So the hubby and I set sail for Denver this past weekend. His close friends from high school live there, and we’ve been wanting to visit a downtown that’s actually affordable.This sign was posted in the Denver Airport ladies room. I started to wonder if we should have just stayed home:
After I was reassured that tornados don’t happen often in Denver proper, I calmed down. I like Denver. It’s got some great things going for it. For one thing, you could buy a whole entire house with numerous rooms, parking spaces, and a basement for like, $230K. Unheard of here in So-Cal. Fancy downtown lofts are also very affordable. I liked the downtown area a lot. People are really nice in Denver. Like really nice. We went to the Denver Modern Art Museum and no less than three people asked me if I had any questions about the art or the stuff for sale in the store. You want to know how many people were working at the Museum? Three.
The Curtis Hotel was great. I recommend it to anyone going to Denver. The themey-ness was not overdone. Our floor was the TV mania floor:
Other floors included the Double Your Pleasure floor, in which the concept of “couples and twins” was really stretched:
And, as I mentioned, they had a 13th floor!
The lobby restaurant and bar is called The Corner Office. And its theme was, I think, "retro urban office romance." The artwork featured couples in office wear on desks in suggestive positions (woman tugging on a man’s tie, man leaning over a woman perched on her desk). But the whole “quitting time” theme of this wall was really neat:
All the clocks are at 5pm always!
The music and bar scene in Denver, however, left much to be desired. Now, granted I only spent a weekend there and my research did not include personal references (mostly internet searches, yelp, and citysearch). We couldn’t seem to find any decent dive bars that didn’t have live music, so we ended up seeing some local band perform at a place called Bender’s. You remember that movie Singles? About Seattle’s grunge scene in the 90s? Well remove all of the heroin and the funky hair color experiments, and you can imagine the scene at Bender’s (and Denver in general really). Lots of tribal tattoos, sandals, mandals, and Birkenstocks. A fair amount of vests and worn-in jeans. The first band sang a song about “golden showers.” And can you believe I stayed for the next band? I know. Crazy! Band #2 went on and the lead singer/guitarist did a sound check forever. Finally, when it was time to start the show, he put on sunglasses. The kind that are almost clear with a bit of purple tint on the top portion only. As soon as I saw that, I told M. we had to try another bar. So a cab ride across town to the Meadowlark, which just sounded cool. Like I could see myself saying, “I got so wasted at the Meadowlark last night.”
It was actually a nice bar. Not a dive, as the internets had indicated, since it was clean and pretty and everyone seemed to be wearing clothes that had been recently laundered. The band wasn’t too bad. It was supposed to be a little indie rock spot, but there were quite a few Dockers and tucked in polo shirts. Yuppies are allowed to run rampant in Denver.By far the weirdest/most interesting thing about Denver is the Aquarium. It had non-aquarium elements, like birds and a tiger. There was an anamatronic orangutan. And it had a piano bar. This is the mod sitting area in the bar:
I had a great time visiting friends and running around town in Denver, but coming home to Long Beach was very nice. Great weather (it was 100 degrees in Denver), and the smell of the ocean in the air was like a big ol’ hug. Plus this face, which was irresistible:
The jury's still out on Denver as a possible home for us, but it was a nice little trip that was relaxing and just what the doctor ordered.
