Hanging Out With Stuart At Denver West Village

I spent yesterday afternoon with my friend Stuart at the Denver West Village Shopping Center in beautiful, exotic, and just plain strange Lakewood, Colorado, a suburb just to the west of Denver. We dined at Qdoba, sitting at an outside table, until a cold front moved in and forced us inside. This is the shopping center where Hops Restaurant Bar and Brewery was once located, where you could order a steak and craft beer for a very reasonable price. Stuart and I dined there many times. There was a location both there and in Denver's Cherry Creek neighborhood, but both closed many years ago. As a matter of fact, there used to be a location in Stuart, Florida, where my mother Mary lived for almost 30 years, and where we often dined, but it closed after it was damaged by back to back hurricanes in 2005. The chain still exists, but nowhere handy to me. Plus, I bet those steaks are not so reasonable anymore. In any case, Stuart is doing well, and spent this past weekend up in Fairplay, Colorado, which is NOT one of my favorite towns, either. They roll up the sidewalks even earlier than Lakewood up there. Hard to believe, but true.