Vain Salon
1890 Pennsylvania Street, Uptown, Denver
720-596-4511
across the street from Fluid Coffee Bar and Las Delicias
Bus directions: the 28 goes down 19th Avenue; the 12 and 20 go down 17th

A couple of weekends ago I tried to get a walk-in appointment at Vain Salon, but they were booked. I liked the look and feel of the place enough to make an appointment in advance, on Election Day.

I have to confess that I’ve never loved my hair. Even in high school, when I had a lot more of it, getting the fine strands to hold a style was a chore. It stands to reason, then, that I’ve had few ecstatic experiences with hairdressers. The worst was being told, about five years ago, that I didn’t have enough hair for a certain haircut. (I didn’t mind the truthfulness so much as the complete lack of gentleness with which it was said. You’d think someone who caters to vanity all day long would know better.)

Given that history, I didn’t have huge expectations for Vain Salon. I just thought that since I was fancy-free as far as hairdressers go, I might as well try one of the four salons in Uptown.

When I arrived at the door, two Boston terriers were standing guard. Turns out their names are Memphis and Diesel and they belong to the owner, Tina McKeever. They had a bed on the floor, but one of them took up a position on the couch, gazing around with soulful eyes while I inspected the products. I was looking for a mousse that was mostly natural but smelled better than Phomollient by Aveda. I didn’t find exactly that, but I did notice the Bumble and Bumble three-part treatment system for thinning hair.

After a fabulous scalp massage and the requisite shampoo, Tina seated me in her chair, and we talked about what I wanted. I told her that my desires were contradictory: my hair was thinning, and I knew it might never stop, so I wanted to grow it out again. Maybe for the last time.

(Ever since I noticed my hair was thinning, I’ve become acutely aware of older women with thin hair. I stare at women who’ve teased what little hair they had left into a translucent Afro and others who show mostly scalp and have a long fringe off the back. As you can see from the picture, I’m not there yet. But when I stand under a light, the crown of my head glows.)

Tina didn’t know all that. She assured me she’d give me a trim and get rid of the two-layer look I had going on after growing out my last haircut (a walk-in) for two months. She also said the Bumble and Bumble hair treatment had worked for a male client of hers. Something to try if Rogaine fails me, I guess.

Tina calls herself a “hair mechanic.” I admired her asymmetrical magenta hair and the tattoos running up one arm, across her chest, and down the other. I think I spotted Cupid near one shoulder. We talked about why she loved Uptown (it has a little of everything) and how glad she was that her dogs were quiet (unlike other pups from the same litter). That way she can keep them at work, where everyone in the neighborhood spoils them.

I walked out of Vain Salon with much better-looking hair than when I walked in. I’ll be going back for sure.

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It was a weird weekend.

Todd was at a sci-fi convention in Denver and stayed at the hotel, so I had the house to myself. I had lots of plans for Saturday, but none for the rest of the weekend.

Until I walked to the bus to Denver Saturday morning, I still hadn’t decided what aspect of Uptown I’d be exploring. Should I try the same dish at all three Mexican restaurants in one day? The two diners? The dessert place and the shakes place?

Did I want to throw up a lot? Well, no.

So I compromised. I decided to go to Las Delicias for lunch, let the other Mexican joints wait, try to get a haircut, and hang out at Fluid or the ceramics store if not.

As we all know, we must compromise to get along in life. But today, compromise just made me feel cheated.

I started out at Las Delicias I (out of five total), where I had a perfectly good chicken chimichanga. But I think I’ll save more detail until I’ve been to all three Mexican restaurants in Uptown Denver.

One detail that I would like to share: my table faced the large windows on 19th Avenue. As I sat there, I saw the grizzled white heads of two old men go by, as if traveling on air. And the arms of a wheelchair-one was pushing the other.

After lunch, I walked across the intersection to Vain salon, which was quite colorful on the inside, and also so busy that no one was at the front counter to greet me. They weren’t able to fit me in until Tuesday, so I said I’d try them some other time. I think I’ll call them in advance sometime—I’d like to see if their haircuts are as appealing as their décor.

I got a hot chocolate from Fluid Coffee Bar (extra mocha, anyone?) and walked an entire block to Ceramics in the City. I swear, you could live happily without leaving this one square block: Mexican food, wine, coffee, a couple of salons, an exercise place, Chedd’s, and a place to paint pottery. Oh, and an immense parking lot across the street. For the SUVs that Coloradans seem to love.

So how artistic am I? It took me an entire hour to paint a coaster. I can hear you all howling with laughter now, but seriously, it was a complicated leaf pattern. I used three whole colors!

OK, I’m artistically challenged. So sue me.

