to your right!

Turns out he is from Missoula, which is perfect, because the first stop on the year-long trip Todd and I are taking is to Missoula.

It’s January, the time of year when I usually feel like losing a few pounds (and that phase of the year lasts until the summer). It’s only the first day of my diet, and already I feel nostalgic for dessert. So I thought I’d put up some pictures to comfort myself and all of you in the throes of early January diets. All dishes are still on the menu unless otherwise noted.

The best bread pudding I ever had came from La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona (the town mentioned in the Eagles song “Take It Easy”). The chef called it breakfast, but it was really a dessert: rich and filling and having that one touch that makes it special, in this case prickly pear fruit syrup (which the restaurant offers for pancakes and waffles as well). Next in the category of breakfasts that are really desserts: Root Down’s banana bread French toast with walnuts and organic chicory and crème fraîche (I asked for extra, which arrived when I was almost done), notable especially for its amazingly dense texture. It required a couple of hours of down time just to recover. In the category of bona fide desserts, I present this lemon ice from Panzano. The plating was so simple and beautiful I couldn’t resist. (By the way, when we were there, Panzano also offered a cherry bread pudding, for dessert. It’s not listed on the menu now; I believe it was part of the tasting menu. You could always call and ask.)And finally, something from D Bar. I wanted to show the palmond3 again, but it’s not on the menu now, so I settled for the “molten cake thingy that everyone has” with Malbec fruit compote and ice cream. The current menu mentions pistachio ice cream, but the topper here is some other flavor that I can’t remember. Currently D Bar offers 4 desserts I haven’t tried, including the bel canto mocha and the apple Sammy. So get over there and try them for me!

I’ve been posting photographs of food on my blog for two years now, but I’ve noticed the results are hit-or-miss, to put it charitably. When I heard about a food photography class being taught by Jennifer Olson (author of Colorado Organic and a member of Boulder Media Women), I signed up.

The 14 members of the class met at Euclid Hall to try to capture the beauty of that new Denver restaurant’s food (but, sadly, not to eat it). We met Beth Gruitch, one of the owners of Euclid Hall, Rioja, and Bistro Vendôme. I learned that Olson helped Gruitch open Rioja but hadn’t thought of being a food photographer until she got out of the restaurant business. We also met Chris, the sous-chef at Euclid Hall, and Chris Caldes, a food stylist.

I’d say I was one of the least-experienced people in the class. For example, the woman on my left (also named Beth) was a product photographer. The man on my right had a cool gadget called an L bracket that allows you to move the camera from horizontal to vertical without changing your stance.

After a talk about the basics of photography, Olson got us up and moving around and messing with our food. Here’s a typical shot by me, respectful of the food. And, oooh, look at those beautiful patterns of light on the dish and on the chair!

Nice red and orange sprinkles, too. But what flavor is it, exactly?Oh, I see, it’s red velvet. (Too bad the only thing in this picture that’s sharp at all is the reflection on the fork.) I like both these photos for different reasons, but this class made me realize that paying too much attention to shape or pattern may obscure the best qualities of the dish. Also, Olson pointed out that a lens around 50 mm is best suited for food photography. But because I saw other students climbing up on chairs and shooting with long lenses, I used my 70-200 mm lens for this shot (1/200, f4.5).

I fell into this trap again with the bone marrow. I was thinking so hard about making it interesting that I forgot to highlight the food itself: the marrow. How did those onions get up there? Did they teleport? Look how they’re hanging there so casually, as if they belong. So I tried to fix it (keep in mind, I’m still using the long lens here, f4.5, but a slow shutter speed).That’s better, but the marrow isn’t really in focus; the onions are. And the pretty lemons in back also distract from the subject. Time to simplify.When I showed Jennifer Olson this photograph, she complimented me on the composition but said she wanted the foreground to be sharp. She also pointed out that she was seeing more bone than marrow. When I told her what lens I was using, she suggested I switch to my kit lens (18–55 mm).I tried to recapture the composition above (I love that gray background—maybe it’s another student’s jeans?), but I couldn’t. I think this one is nicely composed, but next time I’ll turn the bone so the marrow is more prominent and shoot at f8 so the marrow is in focus.

I took a couple of photographs in class I thought were successes. Here’s one of my favorites as far as sharpness goes, though the subject is relentlessly brown.Remember that pretty half-lemon from one of the bone marrow shots? I also took one with that, but then the photo was about the lemon, not the fish and chips. This next photo is brighter.Nice variety of colors; someone else moved the green bean to the front. I think next time I would put the fork somewhere else. In fact, I wonder if using silverware as a prop is a cliché.

At the end, Olson critiqued our photos. She was far more generous with praise of my photos than I am here, which made me happy. I’d like to take a private class with her sometime.

What I learned:

• First of all, it’s OK to play with your food. It’s OK to stand up in the aisle to take a better photo, as long as you’re not blocking the servers or patrons.
• Second, those glistening brown turkeys you see in magazines? Raw. Really, even when they look so crispy? So the photo designed to make you eat the food is of food you can’t eat.
• Third, the trend right now in food photography is to focus on the foreground while leaving your aperture wide open. Only the front of the dish will be sharp. (Most of the time, I prefer more depth of field.)
• Fourth, use natural light. If you must use flash, improvise a diffuser to avoid harsh shadows.
• Fifth, consider buying an assistant on a stick (that is, a pole to which you can clip a diffuser or reflector).
• Sixth, a good food styling kit includes tweezers (to move stuff around), scissors, sponges to wipe away messes and prop up food, syringes and spray bottles to apply water, a set of baking rounds to hold food, and perhaps some cheesecloth to cover the flash if you don’t have a diffuser.

Better late than never…

My Favorite Feature: Precious

As a general rule, I see documentaries at the SDFF because I figure they’re less likely to show in theaters. And although I did see several this year, I started with Precious, which is making quite the stir in the film world. As refreshing as it is to watch a film about an obese black teenage girl (not what filmmakers think most 18-year-old boys want to see), what made the film for me was the confession by the mother at the end. It was awful and heartbreaking and completely understandable and disgusting, all at once. It took the film to an entirely new level.

Shorts from Colorado

Next was Winners and Losers, a collection of Colorado shorts. My favorite was The Unrecoverable Loss of Eugene, a hilarious take on Victorian and modern sexual mores. Perhaps my husband will have more to say in the comments (hint, hint).

Second Feature: Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench

Go see Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench to watch the female lead break into song and the male lead play his trumpet. Go for the experimental take on musicals and story. Don’t spend so much time trying to follow the love story, as I did; just enjoy the music-fest.

My Favorite Documentary: Still Bill

Still Bill won the People’s Choice Documentary Feature award for its warm portrayal of Bill Withers’s decision to step away from fame. It opens with “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone” and closes with “Grandma’s Hands.” It has good cinematography, good music, and good stories. If you can’t see it in the theater, try Netflix or Video Station in Boulder.

At this point I began to notice how many of the movies I chose had to do with music.

Third Feature: Crossing

Crossing had nothing to do with music. Written by two Texans who also starred as Manuel (the lead) and Diego (his camera-toting friend), it follows a Mexican ne’er-do-well who learns his father will be executed in Texas and runs north because he refuses to let his father leave him again. His pregnant wife protests, but he goes anyway, into his own personal comedy of errors.

Second Documentary: Turtle: The Incredible Journey

According to Britta Erickson, festival director, Turtle is another March of the Penguins. I disagree. The overwrought script read by Miranda Richardson got on my nerves. I did like the use of “she”; it’s nice that not all moviemakers feel adventures belong solely to male creatures. And there were beautiful images, especially the opening shot of the hatchling leaving its egg.

Third Documentary: Two Spirits

Like Turtle, this movie showed at the King Center across the parking lot from the Tivoli, where Starz’s main theaters are located. I used my membership privileges to get to the front of the huge line, though I’m not sure it really made a difference; I think all the seats there are pretty good. A documentary about the murder of Navajo teenager Fred Martinez, Two Spirits explores the traditional Navajo concept of gender (there are 4) and notes that it was common for Navajos to celebrate the lives of gay and lesbian children because they were thought to embody both genders and thus to represent the balance of life.

