From Casa Bonita to Colt and Gray

Posted on March 15, 2011 by Beth

Todd and I visited both Casa Bonita (his idea) and Colt and Gray (my idea) one night in February, and the only other thing that connected them was that I acted like a crazed photographer at both, to the point of annoying Todd (and probably other people). And racing around that way didn’t do much for my photographs either.

I realized later I could have sat down at our table at Casa Bonita and eaten “dinner” (my taco salad was a relatively safe choice), talked more to our dinner companions, and then taken photographs afterward. Probably, I would have gotten the same quality photographs without bouncing up and down like a Jill-in-the-Box. But I had just bought a new camera 5 days earlier, and I couldn’t wait to try it out.

It was a humbling experience. My new Canon 60D is a great camera, but the limits of its flash were fairly apparent at Casa Bonita. The pop-up flash wasn’t powerful enough for the dark interior. It worked well enough for members of the mariachi band, who stood close to our table.
But it didn’t work so well when I tried to capture the acts near the waterfall.

Those two photos had to be lightened up considerably, even after I bumped up the ISO to about 1,000.

Taking a photo from behind the waterfall gives some sense of the size of the place.

I think that the waterfall is behind the tower shown here. Our seats were on the top level, and there is at least 1 other level, possibly 2—I can’t remember. I know that we entered the restaurant, stood in this line, which reminds me of the security line at DIA,

and then walked up a ramp to get to our seats (right by the waterfall).

I wonder how much money Casa Bonita makes in an evening. There’s no reason to linger over dinner, but it’s worthwhile to hang around to watch more acts like this magician, buy cotton candy or toys, and play games in the arcade. One of our companions goes every year for her birthday. I can’t see myself going that often, but I would go back with a better flash and more time to concentrate on photography.

Colt and Gray is almost the complete opposite of Casa Bonita. The former is a small restaurant on an urban street in Denver’s Central Platte Valley neighborhood. It focuses on local, lovingly prepared food, and its bar features “mixologists” and locally made liquor such as the Leopold Brothers’ products shown here. Its dinner menu includes the category “Offal.” There is one similarity, though, between CB and C&G: it’s fun to sit at the bar and watch the bartenders in action.

So far, I’ve had the Spaniard, the Martinez with Old Tom Gin (spilled on me by an overly vigorous bartender, who promptly replaced it with a mix of tequila and mezcal and spicy vermouth), and the Fernet cocktail. Todd has had the Fancy-Free, which like the Fernet is on the current cocktails menu. But my favorite drink by far came after I requested a drink with chocolate. What I got in the absence of chocolate in the bar was a mixture of Root liqueur, Upslope Brown Ale, Bourbon bitters, and a whole egg. It was luscious, growing sweeter toward the bottom. It also caused the most annoying photo-incident of the night, because I had great difficulty getting the flash to focus. I finally managed it, but Todd was not happy about the strobe-light effect. And I was not happy when I went to edit this picture and discovered the white balance was set to tungsten (I had forgotten to change it to AWB after taking pictures at Casa Bonita). Thank goodness for RAW files.

I’ve been served one dinner at Colt and Gray (on an earlier visit) and lots of snacks. This burger was cooked properly (that is, I asked for medium and got a burger that was pink inside), but the real star of the meal was the broccoli with rosemary anchovy dressing. Broccoli is not my favorite vegetable, unless it’s grilled and has this salty dressing poured on it. Then I could eat it all day.

The gougeres crusted with blue cheese were nice enough, warm and bready, but I wasn’t as impressed by them as I expected to be.

What I wanted from Colt and Gray that night (besides something to wash the taste of Casa Bonita food out of my mouth) was a sweet, and the rich drink didn’t change that. I ordered the sticky toffee pudding with bourbon ice cream. The sticky toffee lived up to its name, but the best part of the dessert was the whiskey-flavored ice cream. Colt and Gray is a Denver restaurant to visit again and again, for dinner or for snacks and drinks. As Todd said on our first visit, “It’s a good day when you get grease stains all over your notebook.”

