Saturday Night Special

Well, folks. I'm so sorry to say that I did not bring my camera to Denver last night. I don't know what I was thinking, but I'll try to describe everything well.

We met our friends, Joe and Emily, at The Red Sea, an Ethiopian/Eritrean restaurant on Colfax. Colfax is the longest street in the country that has the same name for the whole length. From Wikipedia: Playboy magazine once called Colfax "the longest, wickedest street in America." On the one hand, there is a respectable annual marathon on Colfax. On the other hand, if you want to find a prostitute or some drugs, you're in the right place. Some blocks are normal city areas, and on some blocks, you wouldn't want to leave your car unattended. Something like 40 years ago, my mom worked as a waitress for one summer at Pete's Kitchen, which is still operating on Colfax.

We enjoyed the Ethiopian/Eritrean food, though Jason and I had to learn how to eat without plates or silverware. You tear off a piece of spongy bread and then just pick up a bite of the main dish with it. It wasn't as messy as I anticipated. It was good!

Then we went to their friends' cupcake shop, The Shoppe. It is a little, very bright, bright, bright, white store where you can buy a cupcake or a bowl of cereal, or a PBR in a can. Jason and I split a chocolate cupcake with cream cheese frosting. It was delicious. They were displaying art on the walls, and the majority of it was photographs of tiny My Little Ponies in sweet settings, like surrounded by marshmallows or cotton candy. My favorite was the swimming Pony.



Then we went into a weird toy store a couple of doors down. It was filled with weird, collectible, plastic toys. They were also displaying art, as was the gallery in between the stores.













Next, we checked out RockBar, which is attached to a crappy-looking motel. RockBar was equally crappy, as expected. We sat in the AC/DC booth, drank cans of Tecate and tried to figure out what the deal was. There was a great jukebox, with punk from all eras. Then there was a modern-looking guy dancing by himself on the dance floor, in front of floor-to-ceiling mirrors. He had some great moves, like leading the marching band and rolling the dice.

There were two dudes from the Motley Crue era, with long, stringy hair (one had an Axel Rose-style do-rag) and tight, tight jeans, and high tops. One was allowed to believe he was a DJ, and he started spinning the worst records. GNR's "I Used to Love Her but I Had to Kill Her" made Emily pretty angry. We had to leave and move on to a more civilized bar.









We next hit The Bank, which was shockingly empty. I haven't spent much time in bars since the whole state went non-smoking, and I forget that they lost a lot of their business. I had been worried that it would be too crowded, but there were many empty tables. The fun part about The Bank is the long Happy Hours: 4:30 to 6:30 and 9:00 to midnight. Every time you buy a beer, you get a chip for a free beer. It's pretty much a sports bar with a good menu, and they serve food late at night. They had on the Wisconsin-Fresno game and some of the patrons loved Fresno and would shriek every time they scored. The waitresses grew tired of that table.

Jason ordered an Easy Street wheat, but received something that tasted more like Blue Moon. The waitress brought him another one, but the situation led to inspiration! We invented a new show, called "Beer Detectives!" If you aren't sure what they brought you, the Beer Detectives rush in to taste and identify it for you.