At the panel afterward, an activist from New York who came to Cortez, Colorado, to investigate the murder said this kind of hate crime happens every week. You can find more information at the Fred Martinez Project or the Two Spirit Society of Denver (a performance by several members is pictured here).

Fourth Documentary: The Duke of the Bachata

Made by local filmmaker Adam Taub (La Quinceañera), The Duke is about a Dominican musical genre dismissed as vulgar by the musical elite of that country. I wish I could say more about it, but it was my third film of the day, and I couldn’t stay awake. It was preceded by an amusing short, The Eighth Samurai, which Todd thought was a dead-on parody of Kurosawa.

Yet ANOTHER Documentary Seen After the SDFF: The Yes Men Fix the World

If you’re a liberal, and the idea of playing a prank on a multinational corporation makes you drool, go see this movie. Very amusing. I couldn’t believe that these guys kept getting away with their media stunts.

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.

One of my favorite sights in downtown Denver is the Gas and Electric Building lit up at night.

During the day, its subtle patterning becomes more evident, especially when compared to the crunchy building next door.

It’s located at 15th and Champa.

I’ve been feeling fallish lately, a bit melancholy, but also determined to get things done before winter drives me inside. Saturday Todd and I were out revegetating Carnage Canyon, and Sunday, since I hadn’t had enough, apparently, I dug up and replanted 17 perennials from my yard. That’s the advantage of having multiple gardens: you can always find something to fill a space.

I have a small deadline on Wednesday, so for the next three days I’ll be posting photographs and will post two reviews in a row after that.

This photograph was taken outside the Mercury Cafe. Someone had scattered rose petals up and down the sidewalk.

Here’s the entrance to the Merc:

As you can tell from the photo, it’s one of Denver’s “alternative” cafes. What does that mean? It means poetry readings on Friday and Sunday nights, during which you can hear people upstairs thumping through the salsa or swing; it means Transition Denver events; it means gluten-free desserts; it means locally sourced ingredients. I’ve never had a meal at the Merc that I out-and-out loved, but I always enjoy going there.

Despite the thumping from dancers practicing their moves upstairs, the 20-plus people celebrating Transition Denver’s first birthday party at the Mercury Café were able to discuss the way forward for the next year. Adam Brock of Wild Green Yonder (below center), who showed up late after his recent trip to Burning Man, promised, “This year we’ve taken the first steps of a really long journey.”

The Transition movement, begun in England as a response to the concept of peak oil, appeals to me. Michael Anderson, one of the founders of Transition Denver and a self-described activist (below left), said he loves it because it’s growing something, not fighting something.

But Dana Miller (below right), another founder, noted that the original Transition model for promoting local resilience was designed for small towns of 5,000 people or so. It’s much harder to apply that model to a metro area of 3 million people. She wants their small group of volunteers to turn into an umbrella group to help to guide neighborhood transition groups.

Dana, whom I met years ago when she and Todd and I were involved in a cohousing project, is a natural leader. She’s good at inspiring and directing people and was able to extract pages of ideas from the crowd, from a barter guide to Skype conferences among Transitioners worldwide so they can share ideas.

Everyone agreed that the main activity of the first year—awareness raising—would continue, and the evening ended with gluten-free cake.

I took this photo along the 16th Street Mall in downtown Denver.

The sign reads: “All donations go to the care and feeding of this statue.”

I wonder what that silver paint does to your face?

Danielle Ate the Sandwich wasn’t the only new act I saw Friday at the last Skyline Park concert of 2009 in downtown Denver. Speakeasy Tiger was great fun. Lead singer Kyle Simmons’s voice reminded me of Patti Smith from time to time, but Todd heard Siouxsie and the Banshees. Metromix said her voice “split the difference between Flyleaf and Melissa Etheridge.” What the hell? Who is Flyleaf anyway?

The uniform: white pants and dark vests.

Let’s not forget the drummer (Luke Gordon):

The keytar player (Pete Schmidt) loved to jam with guitarist Tavis Alley. Cutting Alley’s head off was not an artistic decision; I just wasn’t fast enough on the shutter to keep up with the two of them.

Here’s Schmidt with bassist Lauren Gale.

***

Speakeasy Tiger and Danielle Ate the Sandwich play at the Monolith Festival at Red Rocks on September 12-13. According to the website, it’s a green music festival. The Society of American Travel Writers named Denver number 10 of the top 10 North American cities for live music. Pretty cool, huh?

***

This weekend, Labor Day weekend, check out the Taste of Colorado at Civic Center Park.

Todd and I arrived at India House in downtown Denver after a Saturday afternoon of missed connections.

He hadn’t meant to come all the way to downtown Denver; in fact, he had been in Boulder and generously decided to drive to the Merchandise Mart to pick me up from Earthworks Expo. But by the time we talked on the phone, I was already on the 7, heading southeast to downtown Denver. (I could have taken a bus north from the Merchandise Mart to Broomfield, but then I would have been stranded several miles from home because of reduced service on the weekends.)

So he drove a little farther to meet me, and we headed to the mini–restaurant row on Blake between 16th and 15th Streets. We had our pick of Caribbean, Mexican, Moroccan, BBQ, a sports bar…that’s all I can remember. But I chose the Indian restaurant. When Todd saw that the prices on the menu outside were 50 percent higher than at other Indian restaurants we frequent, he announced, “It had better be fuckin’ good.”

Saturday was the day the cellulitis on his leg really started bothering him, which did not improve his mood.

India House is elegant inside, dark and cool. It’s a long, narrow restaurant with an upstairs that overlooks the entrance. That area would be a great place to reserve for a private party, except that the bathrooms and the bar are upstairs too, so one group could never have it entirely to themselves.

The service was unhurried, but we waited too long only at the beginning of our meal. After that, everything arrived when it should. They brought us pappadum with two house-made chutneys.The tamarind was so red I didn’t recognize it; usually it’s brown. The mint-jalapeno chutney was refreshing, and both chutneys were spicy. Not what I expected, considering how the website mentions the chef’s “low threshold for chili.”

Next came Todd’s mulligatawny soup. There was a lot to like: the thin broth was lemony, with just a little diced chicken. But it was too salty.

I wish I had turned over the cauliflower pakora before I took this picture; the pattern created by slicing it in half was beautiful. They were best hot, just come from the kitchen, but they were still decent well into the meal.

The chicken tikki saag was rich and flavorful—again, except for the salt. Whatever happened to the “subtlety of delicate spicing” mentioned on the website? The heat was right—I asked for medium, and I got it, which is somewhat rare at Indian restaurants—but only the pakoras were subtly spiced.

Todd and I were a little disappointed by this meal, but at least he wasn’t hungry anymore, and his leg wasn’t bothering him—that is, until he stood up and had to walk on it. We didn’t know it then, but there were antibiotics in his future.

***

*I didn’t realize that India House used to be Delhi Darbar. I had been to their restaurant in Boulder a couple of times but was never completely blown away. Perhaps the Denver location is now the only one left.

Funny how things work out sometimes. I went to the last of the 2009 Skyline Park concerts in downtown Denver, and Danielle was the first act. She stood on stage with her ukelele and winked at me when I took her picture. Every word she sang came out crisp and clear. Her songs didn’t have endings so much as stoppages, and she joked that she liked the fact the crowd* didn’t know when to clap.

When I got home that night, I showed Todd the CD. He already had it! He called Danielle an “Internet phenomenon” and said there are now lots of “girls with ukeleles.” He added that he had emailed Danielle when he found out she was from Fort Collins. (OK, I know that’s not Denver, but people do live in Fort Collins and work in Denver. By California standards, it’s probably a reasonable commute—an hour or so.)

***

*Someone had set up lots of chairs in the sun, in front of the stage but too far back. Most people sat in the shade on either side of the park, so it must have been a weird experience for the performers.

Finally I had the privilege of buying cupcakes at Mermaids, in downtown Denver just off the 16th Street Mall at Champa. It was my fourth trip there: the first time, I had no cash, and the second and third times, I showed up when they were closed because I don’t have enough sense to read the sign explaining their hours.