No Man’s Land: The Women of Mexico

Posted on February 16, 2011 by Beth

Dana Romanoff has been traveling to Oaxaca since 2006, photographing the families left there in the wake of migration to the United States. She went there because she had been following the stories of migrants on the East Coast, and she wanted to find out how their families were doing.

I heard her speak at Su Teatro in Denver about her photojournalism project, “No Man’s Land: The Women of Mexico.” Previously I had taken a photography class with her at Boulder Digital Arts.

She will tell you things about Mexican farmers and U.S. food you didn’t know. For example, in the nineteenth century, Mexican peasants saw their land given to large landowners to grow crops for export to the United States. During the Depression in the 1930s, Americans blamed Mexican workers for taking their jobs and deported half a million of them. But only a decade later, we invited them back because the United States needed farm workers during World War II. And once the GI Bill was passed, former soldiers left the family farm behind to go to college and get a better, easier job. That contributed to the decline of the family farm, the growth of agribusiness, and an ongoing need for migrant workers.

As Romanoff pointed out, Mexicans and people from countries farther south have been coming here for a long time to work. But it’s only since the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect in 1994 that immigration skyrocketed. From 1990 to 1994, about 400,000 undocumented immigrants came to the United States. But since January 1994, half a million per year have crossed our southern border. Some of these immigrants are not yet teenagers, but they travel north because so many other people in their families have done so.

That is especially true in Oaxaca, one of the poorest states in Mexico (located on the Pacific Coast, near the bottom of the country). Parts of Oaxaca are “Pura Mujer”: purely women. And their children.

What caused so many Oaxacans and other Mexicans to come north? Remember Ross Perot talking about the “great sucking sound” of jobs going south if NAFTA was approved? Well, that works both ways. NAFTA made it easier for US companies to sell corn (and other products) in Mexico, and since our corn is heavily subsidized, it costs about 25 percent less than Mexican corn. People found it difficult to make a profit off farms or even feed their families, and when that combined with drought, as it did in Oaxaca, the results were devastating. (Just to clarify, the people in Oaxaca whom Dana photographed grow agave for a living, not corn, but I suppose some of them grow corn for their families.)

I asked Dana if the government of Mexico was doing anything to make rural areas more livable and prosperous, and she mentioned both government and nonprofit programs but said they weren’t enough. Oaxacans are frustrated at the lack of opportunities in their area.

But getting north is more difficult than it used to be because of the border fence, and more expensive. Immigrants have to hire someone to take them across and often find it difficult to pay that person back. In addition, since the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) relocated to the Department of Homeland Security and changed its name to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), detentions of immigrants have increased, and that continued after the 2008 election. Apparently, Barack Obama does a more thorough job of deporting immigrants than George W. Bush.

So what, you say? They’re breaking the law? True. But detaining them is costing us a lot. Each migrant costs $141/night to detain. About 33,400 are detained each night, costing us $4.7 million/night. In a year, these detention costs amount to $1.7 billion. It’s good business for private prison companies, which Romanoff said helped write the controversial immigration bill in Arizona. But what is it doing for the rest of us?

I think it would be more sensible to let immigrants stay and work and pay taxes, because immigrants are estimated to be contributing $9 billion/year in tax revenues. Some people think the taxes paid by immigrants keep Social Security afloat.

I don’t know if that claim is true, but I have heard it before. Dana said her information came from a professor at Brandeis University and from government records.

Dana’s solution? More temporary work visas. In Virginia, she met two brothers who return to the same farm every year. They get to go home to see their families when work slows down, and they can come back to the same job year after year.

Right now, Dana is writing grant proposals so that her photos and short video can be exhibited across the United States. If you want more information, you can go to her website and see her photos of the women of Oaxaca. She is also publicizing a microfinance program in Oaxaca (I couldn’t tell if she had founded the program, but you can contact her for more info).