The day got better from there. I finally turned in my “pottery,” and made my way to downtown Denver and Wen Chocolates. They were having a birthday party for themselves. The chef, William Poole, told me how happy he was with the first year. He said it could have been so difficult, but they’d had a really good year. I hope it continues, especially after eating that cake. Man! I want Wen to stick around for a while.

Then I walked up to Forest Room 5 to celebrate the release of Michael Henry’s and J. Diego Frey’s books of poetry. It was an accomplishment that they could read at all—that back room is so dark. And all the food was gone by the time I got there. But their reading was quite amusing, even if I did have to stand there for forty-five minutes with period cramps. Damn Ibuprofen! Then I tried Pamprin, and it gave me a rash. It’s enough to drive a girl to morphine.

So here’s a reminder to be grateful.

A friend of mine had asked me to go to a play with her that her husband didn’t want to attend: The Trip to Bountiful. It’s a wonderfully simple story: an old woman tries to get home to a town called Bountiful before she dies. The lead actors were very good.

That night I got closer to an actor than I ever have: my friend and I were sitting near a stage entrance, and the last set of the play was to our left (some of the sets came up from underneath the set; others came in from the sides in this theater in the round). Toward the end, we were three feet from the actors, so I averted my eyes and just listened.

The lead actress kept talking about the redbird (cardinal), which reminded me of my mother throwing raisins onto the patio for the cardinals to eat.

***

Late the next day, I read my email and realized that Barack Obama had been in Denver, at Civic Center Park, and I had missed it. I was playing LOTRO while 100,000 people gathered there to listen at noon.

That upset me quite a bit.

***
Monday night, I went to hear Gloria Steinem speak at the Broomfield Auditorium, and it comforted me a little for what I missed on Sunday. For those who aren’t familiar with her, she cofounded Ms. magazine, among other things.

She walked in and asked, “Are we going to have a good time tonight, or what?” She seemed to have a command of US history that one doesn’t often hear these days: one designed to bring us all closer together and remind us of our similarities. For example, she mentioned that Barry Goldwater was pro-choice.

She mentioned how the United States makes it difficult for people to vote, using as a counterexample that in Canada, election officials actually post lists of registered voters in each community. If there are any Canadians reading this post, can you confirm that?

A couple of memorable quotes: from the man in front of me: “We’re counting the men. We hope we get into the double digits.”

From Steinem: “The art of behaving ethically is behaving as if everything we do matters.”

Because we never know exactly which action makes the difference, do we?

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Fluid Coffee Bar

On Sunday, Todd and I visited what I took to be the “new” part of Uptown, bounded by 19th Avenue, Logan, 20th Avenue, and Washington.

Reminded me of a line from an REM song: “Shiny, happy people holding hands…”

Though the only relationship action I noticed was, apparently, a breakup. I was outside Fluid Coffee Bar, angling for a picture of the Warwick Hotel, where Todd and I had a weekend getaway. I loved it because it had a pool on the roof. And tall glass walls around the pool area, so you could model your swimsuit for the people down below, but there was no danger of you jumping and giving the hotel a bad name.

So here I am wandering across an intersection trying to compose a photograph, while across the street a man has a tense conversation with someone, I assume a woman. He was angry, then pleading, and I could hear his words clearly.

I felt bad for listening to his conversation, even though I had come over to the endless parking lot (another product of Denver urban renewal in the 1970s) partly to avoid him.

Finally I walked off.

But to get back to “shiny, happy”: it definitely applies to all the new condos rising everywhere on 19th and 20th west of Park. In coming years they’ll be rising east of Park too, in the hospital district, where the Children’s Hospital used to be.

And what’s wrong with that?

Well, nothing…

Except they probably cost half a million dollars. I can’t afford one. And how many of them are designated as affordable units?

Probably not many. A building has to have at least thirty units before “affordable” comes into the picture.

I found myself gazing through a gate toward a firepit flickering in one nice stucco building. Part of me wanted to be in there…part of me wanted to go down to 17th Avenue and find some 1890s house. Or a dive.

Except there aren’t really any dives along 17th, not anything that screams “dive,” anyway. (Maybe the Wrangler, next to the dry cleaners at Logan. But I didn’t go in there.)

I don’t really know what my problem is sometimes. I like new, shiny, pretty, tidy…I’m a Virgo, with my fair share of Virgo moments.

But I like the historical air of Uptown farther south. I like the old houses, the trees that shade the streets (even it they’re nothing like the elms that used to shade my street in Kansas City).

Excuse me while I have a moment of nostalgia for the city where I grew up. Where I really don’t want to live ever again.

…

I discovered that the Painted Bench, the restaurant my screenwriting class used to frequent in 2003, has turned into Jonesy Eatbar. I never felt comfortable at those after-class gatherings, but the pâté was good.