So I was extremely happy to pocket red velvet and cookies-and-cream cupcakes. I had planned to have second breakfast at Mermaids, since the sign promised breakfast, lunch, and espresso, but no, the woman at the counter said, they hadn’t served breakfast for a long time. In any case, there were no tables in the tiny storefront or the adjoining building. Mermaids is strictly a pay-and-run sort of place.

I think they must make their money off wedding cakes and such, because their case was half-empty. If you want a selection of cookies and cakes and pastries from which to choose, I suggest Gateaux on Speer or even D Bar Desserts on 17th Avenue. But if you just want cupcakes (or green chili quiche, or a pie of the day) and you’re in downtown Denver, Mermaids is the place (until 3 pm, that is).

I held my cupcake treasures close all the way down the mall to the Tattered Cover to protect them from being squished by some eager tourist. This LoDo bookstore (one of three Tattered Covers in the Denver Metro area) is one of my favorite places to hang out: not only does it provide lots of comfy seating near the café (and in other nooks and crannies on all three floors, though I’ve never taken food upstairs), but also there are tons of free magazines to read.

I do buy books regularly at the Tattered Cover, so I feel perfectly comfortable reading magazines and books for free when I’m there. I ordered a hot chocolate at the counter and found myself the perfect chair in which to pretend I was copyediting on my computer while juggling a drink and cupcake.

My reading spot featured this book, which was quite amusing (Oprah runs the country, of course). I was happy there until my computer announced it was running out of battery power, so I stood up, cleaned the red velvet crumbs off the red seat, and proceeded to crumb-up another chair.

Once again I have been reminded that I am not Timothy Ferris of Four-Hour Work Week fame, who claims he can eat 12 cupcakes at a stretch. The first cupcake, the red velvet, was perfect: the cake was moist, the frosting was not too sweet, and the sprinkles on top were crunchy. I paused briefly to do a little editing and then moved on to the cookies and cream. Unfortunately, the cookies were all on top. I was expecting something like cookies-and-cream ice cream, but what I got was a chocolate cupcake, more white frosting, and chocolate-covered graham crackers on top. Nothing special, and by this time I was getting sick of chocolate. That’ll teach me to order a hot chocolate everywhere I go.

While I was eating my second cupcake, a young couple ensconced themselves across from me. They were determined to have as much of their bodies touching as possible, at all times. It seemed sweet at first, but then the man made a remark to the woman as she walked upstairs that I didn’t quite catch but disliked the tone of, and a few minutes later, he grabbed her face and scrunched up her mouth, saying, “Baby, don’t do that.” I was shocked but too chicken to say anything. I hope he wasn’t hurting her.

I wonder what Timothy Ferriss would have done?

Wandering around lower downtown Denver today, just checking things out, I made a delightful discovery: Bouquets.

According to the website, it was founded in 1985 as a “fresh cut flower shop with a European theme.” It caught my eye as I crossed Wazee at 15th, and I walked in and thought, what a beautiful place.

In the left-hand room I discovered Christopher Marley’s Pheromone series, which I wish I could show you, but the staff didn’t want me to take pictures. Essentially, he collects bugs and arranges them and frames them. It sounds weird, but it’s truly stunning—I never realized beetles could be so colorful and beautiful.

And as his website says, he didn’t always like bugs. Go figure. Perhaps I should collect spiders? Or pickles?

Bouquets offers not only flowers but also plants, pots, statues, vases, picture frames, greeting cards, and baskets. There are two soft leather chairs where you can sit and look at catalogues and just generally feel peaceful.

How, I ask you, could anyone resist this bottle of orange-yogurt goodness?  Clearly Todd and I could not. You can see our grubby fingerprints all over it.Every time I shop at Pacific Mercantile in Sakura Square at 20th and Lawrence, I find something new to eat or drink. King Soopers can’t hold a candle to it, though the Pacific Ocean Market in Broomfield comes close. But it doesn’t have Hawaiian goods like “Maxi Taro Chips” (made from the root in the center of the picture; daikon is on the left, and nagaimo, which I’ve never heard of, is on the right). “Maxi Taro” is not exactly an appetizing name to women, but I thought the supposedly “hot and spicy” chips were all right. Just don’t expect the same crisp texture you’d get from a potato chip. You can also get POG juice there (passionfruit, orange, and guava).

If you need lots of rice, these Asian markets are the places to go. This picture reminds me of the massive bags of flour I helped transport to the Navajo Reservation back in the day.

I first visited Pacific Mercantile, which is on the edge of downtown Denver, during the Cherry Blossom Festival. It was a hot day, so I got this sugary tea in a bottle and a pack of what turned out to be edamame rice crackers. I was dazzled by all the edamame on the package, but once I opened it I realized that I had bought crackers, not beans. They were definitely better than the taro chips, though.

Pacific Mercantile has a long case in the back filled with various fish products, including masago (fish roe), squid, and a large burgundy chunk of maguro that I was too chicken to photograph because the butcher was standing right there looking at me as if to say, “Do you want something, or not?” And, oddly enough, a fish head labeled “Arigato.” Can someone interpret that one for me?

Pacific Mercantile has a housewares section half as big as the rest of the store. If you can’t find anything else there you like, you can always take this home as a consolation prize.Looks like it’s baring its teeth, doesn’t it?

Last week I visited four art galleries in downtown Denver but wrote about only the first two. Today I’ll review two smaller galleries on the northwestern side of Wazee.

According to its website, Translations Gallery offers “a diverse range of contemporary styles to enhance the interior design of your home or office.” It was, I think, the smallest of the four galleries, and is featuring the Peruvian tapestries of Maximo Laura and the stoneware sculptures of Ruth Borgenicht until July 25.

Laura’s bright tapestries have their origins in Andean mythology (image courtesy of Translations Gallery). When I first saw them, I thought of the paintings of Marc Chagall but later decided that was a superficial comparison, based on the two artists’ use of color and my perception that some of the figures in the tapestries seemed to be flying.

I was drawn more to Borgenicht’s sculptures (image courtesy of Translations Gallery), which I thought of as “bowls” until Director Kate Chimenti reshaped one in front of me. It’s a good thing I don’t own one because I’d spend all my time playing with it. She told me that Borgenicht fires the individual rings partway, assembles them into chain mail forms, and fires them again.

***

Just a few doors down is Visions West Galleries, one of three locations in the western United States (the other two are in Bozeman and Livingston, Montana). The cowboy paintings of Duke Beardsley (not pictured) greeted me as I walked in, reinforcing the statement from the website that the “gallery has a strong commitment to promoting contemporary artists from the West,” but other works indicate the owners have a broad range of interests.

My personal favorites were the paintings by Babette Herschberger, especially “Blue House,” and Brad Rude’s whimsical folk art sculptures of animals with human impediments (or enhancements, depending on your point of view).

Before I left Visions West, I asked Becky, who was working at the gallery that day, if she had any favorites. She pointed out the technical excellence of Rude’s sculptures and her fascination with the lack of beginnings or endings in Grant Haffner’s “road” paintings. I left feeling informed and energetic and hungry for cupcakes from Mermaids Bakery on Champa, but that story will have to wait for another day.

As the bus hauled itself around the corner of Wewatta toward Union Station, I saw people in the stands at Coors Field. But baseball was not where I was headed. I wanted some heavier stuff. I wanted art.

Specifically, the Center for Visual Art (CVA) of Metropolitan State College of Denver (Coors Field is in the far left background). Even though the campus is south of downtown across Speer, the center has a gallery on Wazee near 18th Street. On the way there from Market Street Station, I came across 6 galleries on Wazee between 16th and 18th Streets. There’s even a gallery of contemporary Russian art on 17th near Union Station. I had no idea this miniature art district existed until recently. And although there’s no First Friday Art Walk—not enough foot traffic, according to a woman at one gallery—there’s definitely enough art to fill a lazy afternoon.

