Come on Ride the Train, to Ride It. Woot Woot.

No sportstastic post this, just a recitation of some wacky shenanigans in the Mile High City...

So I'm working on this story for the paper. It's a diary-style piece about using the Regional Transportation District's Light Rail line, which runs across a good chunk of the metro area, as the framework for a multi-county bar crawl.

Last night, we--my wife and two of our old friends--made it happen. It was epic, and not in an entirely good way. More like Dante's Inferno. The rules, such as I guess they were, were pretty simple: we couldn't make any long hikes to get to places nearby the various light rail stops, we just had to make do with whatever we could walk to in a reasonable (5-10 minutes) amount of time.

Without ruining the entire bit before I write it--and on the miniscule chance that my editor sees this, trust me, there's more and better and I'm sorry for blogging it and I'll be good--some of the highlights from Saturday night that may avoid print:

* Started at 4:30 and ended at 2:30. Hit seven bars in at least three, maybe four different municipalities. We spent...ah, fuck, that just depresses me too much to think about.

* The dude at Blondie's Firehouse--situated on the site of the former largest-mall-in-the-Universe Cinderella City--with a tattoo of a flaming, anthropomorphic bud of dope on one arm who kept yelling the words "BITCH BIKE!" at anyone who wasn't riding, uh...well, not really sure what. Same dude--sporting the roofer's tan and meth teeth, BTW--gave the night an unofficial slogan when he looked at the waitress bringing Jager shots for he and his buddies and said "guess who's gettin' drunk tonight!!" I shoulda raised my hand. I would have earned a gold star.

* The HoG's Hurricane-tossed friend Clara deciding, basically out of nowhere, that Banky was scheming to keep her from attending Broncos' games, and then that I must be too, because as everyone knows, all we dudes co-ordinate our various plots; a particular piece of paranoia that resulted in numerous indignant and incomprehensible drunk dials from numerous purloined phones to the entire absent staff of this site. One of which was intercepted by Mrs. Bank. Big laffs--and later, shame and embarrasment--ensued. Stay classy, Denver.

* Eating at four different bars. Jesus, we were like wild desert hogs. My blood sugar spiked so high by the end of the night I could have made candy in my ventricles.

* Drinking bourbon upstairs in Denver's oldest saloon, the Buckhorn Exchange, on a bar that was 151 years old, in one of the (formerly, for the most part) worst neighborhoods in town--they keep a security van parked outside--being served by a Pesci-esque dude from the East Coast who used to go clubbing in Ft. Collins. And at Fort Ram, no less, which was maybe the worst establishment in history. Cognitive dissonance. System malfunction. And yes, there were men hanging out in full western gear, right down to the handlebar fucking moustaches.

* Ending the evening in some random dude's car. He was, evidently, an underground cabbie(!) No license, just a Nissan. A Nissan that he drove like 100 miles an hour on Kalamath street at 2 a.m. Turned out to be an OK guy. You may think that was an example of extremely poor judgment, but we just felt that was a good idea at the time.

And now back to your regularly scheduled arguments about the Broncos, Pete Rose, Hockey and the merits of silicone enhancement.



Image from denvergov.org