You might also check out Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America, by Helen Thorpe, the wife of Governor John Hickenlooper (which I haven’t read), or The Latinization of U.S. Schools by Jason Irizarry, forthcoming from Paradigm in Boulder this year (I did the copyedit on the latter). Both books present the stories of Latino/a high school students, some of whom are undocumented because their parents brought them here when they were young. It’s very sad to think those kids cannot get into/afford college because of their parents’ actions and U.S. policies. Let’s hope the DREAM Act passes soon. I want as many U.S. residents as possible to have good jobs and pay lots of taxes so that I can get Social Security in 20 years!

Denver Restaurants: Garbanzo Mediterranean Grill near DU and D Bar Desserts in Uptown

Posted on March 4, 2010 by Beth

I feel odd writing a review of two restaurants right in the midst of publishing my photos from Globeville, Elyria, and Swansea. I’d like to spend a little more time in those neighborhoods, go to Panadería Emmanuel and Bomaretto’s Produce and the nevería (ice cream parlor) I saw on the Environmental Justice tour.

Garbanzo Mediterranean Grill has locations all over Denver, including the University of Denver area, where we went, and Aurora, but nothing north of I-70. And D Bar Desserts, on 17th Avenue west of Park, sits in the midst of gentrification.

The only gentrification I saw on the tour was Globeville Townhomes, and since gentrification moves low-income people out of neighborhoods, and the people in these neighborhoods want to stay (at least, according to Michael Maes of Cross Community Coalition and Tom Anthony of the Elyria Neighborhood Association), I can’t say I’m in favor of it. I would recommend that the Denver City Council stop forcing industrial development down the throats of people who don’t want to live among it.

And, yes, the lady is protesting too much.

Last Friday Todd and I went to Garbanzo on University near Evans for dinner before Amiri Baraka’s reading at DU. Garbanzo is a fast casual joint that claims to place an emphasis on freshness. However, as Todd said, the tomato and cucumber salad on the right in the picture below had been sitting out all day, and the minty tabbouleh, made with couscous instead of bulgur wheat, had an odd sticky texture that might have been more palatable if it hadn’t also been cold.

We didn’t see a rotisserie there; the pictures on the wall indicated that the shwarma comes in chunks rather than being shaved off a large piece of meat.

The falafels, however, were hot out of the fryer and crispy. The tahini made a nice contrast, but the cilantro sauce didn’t have much oomph. One other thing I liked about the falafels was the liberal use of green herbs in the dough, which lent them a bright appearance and a fresh flavor.

Dinner lasted about 20 minutes, so we had time to kill and nowhere to do so before Baraka’s reading. Amiri Baraka is certainly an accomplished poet and critic (e.g., Blues People), and it may be that he is committed to social justice like no other American writer, as his website says, but he is also an anti-Semite, recycling hateful 9/11 conspiracy theories that were debunked years ago. ‘Nuff said.

All in all, it was a relief to get to D Bar, which was packed as always on a weekend night, and stand around until seats opened up at the communal table. The place is a haven for me. We would have preferred to sit at the bar and talk to the chefs, but instead we talked to the mother and daughter, the couple, and the man with his novel also sitting at our table. Todd got the dressed avocado, which isn’t on the menu anymore (pictured here from an earlier visit), and then the ice cream sandwich.

I got the palmond³, and I’m still trying to locate the 3 uses of pear and 3 uses of almond. The menu describes it this way: palmond³—pear I will actually eat—pear³ almond³ caramelized white chocolate ·pom ·almond ice milk.

Some are easy, of course, like the pear halves and the ball of almond ice milk. I assume the cake on the bottom has almonds and pears in it, and the caramelized white chocolate is the custardy thing between the cake and the pears. But then I thought, What if the sugary crumbs underneath the pears are the caramelized white chocolate and the custard is made with almond and pear? And what about the “pom,” which usually means passionfruit, orange, and mango juice but in this case refers to pear.

I started this post with gentrification and ended it with puzzlement over dessert. Must be nice, eh?

Denver Restaurants: My Brother’s Bar

Posted on March 2, 2010 by Beth

I walked by My Brother’s Bar in Denver’s South Platte neighborhood many a time and could not fathom what might be happening behind the white half-curtains. This Denver landmark has a symbol outside but no sign. I was, I confess, a bit intimidated. Would it be one of those bars where a bunch of paunchy men turned around in unison and squinted at me?