In keeping with all the lofts in the area, the CVA contained a circle of interconnecting rooms with high ceilings and blindingly white walls. I’d show you the interior, but photography was verboten. Plus, a bearded guy wearing a red bandanna followed me around. Finally we had this conversation:

“Are you worried about me taking photographs?”

“No, ma’am, but our insurance requires that we [stalk people looking at art].”

“I think it’s weird.”

“I apologize.”

Otherwise, I truly enjoyed CVA, a white, cool, quiet space on a hot day. The photographs by Denis Roussel and mixed-media installations by Heather Doyle-Maier impressed me for completely different reasons. Roussel exhibited several Blood Experiment series, in which he tossed some blood in water or exposed it to air and then photographed the results. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But I was thinking it must not be easy to light blood in water.

Doyle-Maier’s pieces were all about showing the lives of women through textiles. Her last piece, called “99 Reasons for Silence,” resembled nothing so much as an extra-wide table runner hanging from a wooden bar. But I really, really wanted to run off with it there and then. The 99 reasons were actually 99 squares of fabric sewn together in neat rows of 5, some with zippers, one with a buckle, one or two made of children’s underwear, and so on. It was both utilitarian and tender in a way her other works were not.

Then it was on to the Robischon Gallery next door, also a large, white, high-ceilinged space housed in the S & H Supply Building, built in 1909 as a warehouse for various kinds of industrial machinery and then later used as a garage for the Oxford Hotel at 17th and Wazee.

Large photographs of aging energy-related equipment greeted me as I walked in. Kevin O’Connell, according to a woman who emerged from the back to talk to me, used to produce intimately sized photographs but lately had turned his attention to these remnants of industry from the northeastern Colorado plains.

Turning right around the wall, I was overwhelmed by what I thought were excessively wide-angle shots until I learned that the artist, David Sharpe, had taken them with a pinhole camera made from a 35-mm film canister.

I spent most of my time at Robischon peering into Edie Winograde’s photographs (not pictured here) of historical reenactment dramas, such as Custer’s Last Stand. Those reenactments take place both on land owned by white people and on an Indian reservation. Crow Indians, who served as scouts for Custer in his pursuit of the Sioux, participate in some of them. All that begs the question of authenticity, since I assumed that the participants were white. But having the Crow play the role of the Sioux…and hearing that participants complained to Winograde that her photographs were not taken close enough, didn’t show enough details of the costumes…

The atmosphere at Robischon was far more laid-back than at CVA, and I especially liked the comfy couches and chairs.

And those were only 2 of the 4 galleries I explored on Wednesday. What I liked best: the art felt close to my life. Unlike the shiny oil paintings in Gallery 1261, the textiles and photographs seemed like something I could make, if I chose.

I must be a dancing fool, because what I loved most about last weekend’s two festivals was the dancing, albeit of very different kinds (see Red Balloon Boy in action at the end of this post). My favorite was the 1st graders in white shirts and red bandanas performing to a Japanese-language version of “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” I admired the older dancers’ serious mien, even when their parasols blew off the stage.

In 2008 Todd was out of town the weekend of the Cherry Blossom Festival, and I spent the day at Sakura Square listening to a sermon at the Denver Buddhist Temple, watching a judo demonstration, and checking out the booths and bands.

This year, I recognized the vintage kimonos and swords from last year but also noticed two potters, these dolls, and Buddha Baby. I skipped the flower arrangement competition in the Denver Buddhist Temple and bought water instead of the egg roll I enjoyed in 2008.

Late morning I photographed scads of Japanese dancers, including this adorable redhead joining in the dandelion dance (the seeds a reference to reincarnation). I’m of two minds about posting her picture. I think it’s OK because she was performing at a public festival, but then again, I didn’t get her parents’ permission. What do you think? Leave her in, or not?

Todd joined me in the late afternoon to watch the hula dancers. Afterward, we sought out shade at the Larimer and 19th corner of Sakura Square, where a garden memorializes Colorado governor Ralph Carr and Minoru Yasui, who fought for the rights of Japanese during their World War II internment. (There is also a plaza in the latter’s name at 303 West Colfax, across from the Denver Mint.)

Upstairs we browsed photographs of Japanese residents of Colorado, including Tadaatsu Matsudaira, who arrived here in 1886. Had J. J.’s Bistro, also upstairs, offered a patio along with its mostly Chinese menu, we would have dined al fresco, but instead we went downstairs and back into the blazing sun, where the line for shave ice was finally short enough for Todd.

While he was thus occupied, I got these four women to agree to a picture. They said they got their outfits from Japanese companies, online I assume.

Sadly for Todd, his treat turned out to be crushed ice. He claims shave ice melts differently on the tongue. I was happy to help him finish it, for I am not too particular about the shape of ice. It was a cool ending to my long day in the sun.

When I went by PrideFest last weekend, it was like going to a huge party where everybody is as happy as can be.

Not that the other Denver festivals I’ve attended haven’t been fun. It’s just that PrideFest was a warm, welcoming meet-and-greet-and-dance right at the end of downtown Denver. People were running into old friends around me. The ones who got dressed up were posing for pictures. There was free watermelon to put in your Three Olives vodka.

What more could you want? Well, I wished for about 5 friends who liked to dance. I could have gotten out there by myself, of course, but then what do I do with the big purse and camera and notebook?

And I was too shy to dance with Nuclea Waste and the Balloon Boys, though as you’ll see later, other people weren’t.

When I went by PrideFest on Saturday, in between the Cherry Blossom Festival, there was a minor dance party going on at one end of Civic Center Park, and someone was giving a speech in the Greek Theater at the other end. Booths circled the park, but things hadn’t really gotten started.

So if you have one hour to spend on PrideFest next year, go see the parade on Sunday morning. I showed up at Broadway and Colfax after 10 am and was still able to get right next to the floats. I could have walked down the parade route if I’d wanted and gotten a standing ovation. One marcher exclaimed within earshot, “It’s much better down here!”

I didn’t see very many truly fabulous floats, but I did like the Project Angelheart group carrying big cardboard forks and spoons and knives.

And the cowboys from the Colorado Gay Rodeo Association.

I visited the booths for the lavender farm and Grant Family Farms, where I picked up yet more free watermelon. I haven’t noticed farm booths at other festivals, but promoting your farm at a festival seems like a good idea. There were some amusing T-shirts for sale, including “Queerios” and “My Barbies Are Lesbians.” Do you suppose my relative who works at Mattel would appreciate that? But I draw the line at wearing a shirt that says, “Orgasm Donor.”

What made me want to stay for hours, despite the sunburn coming on, was the dancing.

I watched these two girls and thought, “This is what it’s all about.” And, “How come I didn’t know how to dance like that when I was a teenager?”

The man in the green shirt was a great dancer.

And these two? Well, she asked him to dance.

Alto

Everything about Alto is beautiful: the restaurant, the bar, the servers, the food.

I went there last Wednesday to attend a reading arranged by Lighthouse Writers Workshop to show off the work of participants in the summer Lit Fest. I was one of the first people there, around 7:30 on a weeknight. The bar wasn’t busy, but it looked like a great place to have a drink. Toward the back, past the end of the bar where the servers hang out when they’re not busy, patrons can lounge on couches.

The reading was set up in the third room, separated from the middle room by a sheer curtain.

By the time the reading started at 8, people had filled up all the tables in the long, narrow room, and I was contemplating my dinner of two sides, mac and cheese and grilled asparagus.

I’ve been trying to think of a way to characterize Alto’s menu. You can get pork loin or mussels or BBQ ribs or pasta or salad or a burger. Several dishes seem Italian-influenced, but that’s as far as I’d go.

As is trendy these days, the macaroni and cheese was very rich. I can’t identify all the cheeses just by tasting, but there was some kind of blue cheese in there, and the crust on top contrasted with all the gooiness underneath. The asparagus spears were crisp and tasted grilled. That lovely, filling food cost $10, but then I managed to spend 200 percent more on wine. What can I say? The waitress kept asking me if I wanted anything … and apparently I did. And from the look of the wine rack near the entrance, there certainly are wines-aplenty.

The Paul Dolan chardonnay was a bit too citrusy to stand up to the meal, but the Colores del Sol Malbec Reserva was big and fruity enough to do the job.

