The Taste of Colorado, a large festival featuring food, music, and lots of merchandise booths, took place in Denver's Civic Center Park every Labor Day Weekend until it was canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic. It began in 1983 and was Denver's last big event of summer. It was held again in 2021, but on the 16th Street Mall, and just wasn't the same. The past two years it was not held on Labor Day but divided into 4 smaller weekend events held during the summer in partnership with an organization called Taste of Colorado at Viva Streets Denver. To me this sounded pretty lame, and I did not bother to attend these mini festivals. This year I googled "Taste of Colorado" to see if the event might once again take place this year over Labor Day Weekend and found it would be celebrated on 4 different Tuesdays this summer, including yesterday, June 4th. And so, I decided "what the hell," and headed down to Civic Center to check it out. I parked the car and walked all through the park, looking high and low for signs of a festival taking place. The closest I could find was a broken-down stage, seen in the photograph on the left, with not a soul in sight.
Of course, it was not all that surprising, since the festivals were taking place on a Tuesday between 8:00 A.M. and 4:00 P.M. This is not exactly prime party time, and the whole idea of turning a major festival into 4 minor events was ludicrous from the very start. For some mysterious reason, I think the Downtown Denver Partnership just wanted to kill the festival and did it this way to avoid backlash. When I got home, I searched the web, and finally found an article in the Denver Gazette saying the Denver Partnership has canceled Viva Streets for 2024 due to permitting and funding issues. And so, The People's Fair, which took place every year the first weekend in June to mark the start of summer, was sold by Capitol Hill United Neighborhoods (CHUN) to a private company in order to get the money to buy a mansion on Cheeseman Park for their headquarters. That private company ended the festival permanently within two years, and now the Downtown Denver Partnership has effectively killed The Taste of Colorado, the final big event of the summer. It just boggles the mind. I took the photograph on the right, by the way, back in 2019, at the last "real" Taste of Colorado.
And I am not kidding - The Taste of Colorado was a major event. I took the photo on the left in 2019 at the festival when Grand Funk Railroad, Kool and the Gang, and KC and the Sunshine Band were performing. I have also attended free concerts over the years by Johnny Rivers and Creedence Clearwater Revival (minus John Fogerty). The Gazette article also mentioned that LeAnn Rimes performed at the festival. I still don't understand why this event has taken place every year for 36 years and now can't go on. I remember reading in one of Bill Bryson's books about his life in England that when he first moved to the UK, it was considered a poor country, but there were so many things the government did for its citizens to make life pleasant. But these days, when the country is much wealthier, it can't afford it. As he often says in his books, "life just keeps getting shittier."
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