THE NEIGHBORHOOD
The hostel was just a ten minute walk from downtown, through the beautiful Capitol Hill neighborhood. It reminds me of Capitol Hill in Seattle, which I don’t know why is called CH. The capitol of Colorado is Denver. The capitol of Washington is Olympia, not Seattle.
Like the Seattle CH, there are gorgeous houses with leafy trees everywhere, people walking their dogs,
edgy/funky stores in the commercial area,
and gayness.
Like any respectable dem-voting neighborhood, they have those mini give/take a book libraries on a post. I grab Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations and make my way down to the commercial area and find a nice coffee shop to hang for a while. This place was kind of kitch; a throwback with a bygone era feel, where the workers all wore pink baseball caps.
I took the end stool at the counter and the friendly barista got me a coffee and a scone. I started flipping through the Clash of Civilizations (1997). It’s dated but Huntington’s take on Ukraine is interesting, given current events.
A guy came in for breakfast with his little, curly-Sue daughter. She was having a great time eating out with pops, occasionally feeding him some of her food. Father & daughter palling around is the 2nd most charming thing you see out and about town (after mother & child).
-She’s pretty darn cute! Is that your daughter?
-Thank you. It’s my son.
-Oh. Okay. Any chance I can take your picture?
“Sure,” he says and starts to get up to get out of the way.
-Oh no. With both of you.
-Both of us?
-Of course. You guys are charming together.
The Capitol building is magnificent. From this corner you might think we’re in Bwoston or Philly.
Even more splendorous is the interior.
George our guide on the tour said they went all out to not be outdone by any other state Capitol.
This man believed nobody should be derived of their rights simply because of their race.
Good for Ralph for welcoming patriotic, law-abiding, hardworking Japanese who otherwise would have been interned in the West-Coast states. I suppose you could say that the modern non-equivalent to Ralph would be Greasy Gavin Newsome, who rolls out the red carpet for people who have no business being here (most of them anyway). Free health care and university education for the new, illegal 3rd-world migrants- the rest of you can go pound sand- and by the way, American man, here’s your fentanyl.
Of course Colorado politics have gone the way of California. George pointed out that both chambers long had Republican majorities. This has flipped and Colorado is solid blue. After telling us about the Democratic majority in both chambers George said that politics and culture in Colorado has been deeply affected by immigration from California.
I asked George why Colorado put the capitol in the financial, industrial, and major population center, unlike other states. He said it wasn’t really planned that way. It was put in Denver because a sharp local homesteader named Henry Brown, who had 200 acres, offered the very center of his property, donating it to the state for the capitol. This shrewd move allowed him to sell the remaining property around the capitol at a premium, and he became quite rich.
THE PEOPLE
My first conversation was with a couple friendly ‘troubled teens’ on the tram from the airport to downtown. These two girls, around 17, told me about life in and out of ‘youth facilities’ and foster homes, and how they had dreams to travel to Europe, like I was doing. They didn’t have tickets and when the fare enforcement guy came they didn’t seem too worried.
-Do you two have tickets?
-No. We came on the wrong train.
-Okay.
And off he went. I think she was being honest.
At the hosel I talked to two guys in the hot tub. Young Henry from Atlanta was on his way to LA to see if he and his band could hit the big time. Mike from Staten Island was in Denver to visit his son. Brian from Wisconsin with the cigar, 16 oz. can of hazy IPA and tie-die shirt was following his favorite band around the country, who had played at Red Rocks. Henry had lots of questions for me, especially after he found out about my work with kla.tv. Mike mostly listened but when we got to talking about how the corporate/industrial/government complex sort of fit Mussolini’s definition of fascism, he piped in and said, “Oh, man. Don’t get me started on Pfizer and all those other big pharma companies!” You see, folks, you are not alone! Brian didn’t disagree with all the aint-it-awful talk, but he kept wanting to shift the conversation to his concert-attending adventures and plans for retirement. He leaned back with his cigar-holding hand propped up on the brick wall behind him, nodding knowingly at whatever outrage the rest of us were discussing, trying to get back to the story of the time when George Harrison asked him, “How’d you like the show?” outside a coffee shop in Madison."
Near the record store with picture of Lemmy a homeless guy said he liked my hat, then asked for a handout. Instead I put a couple bucks in the ‘for the poor’ box at the big cathedral across the street.
On the free downtown bus from the capitol to Union Station I talked to a black man who had recently lost his 26-yr. old son to fentanyl. He was sending money to his daughter in law in Detroit, to support his 3 grandkids. “I know about addiction! I got off fentanyl but I still am having some struggles with alcohol.”
There was the lady on the train who had a cute, black dog that looked a little inscrutable and scary.
-Is that a cross between a pit bull and a french bull dog?
-Yep. How’d you guess?
She went on about the dog and how she was going to breed him with an English Lilac miniature bulldog and make good money.
-An English what?
-Lilac. Look it up on your phone.
I looked it up and yes, she’ll make some money. The Lilac is a cute little cuddly thing with folds of soft fur bunching up in the torso and over the snout. It’s a cross between a pug, a pit bull, a french bull dog, and a water bear. The lady told me more about breeding and then said something secret and conspiritorial in an inaudible whisper. She looked at me like she’d just let me in on the juiciest secret about french bulldog-pit-bull-English-lilac-waterbear-dog mixes you could hear. But the noise of the train was too loud for me to hear. I said, “What was that?” and leaned close. The lady leaned in too, right up to my ear, covering the side of her mouth with one hand and whispering again. I didn’t catch one word as she stepped back and nodded again and waited for me to react to this incredible information. Acting skills got me out of this one and she was satisfied with my amazement.
It’s funny how many complete strangers want to talk.
THE ROT
“Listen Shumway we’re not paying you to talk about tie-die shirts and Red Rocks and bulldogs. This is a dissident blog where we expect a healthy dose of CONSPIRACY! You went through Denver airport, for crying out loud. Give us some dark matter. Give us deep tunnels and weird pictures and stuff. We want cathartic angry talk. We want FEAR PORN!”
Look, this was just a short layover before the Europe trip. I’ll give you the full scoop on Europe’s demise and the legion of Doom behind all of it after I get there. As for Denver, it seems like a pretty good place to spend a day or two and then get out of Dodge.
Next: Frankfurt and Heidelberg
PS- Apologies and thanks to Sage Hana for the phrase, "cathartic angry talk". I think I'll start using it at the save-the-republic patriot's meeting.
-Hey, are you guys getting anything done here?
-Naw, man. We're just talking C.A.T.
At first, until you mentioned it, I thought the carpet and desks in the House chamber were blue. Then I thought how cute it would be (cutely costly) if they changed the color every time the dominant party lost power. You know, red for Republicans, blue for Democrats. Some states would be changing their decor every two years or so.
Was that dad actually raising his son as a girl or was he oblivious to the fact that he’s letting his boy look like a girl? Ya know, putting him in a situation that’ll make him tough….a boy named Sue sort of thing.