It was a nice evening, full of poetry and fiction and good food and wine. I got to catch up with old friends and make a new one. And it reminded me that I’ve been meaning to do a mac-off around Denver to see which restaurant has the best mac and cheese. So far I’ve had the dish at 4 restaurants, but I’m sure that’s only a drop in the bucket. Maybe at the end of the summer I’ll start writing mac-off Mondays. I’ve written nearly 40 MonHaibuns, and, frankly, I just don’t give a damn anymore.

In late May I mentioned the garden under construction at 15th and California in downtown Denver but didn’t show any pictures of it because it had just been laid out. The reddish building behind it is Wolf’s Camera.

It’s looking much more like a garden now, a nice oasis along 15th Street.

There’s not much shade, but when this arbor gets covered with vines, it will be a cool retreat on a warm afternoon.

Various businesses have sponsored the beds and donated supplies and plants.

***
This weekend the Bug Theatre is showing Squirm Burpee: A Vaudevillian Melodrama at 8 pm on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, along with a matinee at 3 on Saturday. It costs $15, and information and tickets can be found here.

Denver Nail Lounge
500 16th Street, Suite 136 (16th and Glenarm)
downtown Denver
303-534-0778
Bus directions: take the MallRide up to Glenarm

Sometimes lately it seems that all I write about is restaurants. There’s nothing wrong with that, but other people like Denveater do it much better. And downtown Denver can’t be a vibrant place if it doesn’t offer the services people want.

Hence my trip to the Denver Nail Lounge, located in the Denver Pavilions. I’ve been needing a pedicure, and although Lauren at Hair Technology in Westminster gives the most long-lasting pedicures I’ve ever had in my life, downtown Denver is easier for me to reach by bus.

Denver Nail Lounge is a “nail bar and bubble tea concept,” according to the website, and also serves hot chocolate. That sounded like heaven to me, but then I was worried by the caveat on the website that nail products and drinks never come into contact. What’s the point of this concept if you can’t sit back and drink while having a pedicure?

When I walked in, the bar was to my right and a row of three bright chairs faced me. The manicure table is to the left. The setup for pedicures is very much like that at Hair Technology, but that Aveda salon built steps and finished them with slate and piled pillows on top. All in all, the pink vinyl cushions were easier to navigate, if not as eco-friendly.

Of course, eco-friendly and pedicures don’t exactly go hand in hand. I would rate Aveda salons as slightly better on that score, since they use a less toxic nail polish and their products contain fewer petroleum derivates in general. However, McKinsey gave me my nail file and a pink buffing cube (noticing a theme here?) and said I could get $1 off my next pedicure if I brought them in.

Denver Nail Salon also provides stick-on inserts for the loofahs (or whatever it is that scrapes dead skin off your heels). I’ve never seen inserts before, but they may be more eco-friendly than using one with a plastic handle and then throwing it away. In theory, the handle McKinsey used could last forever.

So there I was ensconced on a pink seat, drinking a large if scalded hot chocolate, and McKinsey and I chatted about how she’d moved to downtown Denver recently and how a day of pedicures makes her back sore. Surely someone could design a chair that would allow the technician to sit up straight.

Both the pedicurists working that day were new; mine had been on the job about 6 weeks. Maybe I’ll come back in 6 months and see if the faces have changed.

McKinsey did a good job on my toenails, though she’s not quite as thorough as Lauren. I felt awkward at the end, because I had to move across the room while the polish dried to make room for her next client, a guy, and she didn’t talk to me once I’d paid her. But it was both peaceful and cheery in there, and I got out of the sun for an hour during the Westword Music Showcase.

Leela’s European Café
820 15th Street (at Stout)
downtown Denver
303-534-2255
Open 24/7
Bus directions: take the MallRide to Stout and walk over

I was so pleased to stumble upon Leela’s during my recent trek down 15th Street in downtown Denver. After the parking lot and the Hyatt and other massive buildings, it was great to walk into a place that was open and welcoming, not looming over me.

Leela reminded me a tiny bit of City, O’City on Capitol Hill. Like City, O’City, it is a restaurant and a coffee bar; it even sells pastries by the bar. But Leela’s is much larger and has a stage at the back where bands play on Friday and Saturday nights. Given the MySpace page mention of “exposure,” I would guess that the bands don’t get paid much, if at all.

I ordered my Greek salad with no olives at the bar, as the sign says, and tried out the tiny bar-height table first, but the shorter table was just right for me and all my stuff. In no time at all, my salad arrived: sliced romaine with onion and tomato and green pepper and lemon-pepper dressing. I would have preferred half the feta, but that is my only complaint. My mouth was still tingling from the peppery dressing when I left.

The barkeep liked the looks of the Greek salad so much she ordered it for lunch.

Leela’s wasn’t crowded at lunch. There were two tables when I walked in and a few people at the bar. The barkeep chatted with all of them; she was in her second week and very, very personable. When I asked her how long the restaurant had been open, she said about two years. She laughed about the fact that they “don’t charge” tax; the price you see on the menu is the price you pay. That’s what’s European about the place, she added.

In addition to several salads, Leela’s serves omelettes, “finger food,” panini, burgers, and grilled Italian sandwiches. The drinks on the back of the menu include the Crème Brulee, the Michael Jackson with white and dark chocolate, and the Open 24 Hours, with 4 shots of espresso, mocha, steamed milk, and cinnamon-sugar-encrusted foam.

Leela’s has 899 friends on MySpace, so it must be doing something right. The reviews on Yelp are seriously mixed, from “No reason not to go” to “roaches on the bar.” But I’ll go back at least once: I still want to try the Bellagio Sipping Chocolate.

Sometimes it’s necessary to write not about what is but what could be. That’s the subject of my post today: the 16th Street Mall’s inadequacies and how they might be amended.

I was standing outside Only in Colorado, taking some notes, when a man with a thick accent (Italian, perhaps) approached me. At first I didn’t get what he wanted, but he pulled at the sleeve of his coat and said “shirts,” and I understood he needed to find a men’s clothing store. I was stumped. I thought, I don’t know much about Denver after all. Then I looked in my downtown Denver directory and found two stores for men, Homer Reed on Tremont and Players on Wazee. They’re at opposite ends of the mall.

I suppose I could have sent him to T. J. Maxx or Ross Dress for Less—I think both those stores have men’s departments. But instead I sent him to the Pavilions.

Once department stores (like Cottrell’s) vied for customers on 16th Street, before it became an outdoor mall* in the late 1970s. For upscale shopping these days, you have to go to Cherry Creek. And there are a few shops in Larimer Square in lower downtown Denver. Almost everything else is in a suburban mall.

In May I explored upper downtown, which reaches northwest to Welton, and in June and July I’ll be continuing northwest through downtown. The two blocks from Welton to California and Stout reach the apogee of chainification. Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Arby’s, Einstein Brothers Bagels. Then Walgreen’s, a 7-Eleven, some banks, a Starbucks every two blocks.

The center strip on the 16th Street Mall, which is dotted with benches and chess tables and hot dog and shave ice carts, is a nice place to rest and watch the flow. But the wide sidewalks on either side of this two-block strip don’t lead past interesting shops.

People in Denver love to blame the poor shopping downtown on Cherry Creek Mall and the surrounding boutiques in Cherry Creek North, but let’s face it, department stores have been fading away for years. They were some of the first chain stores, and my personal opinion is that most chains will have to shrink to survive, both the number of stores and their size, or break themselves into regional shopping companies. If we want good shopping downtown, we’ll have to get smaller stores, which will require innovation and dedication from the citizens and government of Denver.

Denver Infill wants a grocery store downtown, which would certainly be convenient. (Right now Cook’s Fresh Market and Vitamin Cottage are the only options, and the latter isn’t really in downtown.) I prefer Lisa Rogers’s idea of greenhouses connected to markets, a more interesting concept than a Safeway or King Soopers, but unlikely to be developed as soon.

