by Mike
Rank | March 18, 2003
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Do I look like
a Beat Poet? Kerouac aint got nothing on
me.
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Buy a book on Denver. Or don't. It's cool.
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Mention "Colorado" and people rightfully think of the Rocky Mountains, a jutting formation of purple majesty that shoots up from the plains until they grind uncomfortably against the sky. But once you drive over those snow capped phallic symbols, you're greeted with an expansive stretch of flattened dirt, interrupted occasionally by a few prairie dogs popping their heads up to say hi.
But follow the pointing claws of the little dogs towards the city and you'll find it's a great place. Read any brochure on Denver and it will tell you about how great "LoDo" is. This is the Lower Downtown area, which apparently was quite a dump some years earlier. But they redeveloped the area, moved a bunch of Starbucks and Mc Donald's in and now it's a thriving metropolis. But I was sure that there had to be some dives that weren't caught up in the redevelopment and I was determined to find them.
I'd been to downtown Denver before in the daytime during a previous visit. My sole intent then was to visit the Denver Mint to see how money is printed. They informed me upon arrival that the only way to take a tour was to have it arranged by your congressman/woman two weeks in advance. I tried to convince the guards that I was an employee there and pulled out a handful of change, calling it "work" I had taken home the previous night. If it hadn't have been for the firearms strapped to their waists, I probably would have chucked the whole handful at their condescending scowls.
Going back this time, I didn't have a map to get into the town from where I was staying in Boulder and I really didn't need one. While my eyes scanned the freeway signs, my liver and heart scanned the terrain. It wasn't long before I found myself pulling into a paid parking lot directly across from the Coors Field, arriving there solely by instinct. And freeway signs; those didn't hurt, either. There were several bars in the area, but no one was walking around and it seemed to be an abandoned district of warehouses. I walked around for a while through a maze of abandoned buildings, the most appealing of which was "Mexi-Dans", an abandoned Mexican restaurant that closed for obvious reasons.
After parking across from Coors field, I sauntered towards the more developed section of town and found myself faced with every imaginable form of ethnic and chain dining, all crammed within a section of town less than a half mile wide. I finally settled on a grungy Mexican restaurant I'd heard had margaritas made with grain alcohol. I sucked down two and was unimpressed. Even less impressive was the waitress that waited until I had a mouth full of food to come and ask me if everything was o.k. with my meal, then run off before I could tell her it would be better if she'd quit bothering me. I hate her so much.
After dinner I felt sufficiently confident to wander back down towards the seedier section of downtown for some action. I made a beeline towards the Silver Dollar Saloon, a hole I walked by earlier and peered in. The door was closed when I came back and upon opening it, an aroma that was not unlike the smell of a moist armpit rushed to greet me with a sticky, enveloping hug. I choked back my dinner and shimmied onto the 50's diner styled barstool and ordered a drink. There was something wrong, terribly wrong with the entire situation but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.
And then it hit me, like the purse of a woman you mistakenly assume is a hooker and offer her five dollars to spank you with a dead squirrel. Everyone was speaking Spanish, including the people on the television and the jukebox. But I had already ordered my drink so I decided to stay, carefully scanning the room to make sure no one was going to bust a bottle over my head. I tried to start up a conversation with the guy next to me, but apparently my Spanish sucks since he couldn't understand anything I was saying to him. Even when I yelled louder and slowly annunciated my sentences, he just didn't understand.
I'd almost finished my drink when several small sausages landed on my arm. Closer inspection revealed that they were actually plump fingers attached to a Mexican woman with her top front teeth missing. It took me a few moments to focus on her bobbing head so that I could try to read her lips, since her voice was incredibly slurred.
"Come on, buy me a beer" she moaned while her head swayed violently. "Come on, please? I'll dance for you if someone puts money in the jukebox."
How could I resist? I had the bartender set her up with a beer, which she greedily grabbed as though it was the first meal she'd had in weeks. In doing so, she spilled half the contents of the glass on my arm and nearly knocked the guy next to me off his stool. He proceeded to yell at her, as did the bartender. Then she stumbled over to another table where they began screaming at her for spilling her beer all over their table. It was worth the two dollars I spent on the beer just to watch her piss off the entire place.
After finishing my beer, I headed over towards a section a couple blocks away that was crammed with Sports Bars. While I was more than impressed with their ample offering of drunken sorority chicks, there was little character to be offered. I stumbled around the corner to a diner where I could hear a live band playing. No sooner did I enter than they decided to go on break, leaving me to entertain myself by wandering into the back room where a couple of old black men were playing pool. One of the men was ranting about Elizabeth Smart, who had been found earlier in the day with her abductor.
"Aint no damn way you'll ever see me letting one of those crack heads into my home to do odd jobs, no matter how cheap they're willing to work for!" one of the men was yelling while he was setting up a shot on the pool table. "I work down at the public housing facility and all of those people are in their situation because they've done it to themselves. Every one of them! They would steal the soul from their mama's if they turned their back on them!"
He went on like this for the better part of a half an hour, rambling on between equally placed shots of pool and whiskey. When I finished my drink and got tired of nodding my head in a simulated agreement, I left. Walking by the front of the diner, I could see him inside still ranting about having to change the garbage disposals of junkies who didn't have better sense than to stick chicken bones down them.
I had decided it was time to wrap the night up and was drifting towards my car when a commotion at the club across from Mexi-Dans caught my attention. Earlier it appeared to be an abandoned building, but it now had throngs of people and music oozing out its back door. A bouncer, whose arms had a circumference the size of my head, was more than happy to take my five dollars and let me in. Inside was a fairly chaotic atmosphere and it took me several minutes of absorbing the atmosphere to realize I was the only white guy in a bar of 100 plus people.
No one seemed to care I was there and I was more than willing to be a participant in the one year anniversary of the Thursday Night Def poetry night. During my last outing to a similar event where I was the only white guy, I spent the evening sucking back Corona's and bobbing my head to the music and rhythmic spoken word performances. At one point, one of the performers asked "Have any of you ever been pulled over and harassed by the police?"
"Yeah!" I yelled back to no one in particular. "About two hours from now!" I was so amused at myself.
The rest of the crowd seemed less than amused when I later won the gift basket that was being raffled off. I held the prize above my head, oblivious that I had become the epitome of the "white devil" an earlier performer had referenced as having robbed him of his history. I'm sure I also pissed off the bar owners as well when I walked out later that evening with a gift basket crammed full of Sam Adams bar glasses a friend had subtly slipped into the package unbeknownst to me.
This time I was more discrete, choosing to hang out in the corner and sip my drink. It was a great performance, with several different performers jumping up to perform quality pieces, either literary or musical. As the performers left the stage, I would congratulate them with a series of hand shakes and slaps on the back. They gave me a confused look, but were polite and showed gratitude.
I could have stayed longer, but I was tired and had to work the next. But it was the perfect end to the evening, absorbing the fruits of another generation of beat poets in the town Kerouac once called home. Maybe next time I'll take in some more touristy activities like going skiing or visit the Coors brewery. Or I'll just wander around here some more and pretend like I belong.
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