A Final Word On First Friday

The First Friday Art Walk held each month on Santa Fe Boulevard here in Denver is always a lot of fun.  It a great place to people watch, and believe me, there are a LOT of interesting characters to see - probably mostly from California.  There was an especially large crowd at the Center for Visual Arts, run by Metropolitan State University of Denver.  This past Friday night there was actually a line to get in, with security guards only letting people in as others left.  The theme of the exhibit was Water Line: A Creative Exchange, although with many of the pieces I could not equate the theme with the work I was looking at.  The piece in the photograph on the left is an  example - I don't know what it is, or what it has to do with water, but I have to ask - is it for sale?

And if it is for sale, do people see it and say to themselves "this will be perfect for the living room?"  They are building a lot of mcmansions here in Denver these days, and in places like Greenwood Village and Cherry Hills, just south of the city , they are building a lot of full blown, Downton Abbey style mansions.  I have often wondered what they do with that space.  Now I know.  The one percenters probably put pieces like the wolf work and the string art in the photo on the right in their living rooms and then have big cocktail parties to show them off.  Of course, I don't know for sure since I am not a one percenter,  but why else could they create these pieces, unless they hope to get some modern art museum curator to pay an outrageous price for them.  That would be my plan - and perhaps an idea for retirement.

Musical Performance Or Child Labor?

As I mentioned yesterday, I attended the First Friday Art Walk Friday evening on Santa Fe Drive here in Denver.  The street was closed for the evening, and some people took advantage of it, like the little girl on the left giving a performance for the crowd. But I have to ask the question - is this a musical performance or is it child labor?  A lot of people were walking up to the open guitar case and throwing in bills.  Does the little girl get to keep this money or do her parents keep it? Are there musically inclined couples only having children so they can put them out on the streets to perform for money, just as farm families used to have lots of kids back in the last century (I guess the century before that one, now) so they could be put to work on the farm?  Does Donald Trump intend to do anything about this?

Just down the street there was another performance going on in front of the Spark Gallery.  The proud mother was standing just to the left of me watching her daughter perform while her two sisters sat patiently on the sill of the Spark Gallery's window.  I hate to bring up this question, but just how long will the daughter perform?  If she is under 18, will she quite by 10 P.M.? I remember when I worked part-time at Walgreen's, the store would hire employees under 18 who would have to leave by 10:00, which is why I always had to work until midnight every night (most often closer to 1:00, although I am not bitter about it - much).  If she does perform after 10:00, will the police come and throw the lot of them in jail?  Unfortunately, I did not stay to find out - I had Taco Bell tacos calling to me. Yo quiera Taco Bell.

The First Friday Of August

Yesterday was the first Friday of August, and as usual, I went to the big First Friday Art Walk on Santa Fe Drive here in Denver last night to take in the art and the action.  I cannot believe that it is August already - time seems to be moving at hyper-speed these days.  It is only 5 months until I have to decide whether to file for social security at 65 instead of 66, and now practical questions are starting to pop up instead of retirement dreams - can I afford supplemental insurance if I retire?  Can I keep the condo in Florida without renting it out? Etc.etc.  But I digress - big time.  I am, after all, writing about First Friday.

Santa Fe Drive was closed off for the evening to accommodate the large crowds, and a line of food trucks was parked end to end on the north end of the street, with long lines of people waiting to buy food.  I was very tempted to try some, especially at the trucks with the longest lines, but decided to settle for a gourmet dinner of Taco bell tacos later on.  And as usual, there was some good art, and some really off the wall stuff, too.  I am very sad to report that the John Fielder Photo Gallery had closed for good. The landscapes there were OK, but quite often they displayed the work of photographers showing people and places of other lands, which I will miss.  For now I will just have to enjoy the weird stuff, like the entrance to the gallery on the right.  I don't know what the work represents, but I like it.  It would look great at the entrance to my condo.