Now I’ve been there twice, both times with company, and I can confidently say that I wouldn’t mind going there by myself and taking a seat at the bar. Though I’m not sure how long I would stay, because the round-back chairs are nowhere near as comfortable as the atmosphere.

My Brother’s Bar, at 15th and Platte Street, just northwest of the South Platte River, is known for being “Denver’s oldest saloon still serving booze on the original site,” according to Tom Noel. An establishment called “Highland House” opened there in 1873 and served Denver’s Italian immigrant community. In the late 1800s, the neighborhood sometimes called Lower Highlands and sometimes called the Central Platte Valley (even though the river is named the South Platte) was sparsely settled. Since then, several different bars have come and gone in that corner building, and the neighborhood is one of Denver’s trendiest.

The bar has a reputation for making good burgers, so when Todd and I went there one Saturday, that’s what we ordered. I chose the jalapeno cream cheese burger, and Todd negotiated with the waitress over a chili cheeseburger. She said she could bring him a cheeseburger and a cup of chili, but not the two together. When she brought our order, we understood why: the burgers are served wrapped in paper rather than on a plate. Saves washing dishes, I guess.

Todd and I liked our burgers well enough, but many of the ingredients seemed to have come out of a can or a box: definitely the chili, and possibly the jalapenos in this cream cheese.

Although the onion rings and fries looked good, the rings were too crispy.

I got a kick out of this condiments caddy, which has 2 sides so you can put it in the middle of a table and let people dress their burgers without fighting over the onions and relish.

If you want a great burger, I recommend Larkburger (there are locations in Boulder and Greenwood Village). If you want atmosphere, go to My Brother’s Bar, where the host says, “Have fun!” and the servers are mellow and Girl Scout Thin Mints are stacked along the front wall and up the stairs. The menu offers a variety of bar food, including vegetarian items. You can drink a glass from a small but quirky wine list or a craft beer such as Twisted Pine or Samurai or order from the full bar.

My Brother’s Bar is on the Beat Poetry Driving Tour of Denver.

Denver Restaurants: Mad Wine and Cheese

Posted on February 9, 2010 by Beth

My friend and I stopped in at Mad Wine and Cheese in the middle of visiting the Denver Art Museum last Wednesday. (Here’s a shot taken on an earlier visit.) The kids got chocolate chip bread at Novo Coffee, and we ordered wine and cheese. I felt pretty decadent to be drinking wine before 4 o’clock. Livin’ large, I guess.

In fact, you could live in the museum residences above Mad Greens, and find salad and coffee and dessert and wine and cheese at the restaurant, and go see art. You’d hardly ever have to leave that one block.

Here’s the cheese plate we ordered for $15. (The two glasses of wine we ordered cost nearly $20.)

From left to right, the cheeses are Manchego (Spain), Roomano (a 4-year-old Gouda from southern Holland), and Barely Buzzed, from Beehive in Utah. The latter is rubbed with coffee grounds. The dark stuff in the spoon is a tart plum spread. I liked all three cheeses, but my favorite was the Roomano.

The Denver Art Museum’s Embrace!

Posted on February 8, 2010 by Beth

I had the privilege last Wednesday of visiting the Embrace! exhibit at the DAM for the second time (yes, it’s that good) in the company of two children who made it come alive.

The DAM solicited a bunch of artists to create the Embrace! exhibits using the strange geometry of the Hamilton Building.

The first exhibit, on the ground floor, uses the walls but doesn’t take quite as much advantage of the corners as some of the others. Rupprecht Matthies asked immigrants to Denver to give him words (in any language) describing their initial experiences here and then carved the words in wood, plexiglass, and foam. The words were finished with help from volunteers, staff, and visitors. For example, the words on the walls themselves were supplied by visitors to the museum, who can add a favorite word to a card. The word is then cut out and put on the wall.

Kids can pick up the foam words and read them or, if they’re not familiar with the language or alphabet, read the translation.

