Tuesday, March 19, 2024

The First Day Of Spring Has Arrived!


Spring arrives today at 9:06 P.M. Mountain Time (10:06 Central), and not a minute too soon. It is way past time for walking around the neighborhood, bike riding, hiking, art and street festivals, and everything else the warm weather brings. I took the photograph above at Denver's Washington Park last week, showing people getting out and about on a pleasant afternoon, ironically just a day before the city's biggest snowstorm of the season. While areas to the west and south of the city got up to 5 feet of snow, in Central Denver it was a mere 9 inches, and the next day the sun was back out. Which is actually what "Springtime in the Rockies" is all about: the occasional large snowstorm followed by warm and sunny days. Except for the mountains, where you can expect snow to fall 9 months out of the year. Of course, if you choose to live in the mountains, you get what you deserve. And if you really are fond of the mountains, that is why God invented day trips.

Monday, March 18, 2024

Watching Leeds Play Millwall With The Leeds United Colorado Fan Club


My friend Mark - seen in the photograph on the left - and I headed to The DNVR Bar at the corner of York and Colfax here in Denver yesterday morning to watch the soccer match between Leeds and Millwall. Leeds beat Millwall 2-0 and are now in first place in the Championship League, England's 2nd division soccer conference. This is important, since the teams that finish first and second at the end of the season are automatically promoted to the 1st division Premier League, while the teams that finish third through sixth compete in a playoff round to decide which one will be the third team promoted. This is a pretty powerful motivation for both players and team ownership. Imagine for an instant that Major League Baseball used the same system. The Colorado Rockies draw almost 3 million fans a year, no matter how bad they play, and so owner Dick Monfort is not very motivated to do what it takes to win - namely, hire baseball executives who know what the hell they are doing and know how to build a winner. Imagine if the three worst teams in Major League Baseball were demoted to Triple A, and the top three Triple A teams replaced them each year. Now THAT would finally light a fire under Monfort to start thinking about winning.




The Leeds United Colorado supporters seem to be a very amiable group, and I was surprised at how many turned up at 9:00 A.M. to watch the game. On the right is the official group photograph for yesterday's get-together, taken by the bartender, who told me he had to work until 2:00 A.M. the previous evening and then come in early the next morning to let in all the Leeds fans. Talk about dedication. DNVR is a digital sports network that decided to take over the space that once housed the Three Lions, a popular Denver soccer pub, which Mark and I frequented in the past. Now that DNVR is returning the place to its soccer roots, we have started visiting more often. And I must say, we enjoyed both the game and the pleasant company. 

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Happy St. Patrick's Day!




Today is St. Patrick's Day. Like many other cities around the country, the celebration began yesterday here in Denver with a parade in the Lower Downtown (LoDo) neighborhood. It started at 9:30, and so a little too early for me. However, I did manage to head down to LoDo in the afternoon, finding the place filled with thousands of 20-somethings, all trying to get inside the same bars, such as Scruffy Murphy's Irish Pub, seen in the photograph on the left. This neighborhood is filled with rooftop bars, all of them packed wall-to-wall with people. One of them, El Patio, was blasting what to me was horrendous music at the sound level of a jet airplane taking off. How lovely it must be to spend the afternoon up there. Okay. Okay. I know I am an old curmudgeon. Deal with it.




Meanwhile, a little further south, on Market Street, right around the corner from historic Larimer Square, Nallen's Irish Pub was celebrating its 32nd St. Patrick's Day, and also seemed to be packed to the rafters, as seen in the photograph on the right. Years ago, when I first moved to Denver, the most well-known Irish restaurant and bar in Denver was Duffy's. It was located downtown, right around the corner from the 16th Street Mall, and had waitresses that had worked there for decades. When the National Association of College Stores had their convention at the newly opened Colorado Convention Center, which I attended thanks to my job at the University of Denver Bookstore, I overheard one out-of-towner describing how he kept asking people on the street for bars to visit in Denver, and every damn one of them told him to go to Duffy's. Ironically, they were always closed on St. Patrick's Day to avoid possible lawsuits resulting from overdrinking. How times have changed here.