Catching The Mets Game With Mark

I went to the Colorado Rockies - New York Mets game at Coors Field Wednesday night with my friend Mark, who - as regular Blog readers know - works at the University of Denver's Anderson Academic Commons (the library).  Mark was able to get a pair of complementary tickets from a friend of his who used to work for the Rockies organization, and they were great seats, as you can see from the above photograph of Mark.  The Rockies started out pretty good, going up 5 to 0, but then after a 20 minute delay in the game (after an umpire got hit by a ball), the starting pitcher fell apart, and Colorado lost 10 to 5.  And I hate to complain after going to a Rockies game for free, but the "Coors Field experience" is not nearly as nice as it used to be.  The Rockies constantly play very loud, very obnoxious music - I assume to attract the younger crowd.  It actually hurts your ears, and I had a very hard time hearing what Mark was saying.  No doubt it was about soccer - Mark's obsession in life - but I missed a lot of the details.  I say tone it down, Rockies, or the club will lose all its fans over the age of 19.

The Late Show

I just finished reading an advance reading copy of The Late Show, Michael Connelly's new mystery novel. Randy, the Hachette Book Rep here in Colorado, was kind enough to drop off a copy when he came by for an appointment with one of the buyers at the bookstore where I work.  It is a stand alone novel about a female police detective in Los Angeles named Renee Ballard, who runs afoul of her supervisor and winds up working the 11:00 P.M. until 6:00 P.M. shift, called The Late Show by the detectives.  The book focuses on two cases Ballard is investigating, one of them on her own, against direct orders from her supervisors.  Like Connelly's popular Harry Bosch character, Ballard is  a rebel and a loner, and the story is quite good.  I have yet to read a bad novel by Connelly, and I recommend picking up a copy of The Late Show at your local bookstore or library.  Now!

Late Summer Baseball!

I received an e-mail from MLB.com advertising a price of $39.95 to receive their service until the end of the season.  That was an offer I couldn't resist - it means that I can watch all the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Cubs games through the end of September.  What a deal!  And although I am still spending a lot of time catching up on things after working 7 days a week for the first half of the summer, I was able to catch several White Sox broadcasts last week.  And none other than Steve Stone, Harry Caray's old partner from the days he broadcast Chicago Cubs games, was doing the broadcasts.  Talk about nostalgia!  Of course, the White Sox really stink this year, but that is also part of the nostalgia.  The last summer I lived in Chicago and went to the games at old Comiskey Park, back in 1980, the team also stunk, but announcers Harry Caray and Jimmy Piersal, as well as owner Bill Veeck, did their best to make things interesting.  And so I hope Steve Stone can do the same with the White Sox broadcasts this year.  Holy Cow! What a way to wind up summer.

A Weekend Full Of Festivals

This past weekend, in addition to the Cheesman Park Art Fest, the city of Golden - just to the west of Denver - held Buffalo Bill Days.  In addition, the annual Dragon Boat Festival was held at Denver's Sloans Lake.  I decided to take advantage of all three, and after spending Saturday afternoon at Cheesman Park, I decided to attend the other two festivals on Sunday.  I started the afternoon at Buffalo Bill Days, and was surprised to find that Buffalo Bill was still alive and kicking, mixing with the crowd at his festival. He is supposed to be buried on nearby Lookout Mountain, but perhaps they bring him back each year just for this festival.

My next stop was the Dragon Boat Festival, but as I approached Sloan's Lake, it started to rain, and I decided to just drive around the neighborhood until the rain let up.  It finally did, and I arrived just in time to see the grand finale, which consisted of all four dragon boats racing around the lake several times.  The boats are pretty far off, so you don't feel very close to the action, but there was still a big crowd watching.  There were also plenty of food booths serving every type of Asian food.  As far as I could tell, nothing still alive, thank goodness.

I have attended this festival a number of times, and have never taken very good photographs there.  The area where it is set up is treeless, a large field with booths strung out across it, and various food carts set up in the parking areas.  The best part of the festival are the dragon boats themselves, one of which can be seen in the photograph on the left.  After the final race, the boat crews wasted no time in removing the drums and dragon heads from the boats, so I had to take that photograph quickly.   And while there did I sample some of the food, since Asian food is one of my favorites?  Hell no! They were charging money for it, and you know how I feel about that.