My favorite exhibit was “Chamber” by Charles Sandison. Using projectors and computer-generated words, numbers, letters, and symbols, he created the effect of a room lit by firelight. We had fun playing with our shadows and trying not to let the lights “get us.” This man had the right idea: lie down and watch the patterns.

My friend’s children were fascinated by this exhibit, “Mirage,” by Zhong Biao, especially the funhouse mirrors. Here’s a small section in closeup.

Possibly the kids’ favorite exhibit was this one by Tobias Rehberger. Several of the Embrace! exhibits encourage visitors to touch, but Rehberger’s installation lets you walk (or, more accurately, struggle) through the bungee cords. If you look closely, you’ll see a child in the back. You’ll also see a window on the left with bright colors peeking through it. That installation takes up several floors.

I’ve shown you only 4 of the Embrace! exhibits, though we saw about twice that many, and there are at least 3 that I missed, even in 2 visits. As my friend’s daughter said late that afternoon, “But we haven’t seen all of it.”

We did, however, get some good cheese at Mad Greens and Wine.

Denver Attractions: Genghis Khan

Posted on February 4, 2010 by Beth

I am forced to write a wordy post about the Genghis Khan exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, because no one was allowed to take photographs. Some materials in the exhibit were contributed by private individuals, including the body of a Mongolian woman. The emphasis on showing respect for the human remains struck me as unnecessary and odd. Perhaps there was a museum incident I missed?

My only photographs come from the approach to the exhibit, which was on the third floor. Going upstairs in the DMNS always activates my fear of heights; on Sunday I told Todd it felt as if my whole body was fizzing, starting in my belly and going out from there.

This fin whale hangs in the back of the museum: its head points toward the front of the museum, and its tail reaches out to Genghis Khan on his throne, right next to the group of red hat ladies who came to visit.

And here’s a closer view of the entrance to the Phipps Special Exhibits Gallery, which was rebuilt in 2009. Genghis Khan is the first exhibit in the remodeled gallery.

The Museum is seeking LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification for the Phipps Gallery project. Construction crews used low-emitting materials in construction, and the gallery is designed to consume less power overall. In addition, 17,254 pounds of materials from the old gallery were reused in the new gallery, saving tons of trash from the landfill. The terrazzo floor covering outside the gallery includes 4,000 pounds of recycled crushed beer bottles.

Getting into the exhibit was a slow process. First we waited outside for the vestibule to clear, and then we waited inside the vestibule. Even so, there were people 2 and 3 deep around each exhibit.

In the vestibule, we received cards printed with a name: mine was Börte, the first wife of Genghis Khan (then called Temüjin). As the mother of his four heirs, she became a powerful woman in her own right, as did her daughters.

Kiosks throughout the exhibit gave snippets of information about each character. Todd complained that his character was just some guy and that the same thing had happened at the Titanic exhibit as well: he was a third-class passenger who drowned, whereas I was rich enough to get a seat on one of the boats.

Whoever designed the exhibit had taken care to promote the contributions of women. Höelün, Temüjin’s mother, survived ejection from her husband’s clan after his murder and kept her 7 children alive on the steppes until Temüjin could begin his ascent.

And one of Genghis Khan’s daughters led an attack in Central Asia.

I had mixed feelings, however, about the note that women played an important role in battles: they killed the wounded and collected the arrows.

Hmm, killing the wounded. Now there’s a noble profession. Yanking arrows out of dead (or dying) bodies is right up there too.

This exhibit rekindled my ambivalence about force. I had a great time taking Krav Maga self-defense classes for 2 years. I still dream of being a modern-day freelance warrior, but then reality, in the form of my inability to do even 1 pull-up, does intrude.

The larger the scale of force, the more it bothers me.

I admire Temüjin for uniting clans who were continually attacking each other; they repaid the favor (which involved killing the clan leaders and promoting their subordinates) by declaring him Genghis Khan, or sovereign ruler. But why should I admire Kublai Khan, his grandson, for uniting China? Why does China need to be united? Why must empires expand? No matter how far we push out the borders, there will always be an enemy on them. Why not just live with it?

