After a particularly diverting weekend here in Denver, I wondered if I’d be able to write about it in a visitor-friendly way and in the voice of The New York Times 36 Hours series.
Friday
History, music and food
Members of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Ute and other groups gathered regularly at the confluence of the South Platte River and Cherry Creek long before flecks of gold Europeans spotted in the waters led to Denver's founding in 1858.
Wade into the city at the flagship Tattered Cover bookstore in an old theater at 2526 E Colfax, near the City Park for which this neighborhood is named. In addition to being a landmark on the longest street in America, Tattered, as Denverites call the store, is a place to explore local authors whose work will give you a sense of place. Among my favorite Denver writers are Kali Fajardo-Anstine, whose 2019 short story collection Sabrina & Corina was a National Book Award finalist; and crime fiction novelists Manuel Ramos and Patricia Raybon.
Would be great if you could pick up Mindy Sink's Mile High City's Best Urban Trails, Historic Architecture and Cultural Highlights while you're at Tattered. More on that later.
For now, head to the Denver's downtown performing arts center for live music at Dazzle, where the early show usually starts at 6:30 pm.
This jazz club's intimate space is brightened with murals honoring some of Denver's finest musicians, including the late Ron Miles, a composer, cornet player and bandleader who performed with, among others, Joshua Redman, Bill Frisell, Mercer Ellington, Don Byron, and Jason Moran (another Denverite); and Charles Burrell, a jazz and classical bassist who in 1949 became the first African American to sign a full-time contract with a major American symphony when he joined the Denver Symphony Orchestra.
You'll need a ticket for Dazzle’s main room, on whose stage audiences have recently seen such performers as bassist Ron Carter (who has called Dazzle “one of the notable jazz clubs of the Rocky Mountain region”) and local pianist Annie Booth. You may spot Burrell, who turns 104 in October, in the audience.
You can hear but not see the show from the bar and piano lounge area, where you can usually get a seat without buying a ticket. In both rooms, you can get drinks and a bite to eat during the shows. The menu items are light -- sandwiches, green chili, a Salvadoran-style tamale -- which leaves room for a hefty slice of lemon olive oil cake supplied by the local Scratch Family Bakery.
Make an evening of it. After the late show, the bar and piano area is transformed into Dazzle's El Chapultepec Piano Lounge. There's no cover charge to listen to live music at the after-hours lounge, just as there was no cover at the storied bar for which it was named. That bar, known for musicians jamming late into the early morning hours, was affectionately called the Pec. The Pec closed in 2020.
Saturday
Bakers and beer
Sleep in if you were up late at the Pec. Then wake up with a shot of espresso and a shot of sugar in the swirly shape of a cinnamon roll at Hot Shot, a newish coffee shop in an old bowstring building that once housed a dry cleaner. Hot Shot's pastries are supplied by Rebel Bread, a Denver bakery that gets flour from Dry Storage, a Boulder company that mills grains grown by farmers from the region.
From Hot Shot you can stroll five blocks north on York Street to what was home to a World War II Army medical depot in the Clayton neighborhood. The depot's warehouses have been renovated into York Street Yards, where you’ll find a friendly brewery, a virtual golf club, several gyms, and an e-bike shop where you can try out a ride.
This summer three neighborhood nonprofits -- music school New Cottage Arts, literary educator Lighthouse Writers Workshop and anti-hunger group Denver Food Rescue -- got together to organize Clayton Community Days, a music, food and shopping festival in a grassy area at the west end of York Street Yards. During Clayton Community Days every first Saturday starting April 6 and ending September 7 you could have taken a yoga class on the grass before browsing booths offering such items as earrings hand-beaded by Colombian immigrant sisters or sourdough loaves from a neighborhood baker who calls her cottage business Big Raven Bread. You could have grabbed lunch from a food vendor and settled back on the grass to listen to local musicians such as Mariachi Alma, Denver's first all-women mariachi ensemble.
Clayton Community Days hopes next summer to again be part of a busy roster of fairs and festivals that give visitors a chance to sample Denver's neighborhoods and cultures. Among them are a Dragon Boat Festival in late May or early June on Sloan's Lake in northwest Denver; Juneteenth in Five Points in central Denver; the Denver Art Museum's Friendship Powwow in September in the near-downtown district known as the Golden Triangle; and First Friday Art Walks year-round at the galleries on and near Santa Fe Drive in southwest Denver. If you're here in January, perhaps on the way to the mountains to ski, you can take in the National Western Stock Show in northeast Denver. The show, akin to a national state fair, kicks off with dozens of Longhorn cattle being driven through downtown Denver, and ends a few weeks later with the grand champion and reserve grand champion steers -- neutered male cattle each weighing more than 2,000 pounds and coiffed to teddy bear fluffiness -- being brought into pens in the lobby of the fancy Brown Palace hotel so people can admire them as they enjoy high tea.
Denverite, an online newsmagazine owned by Colorado Public Radio, can help you keep track of all the goings-on.
Back at York Street Yards, the warehouses stretch east to west on part of the 39th Avenue Greenway, a linear park built along a drainage channel where you'll find joggers, dog walkers and children in a playground. Plus adult-size swings. The greenway ends at Franklin Street, on which you can head south for dinner at Brasserie Brixton if you feel like unpretentious and delicious French. Or if you like unpretentious, delicious, Michelin-lauded and Mexican – in a state whose southern portion was once part of Mexico -- keep ambling west past the greenway to Mr. Oso for fresh and inventive starters and tacos.
Sunday
Venture out -- with care
Go on a hike with a local, who can share favorite spots, and advise visitors who don't always account for the toll the high plains altitude and weather can take.
I'm not that local, as I am not particularly outdoorsy. I rely on a friend to take the lead, and she has shown me such jewels as South Valley Park in neighboring Jefferson County, with its undemanding trails and jutting red rock formations that called to mind Easter Island or a row of chess pieces. If you don't have local contacts, or your Denver area friends are more like me, consider a guided hike offered by the state parks and wildlife department. And remember your visit to Tattered Cover bookstore? Now would be a good time to consult Walking Denver: 32 Tours of the Mile High City's Best Urban Trails, Historic Architecture and Cultural Highlights by Mindy Sink with Sophie Seymour.
Take plenty of water. And maybe use some of that local sourdough to make a sandwich.
If you’re traveling by plane, you’ll want to head to the airport at the end of your trip (and in at the start) on the convenient train to the plane. For a last Denver espresso and view of the Rockies, stop on your way to the train station at 40th and Colorado at Prodigy. This shop in a bright and airy converted garage offers work experience to young adults from northeast Denver. The staff always seem to genuinely want you to have a nice day, so you’ll get to the airport fortified in body and spirit .