My 67th birthday yesterday was a doubleheader - lunch with my friend Mark and dinner with my friend Stuart. In the afternoon Mark and I went to Pepper, an Asian restaurant just down the block from Denver's Tattered Cover Bookstore, where I used to work as the bookkeeper. In celebration of the coming of spring training, Mark (seen in the photograph on the left) wore his Hudson Valley Renegades tee shirt. The Renegades are a team in the Class A Short Season New York-Penn League, and are targeted by major league baseball for elimination, along with the entire Pioneer League, one of whose teams is the Rocky Mountain Vibes, who play in Colorado Springs. This would be a disaster for the cities where these teams are located - a true injustice. As usual, the food at Pepper was great, although since it was Sunday we were charged dinner prices even though we were having lunch. Talk about injustice!
Later that afternoon I went for a walk with Stuart (seen in the photo on the right) around Belmar, an open-air shopping district in Lakewood, Colorado that features a variety of shops and restaurants, one of which is the Champa St. Burger Works, where we had dinner. The food there was good, too, and they had very cheap beer on tap, which is always a plus for me. Belmar, by the way, is considered Lakewood's downtown area these days, and sits on the site of a former shopping mall called Villa Italia. Because of this history, Belmar holds the Festival Italiano there every year. It is wildly popular, and I myself attended the event last year. Stuart did, too, although unintentionally. He mentioned to me that it was so crowded, it was almost impossible to find a parking spot, much less maneuver around the area. But this is perfectly understandable. Lakewood is so boring that when something takes place there that is actually interesting, all 155,000 people who live there show up to enjoy that rare event. Who can blame them?
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