Coming Home: Reflections on Denver’s Convention Craze

By Stephen Nichols, VoterWatch’s DNC Celebrity Correspondent

“I can’t wait to get to Two Fisted Marios Pizza, grab a cocktail at Jet Hotel, and catch a show at Red Rocks,” I remarked to my girlfriend Mercii as soon as I landed. In my first extended stay in the Mile High City since the 2006 circus called the “Real World”, I am feeling a great deal of nostalgia. However, there are a few “subtle” augmentations to the landscape I briefly called home, that surprised me.

For starters, Denver is (and has always been) a world class city; the citizens here know that, and so it didn’t take the 150 million dollar overhaul that the city orchestrated for a far larger television spotlight to reassure themselves of her grandeur. Watch out MTV, here comes the DNC. It’s deep in their hearts; the Rocky Mountain air, their beloved architecture, and their indie-film-esque set of young people that make this place the hub of urban culture that it is (but very few people know about).

This self-confidence that I’ve known Coloradans to brandish, particularly when it comes to their state, is still alive and well. Through the majority of the international press corps, we are left to perceive a unified excitement of the DNC’s presence, as the convention’s goings on are paraded in prime time. Yet, I am witnessing a far different social atmosphere—one that the major media outlets are neglecting.

Against the shining backdrop of the Pepsi Center Complex—the nucleus of the week’s activity—is a police presence that looms over everyone. It’s not just the plain-clothed secret service and their clandestine (and very spooky) ways either. There are fifty-two law enforcement agencies borrowed from across the state, brought here to make people “feel” safe amongst a the highest profile event to hit this state in history.

Ask a local, however, and they’ll tell you that their city was virtually “occupied”, putting their civil liberties in jeopardy. One cab driver tells it like this, “The city could have done a better job making its own people feel at home. This uniformed mob has taken over. It feels like I’m in…Tiananmen Square”. Believe it or not, even the cabbie spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprimand from his employers, (MetroCab of Denver by the way).

I walked the Sixteenth Street Mall on Saturday, days before most party leaders and dignitaries arrived, yet already there were white Chevy Suburban’s with six-riot gear vested officers standing on reinforced foot rails on either side of the vehicle. A message was being sent to the citizens of Denver as they strolled their home turf to get a glimpse of the upcoming festivities or to do some last minute errands before the outsiders invaded their lives.

With not a protester in sight, not any sign of civil unrest, that message rang loud and clear. The message: “Don’t mess with us this week”.

Another feature of the city of Denver I remember from 2006 was a very healthy population of transients and the homeless. In fact, one of our cast assignments on The Real World was to help out at Volunteers of America on a project aimed at providing opportunities for literacy to the many thousands of Denver’s homeless adults and children. As I would ride the free shuttle to the gym, I’d pass several of them on my route and wonder why the cameras never focused in on them, as that is The Real World after all.

What a difference two years makes! The city can certainly celebrate that its homeless problem has been all but eradicated, well seemingly. I have no real evidence of what the city has done, but in talking with the Anderson family, natives of Colorado and residents of the nearby suburb of Wheat Ridge, I was able to come to a plausible hypothesis.

“I heard that the city rounded all of them up and gave them haircuts and movie tickets, and took them to Boulder”, claimed 23-year-old Briana Anderson. “My friend has to plan a two-hour commute, from what would usually be thirty minutes, because the city closed traffic for ten blocks around his office,” says Briana’s sister, Trischa.

Though these reports aren’t confirmed and as extreme as it appears, it does make me wonder where have all the denizens gone and why is it that every time Denver wants to get a little more limelight, the people who live here suffer the most under the guise that, “it’ll be good for us in the long run”?

The city of Denver has never watched its little homestead catapult to the national stage before—at least not to this level. Remember the NBA All-Star Weekend in 2005? Or those seven strangers (shout-outs to Tyrie, Alex, Davis, Brooke, Colie, and Jenn) who were picked to live in a house, have their lives tape and to find out what happened when people stop being polite and start getting real? While the focus was surely put on the city back then, this week’s Democratic National Convention tops the cake.

It will be good for them in the long run, right? The city government and economy will surely profit with an expected 200 million dollars in revenue, as a result of the convention dollars pouring into regional businesses like eateries and hotels. Still, the people who make this city great have to bite there tongue, get out their sneakers, and wait it out until their hometown becomes home again.

I guess it’s a bad time to remind everyone about the failed Winter Olympic bid of 2002. “They got the bid but the city voted it down because it was too expensive”, Paul Anderson, patriarch of the Wheat Ridge clan, told me. With an insatiable appetite for the limelight coupled with fattened city coffers, I can’t help but wonder if the city will reconsider its dreams of bringing the international torch a mile high.

by billy

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