But what if Denver produced a hybrid? A combination of a big grocery store that contracted out its produce section to Rogers and its supplement section to Vitamin Cottage and its meat and seafood section to Whole Foods (hey, I can dream). If it were housed in one of the old buildings on the mall, which are several stories tall, it might need extra space for lots of escalators and elevators. The lack of parking in the area would be addressed by providing superior delivery services.

What do you think?

An’s Lemongrass Grill

An’s Lemongrass Grill caught my eye on a recent walkabout of downtown Denver. I visited it Tuesday on a rainy June day when the high reached only the fifties. It was one of those days that reminded me how unpredictable spring can be in Colorado. Fall is generally a much better time to visit, weather-wise.

An’s, slightly off the mall toward 17th Street, had a well-designed logo, but I couldn’t get a decent picture of the exterior. The interior was well-designed, unless you want to go to the hard-to-find bathroom during a rush. The menu is a bit cheeky—”Asian Portion,” “Texas Portion,” “Main Course”—but what I noticed first was the overabundance of plastic. No compostables here.

Even the table looked to be made of plastic with a bamboo pattern. Of the two dishes I ordered—main course with brown rice and chicken, and crab and asparagus soup—the soup was better. Cloudy with shreds of crab and slices of white asparagus, it tasted of the latter with a hint of crab. There was too much brown rice for me in the Asian portion, and the chicken tasted precooked and warmed over.

The downtown lunch crowd flowed in and out of An’s when I was there; obviously the food and the plastic containers suited them better than me. One of the awards hanging on the wall dated to 2002. Maybe it was an off-day.

After lunch, I crossed California to visit the Denver Visitor Information Center at the “California Mall,” which used to include a food court, though the shadows of those words are not visible in this picture. The visitors center is to the left of the orange question mark. I recommend it for visitors and residents alike; I had never heard of the Purple Martini bar in the Tabor Center, for example. You can buy tickets to events in Denver at the center, and there are several people there ready to help you find entertainment.

My final stop of the day solved a mystery. I’d seen this store and called it “Cottrell’s,” but that was the name of a former department store, possibly a locally owned one. The contemporary store, Only in Colorado, is one of three on the mall owned by two brothers (and another works for them) named Young Chung. According to the clerk at the Welcome to Denver Store down the mall a few blocks, the three brothers have different middle names.

It was confusing for both of us.

At Only in Colorado, the neatness of the T-shirt racks astounded me. I wanted to buy the T-shirt that read, “If you don’t speak to your cat about catnip, who will?” There was no fitted version, so I settled for a hot pink Denver T-shirt.

Only in Colorado is THE place to get a touristy T-shirt in downtown Denver. The other stores have similar merchandise but are much smaller. One or more of these stores has been in business on the mall for 40 years. They sell sand paintings and moccasins, small Western sculptures (some of the Mill Creek Studios creations were appealing), leather hats (“USA” on the top label, “Made in China” on the one underneath), and “genuine Indian handcrafted jewelry,” though I didn’t see any certificates of authentication.

Appaloosa Grill
535 16th Street (16th and Welton)
upper downtown Denver
720-932-1700
Open 7 days a week; live music every night
Bus directions: take the mall shuttle from Market Street Station

Ever since I attended a Mile High Business Alliance event at the Appaloosa Grill, which featured impressive appetizers and local beer, I’ve been wanting to eat dinner there.

Alas, fate in the form of Stang Auto Tech intervened last Friday. The $3,000 of long-delayed service on the truck wouldn’t be done in time for us to pick it up and drive to downtown Denver by dinner. We canceled our patio reservation and settled for brunch on Sunday.

Appaloosa Grill is at the corner of 16th and Welton, in a beautiful red-stone building, the Masonic Building, which was gutted by fire in the 1980s. The Horse was originally owned by Mayor John Hickenlooper’s company, Wynkoop Brewing, but was sold to Johnny James Qualley and Adam Hill, members of the local roots rock band Oakhurst, and a couple of other investors.

When I walked in, I was startled by how empty the place was. I thought, brunch in downtown Denver, we’ll have to wait for half an hour, right? But I guess the hot places for brunch in Denver are Dixon’s (in LoDo) and Snooze on Park Avenue.

The Horse has a small patio, which was already full, so we took a booth with a view of the mall. One of my first sights out the window was a white horse and buggy carrying a white family down the mall. The second was of a black man in an apron on the corner. At first I thought he must be one of the cooks, taking a break.

“Hit the Road, Jack” was playing as we sat down, but luckily that wasn’t a hint about our brunch. I ordered the Spotted Horse Scramble, with cheddar, roasted red pepper, and black bean and corn succotash. It was barely warm when it came out, but I liked the cheesy egg flavor. What I noticed most was the mixture of textures: egg and bean and soft sweet pepper and juicy corn. The sourdough toast was light and crisp, and when I asked the waitress for jelly, she brought grape because that was all they had.

Todd’s breakfast burrito had a slightly spicy green chili and perhaps a few too many potatoes inside, given that I had half a plate of them sautéed in paprika.

Brunch neither impressed me overmuch nor depressed me. It was good, solid food, more originally presented than it would be at, say, the Hard Rock Café across the street, and in reasonable portions. I’ve eaten brunch at Dixon’s before in lower downtown Denver, but what I remember about that restaurant was the long patio that allows great people-watching.

I’d be willing to go back to Appaloosa Grill for dinner, but most of all I want to go there sometime after 10 and hear some roots rock and see the website-fabled crowd: “The crowd leans a little older than you’d find in LoDo . . . and far more accessible. It’s hip enough to be hip without making the tragically unhip feel completely unwelcome.”

What a relief.

Perhaps I could even see Oakhurst play. They used to play the Horse more regularly, but our waitress said they tour a lot. When they do play the restaurant, though, it fills up.

When we left, around 1 pm, “Georgia” was playing, and there were 7 people sitting at the bar. On the corner outside, the man in the apron was trying to convince a young man to part with his shoes for a shine. But the latter had headphones in his ears. He wasn’t ignoring the older man—he didn’t hear him.

Two different eras, on the corner of the 16th Street Mall where the Masonic Building sits.

Cook’s Fresh Market

I can’t count the times I’ve passed Cook’s Fresh Market while taking the mall shuttle through downtown Denver. And every time I said to myself, “I’ve got to check this place out.”

I finally did that Tuesday. I picked up some chicken green chili soup and Cajun remoulade and managed to resist all the luscious-looking desserts and homemade breads.

When I was there, at 2 in the afternoon, the tables facing the 16th Street Mall were still pretty full and people were standing in line at the deli. Nobody accosted me about taking pictures in the store, probably because the counters are so high that a 5’7″ person like myself can’t see over them. There was a sign stating the obvious and advising people to yodel. Seriously, though, it’s not a terribly user-friendly design.

In any case, I didn’t need to order any of the meat or fish, though the Famous French Hangar Steak sounded intriguing, as did the bacon-wrapped jumbo sea scallops. I moved on to the deli, where I noted sesame-roasted sweet potatoes and bleu cheese chicken salad.

Getting the point here? (The “bleu” gives it away.) A little beyond your basic deli, with prices to match. There’s a list of all their products on the website, including such things as “summer meat bundles,” if you’re the kind of person who likes to get off work in downtown Denver and purchase 29 pounds of meat. And I did notice, Denveater, that they order most of their fish from Foley’s Fish of Boston.

But I had to laugh at this statement on the website about the opening of the downtown store, their second in the Denver Metro area: “Their heralded opening is as important to Denver as was the opening of Dean and DeLuca in New York’s SoHo years earlier.”

Hyperbole aside, the two items I bought were good. The carrots and potatoes and onions in the chicken green chili soup were firm, not mushy, and the small pieces of chicken were wonderfully soft. The soup was just spicy enough for semi-wimpy people like me. Both takeout containers appear to be reusable.

I’m writing this while Todd is lying on the couch, trying to figure out what to do with the Cajun remoulade, since we have no shrimp or sliced asparagus. Myself, I thought it tasted fine with carrots and crackers.