I also admire Genghis Khan for supporting all religions and encouraging the arts and sciences.

All that conquest, though, past the point of uniting the Mongols? Pure ego.

***

The exhibit ends by showing us modern-day Mongolians. The population in Denver, 2,500 to 3,000, is the largest in the United States; Mongolians like Denver’s climate. Denver has been Ulaanbator’s sister-city since 2002, and there is a City of Ulaanbaatar park near Lowry.

Denver Attractions: Konovalenko’s Gem Carvings

Posted on February 3, 2010 by Beth

On Sunday, approximately half the members of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science decided to show up when we did. Oh, well, at least we had biscuits in our bellies.

We had an hour to amuse ourselves before we could get into the Genghis Khan exhibit, so we wandered around until we found my favorite exhibit at the museum: Vasily Konovalenko’s gem carvings. As you may or may not be able to tell from this sign, the guy was self-taught. He became famous for his carvings in Russia, and then he emigrated to the United States in 1981. The DMNS has the largest collection of his carvings outside Moscow.

Almost everything about this servant is carved from gems, except the tray.

It was a bit of a challenge to photograph the figures, between the low light and the reflective cases. This detail from a strolling couple has eye-popping colors. The bodies are carved from quartz. My favorite carving is this one, of three singers, one with a balalaika (on the left) and one with a horn. DMNS uploaded a few pictures of other carvings to Flickr.

Denver Restaurants: Rise and Shine Biscuit Kitchen and Café

Posted on February 2, 2010 by Beth

Rise and Shine Biscuit Kitchen and Cafe, located at 330 Holly in the same space as Basil Docs, is not exactly in our neighborhood here in Broomfield. But once we decided to spend the day at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science with Genghis Khan and other notables, a biscuit sounded like just the thing to power us through the museum.

Both the Boone biscuit (avocado, lettuce, tomato, mayo) and the Charlotte (bacon instead of avocado) tempted me, but I settled on a biscuit with jam. This biscuit was densely layered and crisp on top from all the butter in the recipe. It tasted the way a biscuit should.

Rise and Shine is a small place, with seating for 5 or 6 people. Therefore I was impressed that the staff brought our food and drinks (a mocha and a hot chocolate) to our seats, rather than handing them over the counter.

My second choice, the biscuit cinnamon roll, was a rather odd amalgam of the two: it had the cinnamon roll’s flavor and shape but the biscuit’s texture. The frosting was perfect—not too sweet.

I’m still partial to Lucille’s biscuits, which are, as Rise and Shine proprietor Seth Rubin told Denveater, cake-like and sheet-cut. I like the way they crumble, which I suppose no self-respecting biscuit should do.

Todd had an egg biscuit and then a cheese and sausage biscuit, which I enjoyed most for its flavorful sausage. I have to confess that when I eat a biscuit topped with eggs or cheese or sausage, I forget about the details of that particular biscuit and start thinking of fast food breakfast sandwiches. It seems hardly fair, so I’ll have to go back someday and try the Boone. Or the biscuit of the day, which on Sunday was dill and cheddar. Or the Pablo’s coffee.

Note: If you stop in at Rise and Shine before closing time at 2 and you’re craving pizza, you can get a slice or two from the pie Basil Docs left the day before. Or, you can wait until 4:30, when Basil Docs starts taking orders for whole pies.

Denver Attractions: Genghis Khan at the DMNS

Posted on February 1, 2010 by Beth

On Sunday Todd and I visited the Genghis Khan exhibition at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in City Park. Unfortunately, photography was expressly forbidden in the exhibit. If I’d had a supercool stealthy Leica, or some such camera, I might have snuck some photos. But I didn’t, and nobody else was sneaking any, so I didn’t have any cover.

I was able to take pictures of other parts of the museum, however. Here is the first, and probably the plainest, of my photographs: a side gallery at the DMNS. It’s probably used for parties. My favorite part is the palm trees.

Beth at Home and Abroad

Make anything an adventure

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