…

The best discovery of all: Fluid Coffee Bar.

It really does have the air of a bar. I enjoyed the cement floor, the little niches with “just-come-and-sink-into-me” seats, the fireplace with a mosaic design above it, the counters for laptops along the walls.

Illegal Grounds is like an old, comfortable boyfriend, but Fluid is nothing if not a lover.

Even if you have to dump him on a street corner later, it was still good while it lasted.

Dazbog

I used to think Downing was the edge of the known world, the kind of place you might go past and disappear. As if it were the edge of an ancient map.

My husband and I would occasionally venture as far into Denver as Downing to go to Chez Artiste, an art-house movie theater.

A week ago I walked right up Downing from Colfax, marveling at how nice the houses were. I had always thought there was a buffer zone of shabbiness around Colfax, but if it ever existed here, it has gone away.

I was in search of Dazbog coffeehouse, at 17th Avenue and Downing. It’s right across from Las Margaritas; I ate there once years ago, and had mole, one of my favorite foods. (“Mole,” by the way, means “sauce”; “guacamole” means “testicle sauce.”) I’ve driven by this corner many times on my way down Park Avenue to the Botanic Gardens or Free University. It’s one of those impossible corners where more than two streets intersect, where the map becomes full of less-than-90-degree angles. It’s also close to the “hospital district,” though some of the hospitals are migrating to the periphery where they’ll have more room to grow. It’s a little worrisome because there aren’t that many hospitals left in the main parts of Denver. Denver Health is still down on 6th Avenue, but otherwise you have to travel.

Dazbog (Russian-born, Denver-roasted coffee) is a nice little place, with walls partially plastered over brick to get that…rustic?… look. Or something. I bought one of their truffles, which was about as dry as a malt ball—I’ll never try one of those again. And I settled down in various seats to work. When I looked up again, there was a family of three at the counter, and the place was packed.

I won’t avoid Dazbog, but I won’t seek it out either. It doesn’t have as much character as some of the other coffee shops in town, and the baristas are not nearly as happy as at Illegal Grounds.

Maybe I was feeling persnickety after getting worked up at the John Lennon birthday celebration I wrote about earlier this month. Anyway, I was more interested in the rest of this particular part of Uptown, so I gathered up my unnaturally heavy laptop, etc., and headed east on 17th.

It’s a busy street here, still one-way but much more dangerous to navigate than it is farther west. I stayed safely on my side, investigating the shops. Baer Simon Photography was a bit of a mystery: the front was completely blocked off by a white screen, but the door was open and a bike was inside. I couldn’t see a good way to get from the front to the back of the store. Everything in there was so white and quiet; I felt as if I were rattling the door to a tomb, but the pictures were all of parents and babies.

As I stood there, a man unlocked a narrow door nearby and went up the stairs with his dog. Apparently people live above these stores.

Talulah Jones was my first stop. Although I have no children, I do have nine nieces and nephews, not to mention friends with children. There’s something about children’s clothing that’s so fun, especially the shoes—I always want to take a pair home.

It is exactly the kind of store that makes you afraid to have a bulky backpack like mine. There were so many displays I could destroy just by turning around. It reminded me of Marshall’s recent rant on How I Met Your Mother about how he’s too big for New York. How he gets bruised from bumping into things in tiny Manhattan stores.

But there was so much to discover there: clothes for kids, jewelry, home decor, books. I found a locally made poncho that I was dying to get for my niece, but she’s thirteen and I think it’s too small. I’m going to email a picture of it to my sister, though, just to make sure. I searched and searched for books with my nieces’ names in the titles, but couldn’t find any.

Maybe other people don’t care about names the way I do. I always note street names or shop names that remind me of someone I know. I often take pictures of them, as if I’m marking my loved ones’ presence in the world. Does anyone else do this?

Finally I bought a notebook and moseyed on down 17th to Ahimsa Footwear, billed as Denver’s vegan shoe store. It’s been around for about a year, though I really wonder how they get any foot traffic (pun intended) at their location. It seems easy to miss. (Ahimsa closed its Uptown store in March 2011, but it still sells goods online.)

I hope they stay in business, though, so I can buy shoes like this one. That heel is so cool! It’s made in India, which I doubt is any better than China in terms of sweatshop labor in general, but their website claims it’s sweatshop-free.

I did my best to help them, buying a purse and a wallet. They were made in USA, which will be the next theme on this blog, at the beginning of November.

If you visit, you can get your Vamp bag in time for Halloween. They’re made in Denver. That’s as close to emissions-free as you can get.

When I was done shopping (read: I couldn’t carry anything else), I went back to the Paint-In and watched the end of the show, stopping in at Indulgences, Etc., for a chocolate or two.

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