Cook’s Fresh Market offers a large selection of dried fruit and a good-sized open cooler full of cheese, including Cotswold, German Butterkase, cave-aged Tallegio, Pecorino Romano, and Whiskey Cheddar. The salad bar was squeezed into a small space but looked well-stocked. The store’s produce section is small, but the website mentions their insistence that everything be as fresh as possible.

Cook’s Fresh Market won’t fulfill Denver Infill‘s wish for a downtown Denver grocery store. It’s not quite as big or as well-stocked as Marczyk Fine Foods in Uptown Denver, but it’s a good place to stop for a sandwich or high-quality meats or cheese or desserts.

Saturday I made my way to the Downtown Denver Arts Festival, an event with 11 years of history in this town. But I took the long way there.

My husband dropped me off west of the Platte River, at 15th and Platte, an area that used to be off the beaten track. For as long as I can remember, Paris on the Platte has been serving coffee there, but now it keeps company with Vitamin Cottage and new housing and my first stop on the tour that would lead to downtown Denver: Wen Chocolates.

I don’t visit Wen often enough to get to know the staff, especially now that I’m on a diet. But Saturday was my splurge day, so I went to the tiny store (maybe 100 square feet) and started ordering truffles. As always, I got some freebies, one of which pleasantly surprised me: the rosemary truffle, my favorite of the day. It looks plain but has a distinct, delicate flavor of rosemary. Prazen Sladkor is simply the best caramel I’ve ever had, and the pear hazelnut (pictured) is awfully pretty. I couldn’t taste the pear at all; next time I order it, I’ll eat it first.

Sometimes my tours of Denver give me the feeling I’m passing through people’s lives ghost-wise. Today I sat at the confluence of the Platte River and Cherry Creek, content, trying to make the chocolates last longer than 5 minutes and watching people wade in the cold shallows across the river.

As I crossed Millennium Bridge on my way to the mall shuttle, I passed a wedding party swank enough to afford two photographers. Everyone but the bride wore black; I liked the bridesmaids’ sleek black satin dresses better than her elaborately appliquéd froth of a dress.

The thing I like about the shuttle is its ability to bring Denver to me. It carries everyone: tourists, the homeless, downtown Denver workers. I also like to study the storefronts on one side of the 16th Street Mall or the other, to memorize downtown Denver.

I could see no sign anywhere of the Downtown Denver Arts Festival, so I turned back to the passengers. The man next to me studied the RTD schedule changes intently. He was a regular at RTD board meetings, he said, flashing a grin with more gum than teeth.

By Welton, the festival materialized: white booths everywhere, squeezed in among the renovation of the Denver Pavilions. The art started this way for me: large landscapes, which you’d expect from an art fair in Colorado; metal wall hangings like sheaves of wheat; and photographs of horses, taken all over the United States but mostly in Colorado and back East, where Susan Williams used to live.

I was curious how much the artists were selling in this economy, so I stopped at a booth displaying ceramic objects painted with birds and asked the artist, Peggy Crago, if she birded. She said she doesn’t, but she likes to paint them. Saturday had been slow for her, but she said a festival can pick up anytime. She should know: she’s been exhibiting at the Downtown Denver Arts Festival for 11 years, since it was called the Celebrate Colorado Artists Festival.

Sean Brown didn’t want me to take pictures of his delightful ceramic birds perched on paintbrushes. Given that his work was hanging in public, I thought his attitude was ridiculous. At the next booth, I just went ahead and took a picture of this stunning $14,000 sculpture by James LaCasse.

Some other beauties: Marvin Blackmore‘s intricately painted Southwestern pots; Kristin De Santis‘s metal relief paintings (oils on aluminum); and Karen Smith‘s painting of a woman on a couch in neutral tones, titled Waiting for Her Date. If I’d had $1,100 burning a hole in my pocket, I’d have bought it on the spot.

Just as it began to sprinkle, I found myself at Diane Harty Millinery (hurray for a user-friendly website!). I watched her work a hat and tried on a few of her creations. I vowed I’d get one of her hats before the summer was up.

And that was half the festival at most. Even so, the Downtown Denver Arts Festival is more manageable than the Cherry Creek Arts Festival, which happens over the Fourth of July weekend in the Cherry Creek section of Denver.

As I was writing this entry, I came to two conclusions: Artists really don’t know how to make websites; “Click to Enter” is so yesterday and annoying. And I like the Denver Pavilions better with the streets blocked off: it seems like more of an organic whole.

Denver Firefighters Museum
1326 Tremont Place
upper downtown Denver
303-892-1436
Admission: $6
Hours: closed Sunday and holidays. Open every other day 10 to 4.

When I visited the Denver Firefighters Museum (DFM) last Saturday (before I went to the Five Points Jazz Festival), I started with the video guide, which advised visitors to speak quietly and forbade them to run. Alas, the family playing in the fire truck was breaking all the rules, their voices echoing in the open room, but it was pleasant noise, if a little deafening at times.

I spent two hours at the museum and barely made it to the second floor. I liked the DFM a lot. It’s a family-friendly museum, though I think young children would like it best. After I saw a little girl calling 9-1-1 on the plastic phone and saying, “My house is on fire” in a serious voice, I just had to do that myself. It made me feel all emotional. Then I turned around to face a pair of teenage girls. I was mortified.

In the early days of firefighting in Denver, before the 1870s, the volunteers’ motto was “We Raze to Save.” In other words, there wasn’t too much they could do about a fire except to pull down the burning building to keep the fire from spreading to adjacent structures.

And there wasn’t much protective gear until the 1920s, when equipment developed for miners made its way to firefighters. Before that, early firefighters could only hope their beards would protect them. When they had to go into a smoke-filled room, they would wet the beard and clench it between their teeth, thus filtering the smoke.

I learned such things and many more at the DFM, which is not too far from West Colfax, the Denver Mint, other government buildings, and hotels such as the Sheraton. It occupies Denver Station 1, which, oddly enough, was the second Station 1. In 1909 it replaced the first Station 1, and once Denverites’ safety from fires was ensured by the brand-spanking-new station, the city tore down the old one and built the Pioneer Monument at Colfax and Broadway in 1910. So the next time you’re standing by the Denver Post building and looking at that statue, remember that was the location of the first fire station in Denver.

Since 1975, Station 1 has been located at Colfax and Speer. The old station became the museum, and one of its strategies for survival was to run a restaurant on the second floor (sadly, now closed).

This photograph is a detail from a hand-drawn pumper, purchased in 1867, which required 15 men to pull it and 15 men at a time to pump it. The DFM has several different fire wagons, from ladder wagons to the steam engines used from the 1880s to the 1920s to more modern engines.

A word of advice to people exploring downtown Denver: get off the 16th Street Mall. Some great things go on there, but more interesting, more local things happen elsewhere.

I was crossing the apex of upper downtown Denver after visiting the Denver Firefighter’s Museum (more on that in a later post) and found nothing but government buildings and hotels like the Sheraton and parking lots.

Green Fine Salad Company was closed, so I inhaled tomato soup and salad greens from the Corner Bakery (a lot like a Panera Bread) and headed over to Trinity United Methodist Church, Denver’s first church, at the corner of Broadway and 18th Avenue and Tremont. The church was originally established in 1859, a year after Denver incorporated, but the modern Gothic building shown here, designed by Robert Roeschlaub, held its first service at Christmastime in 1888.

Trinity is famous for its organ, which has more than 4,000 pipes. My husband went to church there once as a child (his parents are Methodist), and I believe he got to play the organ.

Just across Broadway is the Brown Palace, which received its first guest in August 1892, almost four years after the church held its first service. At that time it was on the edge of downtown Denver, to put it mildly.

The Brown Palace is Denver’s only Mobil Four-Star and AAA Four-Diamond hotel. I noted this unusual fact from the website: “The hotel’s original artesian well is located 720 feet deep beneath the lobby floor and still provides water to every faucet in the hotel.” Notice how it carefully does not say “all the water”?

The Brown Palace is one of several locations in Denver where you can have afternoon tea. And if you go in January, you will have your tea in the presence of a champion steer in honor of the National Western Stock Show’s Junior Auction of Livestock Champions.