And, of course, all those twenty-somethings just love to dress up in costumes and party. Be it St. Patrick's Day, Halloween, Oktoberfest, Comicon, and whatever other holidays a costume might be appropriate, they will be down in LoDo celebrating. The next big event to draw people to LoDo will be Opening Day. I used to attend the Colorado Rockies home opener every year, no matter the weather, but eventually, after the introduction of "dynamic pricing," where the price of a seat went up or down based on the popularity of the event, not to mention the phasing out of ballpark ticket windows and the start of online sales, with a fee added for the "convenience," no less, I decided to skip opening day and just walk around the neighborhood each year and enjoy the ambiance. I remember going up to one of those rooftop patios to take a photograph of Coors Field, located across the intersection. That patio was, of course, packed with people, but I assumed the place would clear out once game time approached. And I was shocked to find that nobody ever left, or even went in to watch the game on television. Nobody was interested in baseball. It was just another excuse to party. Oh well, it certainly makes for great people-watching. Happy St. Patrick's Day Everyone!

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Twelve Days Away From The Regular Season: Watching The White Sox Play The Cubs



I watched the spring training game between my South Side heroes, the Chicago White Sox, and their North Side rivals, the Chicago Cubs, yesterday afternoon on MLB.com. The game was played at Camelback Ranch, the White Sox training facility, in Glendale, Arizona. It was 60 degrees and raining, and the start of the game was delayed 30 minutes until the rain lessened to the point play could begin. The White Sox still have 51 players in camp, and need to make some serious decisions about the final roster pretty soon. The Sox beat the Cubs 3-2, their 4th victory in a row, and I was happy to see that a lot of their pitchers actually look pretty good. The game was called in the middle of the 8th inning when the rain started up again. Putting those two teams together always seems to bring Chicago's weather to the desert.


I actually tuned into a rebroadcast of the game last night, and planned on watching just the first few innings. However, I wound up watching the entire telecast because during the game, Steve Stone and John Schriffen (who are beginning to work very well together in the broadcast booth) interviewed Chris Getz, the new White Sox General Manager, Brooks Boyer, the Marketing VP, and Pedro Grifol, the 2nd year manager of the team, over 3 innings. Getz (seen in the photograph on the right in the center, with Stone on the left and Schriffen on the right) recently traded ace pitcher Dylan Cease to the San Diego Padres, and talked about his reasoning and why he thinks the 4 prospects the Sox received in return will make an impact on the team. Brooks Boyer talked with enthusiasm about all the promotions that will take place at Guaranteed Rate Field this year, and Pedro Grifol talked about how the team is coming together as a unit and accepting a style of play he feels will win ballgames. I was very impressed with all three, and it makes me feel the team, although now in a rebuilding mode, will prosper in the coming years. Wait a minute! My God! I said it would not happen, but damn it, it did. I have caught that contagious kind of optimism that comes with every spring training. Is there no cure?

Friday, March 15, 2024

The Ides Of March 2024


Today is the Ides of March, the day Julius Caesar was assassinated back in 44 B.C. on the steps of the Theater of Pompey. A seer had warned Caesar to "beware the Ides of March," but he unfortunately did not heed the warning and beef up his security detail. When we were in Rome back in 2019, my sister Susan and I stayed near the Campo de' Fiori, and I read in Rick Steve's guidebook on Rome that you could see part of one of the original walls of the Theater of Pompey incorporated into one of the buildings there. I spent a lot of time trying to find that damn wall, but without success. Then I read on the internet that the ruins in the center of Largo del Torre Argentina, a number of blocks away from Campo de' Fiori, have reopened to tourists after 2000 years or so, and it mentioned that the Theater of Pompey was once located there. Just for fun, I checked out a map of Rome, and it showed the site of that theater located just around the corner from Via Dei Chiavari, the street where our hotel was located. I had taken a number of photographs of that street while we were staying there, including the one above. So where was that theater really located? Digging deeper, I found that the Theater of Pompey was quite large, and so it is very possible the complex took up the entire area. That seems to make sense, and so I am just going to accept it as fact. But I do have to wonder if the ghost of Julius Caesar haunts that area after dark. Perhaps that is why Perry White, the editor of the Daily Planet on the old Superman television series, always used to exclaim "Great Caesar's Ghost" whenever he got exited about something. That makes sense to me, too.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

The Quiet Before The Storm. And Then, Of Course, The Storm...