I have never stayed at the Brown Palace, but my husband and I did consider it as a wedding location in 2002. In the interview (and who was interviewing whom was anyone’s guess), Todd was put off by the revelation that we would not be tasting the food in advance.

“How will we know if it’s good?” he asked.

Stunned by our lack of respect for the hotel’s reputation, the wedding coordinator sputtered, and I, in full-on bride mode, was mortified. Todd was right, of course, and anyway I never did like the hotel’s décor, with several loud patterns clashing in every room.

The Brown Palace offers free guided historical tours every Wednesday and Saturday at 2 pm. Reservations are required. Private tours can also be arranged.

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.

Bayou Bob’s Restaurant and Bar
1635 Glenarm Place
Upper downtown, Denver
303-573-6828
Bus directions: from Market Street Station, take the free shuttle up 16th Street to Glenarm. Bayou Bob’s is next to the Paramount Theater and near the Pavilions.

After the Green Festival, Todd and I headed out to Bayou Bob’s for dinner. The next day I would be succumbing to the Eat to Live diet (1 lb. each raw and cooked vegetables, 1 cup beans, 1 oz. nuts, and 4 fresh fruits daily), so fried food sounded like the proper sendoff.

There is nothing at Bayou Bob’s on the Eat to Live diet, not even the house salads. But we didn’t bother with those. I ordered jambayala with green beans Acadien, which was suitable spicy and gooey and loaded with sausage and chicken. Amazingly enough, the portion was just right.

The hush puppy was crispy but not mind-blowing like one I had at Brunet’s in Baton Rouge.

Todd ordered friend shrimp and mashed potatoes with cream gravy. The gravy had a little too much white pepper, but the potatoes, mashed with the skin, were creamy.

The gumbo could have been spicier, in my opinion, but it does look pretty in this picture. As you have no doubt noticed, food presentation is not Bayou Bob’s strong point.

Todd claims the fried shrimp at Bayou Bob’s is the best he’s ever had. He said there were only a couple of places in Louisiana that measured up. The shrimp I ate was tender; the batter was crisp and not too thick—what’s not to like?

Bayou Bob’s is a vinyl-covered-booth kind of place, with lots of windows that allow you to watch passersby if you can’t think of anything to say (or you’re dining alone).

Now that I think about it, Denver has quite a few Cajun/Creole restaurants. If you want elegance, you could try Gumbo’s in LoDo. Another home-grown favorite is Lucile’s, with house restaurants in Denver, Boulder, Longmont, and Fort Collins.

I know of two chains:Pappadeaux in Westminster and south Denver and a Bubba Gump Shrimp Company 4 blocks from Bayou Bob’s. As far as atmosphere goes, Lucile’s and Pappadeaux are pretty much opposites—Pappadeaux is one huge room with glass and dark wood accents, and Lucile’s is crammed into a worn old house. Bubba Gump’s main claim to fame is that it allows you to harass your waitron.

You wouldn’t eat at a chain when you could eat at a local, family-owned place, now, would you?

When I walked into the Exhibit Hall at the Green Festival in downtown Denver, I wasn’t sure what would greet me.

There was this guy at the entrance to the Convention Center—is he a giant blue stalker?

Once in the Exhibit Hall, I looked to my left and saw the booth for Sustainable Industries magazine, and I thought, That sounds like something I should read for Restoration Nation.

Restoration Nation is an idea I’ve been dreaming about for several years: How do we change the current “free market” economy to “an economy that restores”? Not that I believe the two are mutually exclusive, but the focus of the first is consumption, and the focus of the second would be restoration of lands.

I signed up to get the magazine, just to see if it would give me any ideas. And I went to see local author David Wann (Affluenza, Superbia!), whose talk, “Culture Shift: Creating a Restoration Economy,” sounded promising.

Wann gave his audience a lot of information, much of which I had heard before. Although he liked the name Restoration Nation, he didn’t answer the question two paragraphs up.

But the next two talks I wanted to see were canceled. I began to feel that someone was hexing my Green Festival. I wasn’t enjoying it as much as I’d expected. All the information and products presented at the festival seemed like a bunch of loose threads, and what I really wanted was to gather them together somehow into Restoration Nation.

But maybe that desire to corral all the disparate threads of what we call the “Green Economy” or the New Economy is misguided. Maybe a change in our idea of what the market should do (which is what Restoration Nation requires) need not come from one direction. Maybe Restoration Nation already exists. After all, isn’t this the kind of thing I’m looking for?

Only I want an entire economy of it. Maybe the website I want to set up should just ask questions, since that’s all I seem to do.

There was a lot of stuff at the Green Festival exhibit hall. I couldn’t keep track of the sustainably made purses and hemp clothing lines (though I intend to check out Vital Hemptations) and books and even these to-go containers (the button says “Reduce Your Forkprint”:

I found it fascinating and, ultimately, exhausting. And about that time I remembered one of David Wann’s lines: “Green overconsumption is still overconsumption.”

But I bought the 83% organic lotion from Boulder anyway.

équipement de vin

It was embarrassing, I confess.

The proprietor of équipement de vin, Cheryl Webster, caught me in the wine cellar photographing a champagne cooler with my cell phone. I had forgotten to bring my camera to my second visit to her store and was making do with my phone.

Even if I wasn’t professional enough to ask whether I could take pictures, Cheryl was both professional and warm, handling all the customers with ease, and letting them feed carrots to her dog.

In honor of the holidays, Larimer Square was holding a “tailgate” party, with some stores offering food or drink to their customers (see the website for information about the party on December 17). Cheryl had set up some hors d’oeuvres in the wine cellar and was directing customers to go next door for beer.

Equipement de vin is an attractive, Tuscan-style store, long and narrow with echoing wood floors. When you enter, you can see all the way to the back, but displays are arranged to slow you down and entice you to consider the wares. Everywhere you turn you find wine racks or glassware or bottle cozies or just about anything else you can imagine having to do with wine or entertaining.

On the tall black shelves across from the register, which display color-coordinated sets of candles and tableware, I discovered the perfect coasters, made of black slate, to complement my blue slate tables with wrought-iron frames.

Cheryl was dealing with several sets of customers while I was in the store, but she took the time to answer this rather pointed question: “How do stores make money when most of their stock is fairly inexpensive? Is it just volume?”

Well, yes, she said, but her store also sells furniture, wine-themed art (a popular item), and glassware, including exquisite decanters that cost as much as $300.

My next question was about “nosing” wines, a subject that has vexed me for years. She suggested a way to develop my nose using the store’s wine-tasting guide:

1. Throw a wine-tasting party focusing on one varietal.

2. Find a small amount of every item listed under that varietal on her store’s guide (blackberries or spices for merlot, for example) and put each item in a separate glass.

3. Smell the item, and then smell the wine and see if there’s a match.

She solved my problem, and I bought the wine-tasting guide, a wine and food matching wheel, and the coasters.

Equipement de vin offers tastings of Colorado wines Thursday through Saturday. Cheryl’s cellar was full of Colorado wines that were new to me. I’m looking forward to doing a wine tasting this weekend.

***

After a long day of visiting stores in Denver on Saturday, it was a relief to return to équipement de vin and hang out at the bar in the back with Matthew, who knows a lot about wine and is a writer to boot. We tasted the Whitewater Hill Riesling (a wine made in Grand Junction, Colorado) and four red wines from Bonacquisti, a winery at 46th and Pecos (the grapes are grown on the Western Slope). Our favorite was the Riesling; I didn’t love any of the reds, but the Delagua Red (mostly merlot) and the cabernet franc were my favorites.

Among the things I learned from him:

1. Merlots are fermented with the grape skins for only a short time in order to preserve the silky texture of the wine.

2. Merlots don’t spend much time in oak.

3. When I perceive a “burnt” smell in a wine, it has to do with how deeply the oak barrels in which it was aged are toasted.

4. To properly smell a wine, tilt the glass and smell from the “bottom” of the glass to the “top.”

5. He also explained the difference between aroma and bouquet, which I can’t remember. Another tip he gave me (so I can remember more of this stuff): take wine classes at International Wine Guild in Denver.