It was a very pleasant afternoon this past Tuesday in Denver's Washington Park, sunny and in the 60s. And there were a surprising number of people out and about, enjoying the day. Could Mitch Romney actually be right that half the country doesn't work and are receiving entitlements from the government? But, as usual, I digress. They were no doubt all out there because the weather forecasters have been predicting a major storm starting last night and continuing into Friday. This has been predicted to be the largest snowstorm here since March of 2021 (March is, by the way, our snowiest month), when we received 27 inches of snow at the airport. Of course, Denver International Airport (DIA) is close to the Kansas border, more like a different planet than part of Denver. The amount of snow received varies wildly in the Denver area. Golden and Boulder, to the west and northwest of the city, and up against the foothills, get far more than Central Denver, where my condo is located. And the mountains, of course, get dumped on like crazy. No surprise there.



The rain, as predicted, turned to snow last night, and the local newscasters were interviewing people stocking up at the local King Soopers Supermarket in Golden, where it looked like they were preparing for a months long siege. One woman explained that they were predicting 3 feet of snow for Golden, so I guess I can understand their concern.  Just after 10:00 last night, it was reported that snow in the mountains was very heavy, visibility was down to zero, and Interstate 70 was closed in both directions between Golden and Silverthorne, on the western side of the Continental Divide. Hopefully people who live in Denver's mountain suburbs, such as Genesee and Evergreen, made sure to get home early last night. If not, it will be a long cold night waiting for the interstate to reopen. But living in those suburbs, most of them probably will just stay at their place in the city, and have the concierge bring up a light dinner and bottle of wine.  Here in Denver itself, they predict around 12 inches, but spread across Wednesday night and Thursday. Big deal. Why does everyone else have all the fun? And why the hell do we not have a concierge in our building? From which, by the way, I took the photograph on the right? Life is so damn unfair.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

The March Issue Of Chicago Magazine



I just finished reading the March issue of Chicago Magazine, the cover story of which is titled "Who Runs This Town? The 50 Most Powerful Chicagoans, Ranked." The answer to that is J.B. Pritzker, Illinois Governor, number #1, and Brandon Johnson, Chicago Mayor, #2. And enough of that. Far most interesting was the article in "The 312" section about La Salle Street, the financial center of the Midwest, which is evidently economically distressed due to corporate restructuring, employee downsizing, and the popularity of work from home (so you actually don't have to work). The purchase of the James R. Thompson Center by Google is considered a positive step, but everyone agrees more needs to be done. La Salle Street Reimagined, an initiative started by the former mayor to revive the area, has five projects in the works, but Brandon Johnson, the current mayor, has eliminated funding for La Salle Street Reimagined in 2024 to cover budget shortfalls, which is giving the jitters to proponents of the plan. Canceled because it was the former mayor's idea? In other words, politics as usual?





Another article, titled "Raising L," is about a grassroots advocacy group that is unhappy with the current state of the Chicago Transit Authority (the CTA), which they say has become unreliable, with "L" trains scheduled every 5 or 6 minutes often running every 30 minutes. Of course, it is the same with the RTD here in Denver. There have been cutbacks in service, and the light rail trains now also run every 30 minutes, but RTD actually announces those cutbacks and change the schedules, so people know what to expect. What a concept! Do you think it might work in Chicago, too? Combining these issues with all those vacancies on North Michigan Avenue (the Magnificent Mile), as well as the prospects for the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Cubs this year, and it looks like Chicago has it's work cut out for it. But as they often say in both business and government, there are no problems, just opportunities. And so, Chicago currently seems like a city with a lot of opportunities. And yes, that is indeed a photograph on the right of the Chicago Board of Trade, anchoring the south end of La Salle Street, that I took in 1973. All seemed well back then. See what happens when I leave town?