As I wait for the 8:00 AM #15 bus outside the Colfax Ave Business Improvement District’s office, I often chat with the Ready to Work team as they prepare to start their morning of street cleaning. It’s easy to see why they love their supervisor, Jerrica. Her calm demeanor, quiet radiance, and quick laugh are magnetic
Characters of Colfax just got a lot more.. Colfax. We’re excited to announce the addition of local cartoonist Karl Christian..
Jerry Baack’s gruff voice and smiling eyes can make anyone feel at home. Like Colfax Avenue, his stories are often all-at-once edgy, beautiful, hilarious, and tragic.
Imagine you are in 1911 Denver at a 5 star hotel, in an immaculately clean foyer that leads into a dining room. Ornate chandeliers provide the lighting for yet another fantastic 7-course dinner, in which Denver’s elite are the guests. Champagne flutes clink and elegant music plays from the piano just feet away. Now fast forward to 50 years later.
“They call me white chocolate. No really, that’s my nickname because I can karaoke the SHIT out of ‘Bust a Move’,” she says laughing to herself. Long, dark hair cascading over her shoulders, covered in tattoos. The ‘she’ who I’m referring to? Well, that’s none other then the fabulous Jody Bouffard, owner of Denver’s LAST ‘lesbian’ bar here in Denver, Blush & Blu.
What’s not to love? With its mix of old and new, sober and stoned, there’s a unique characteristic about Colfax, where each step has the power to catapult you into a different phase of time. The avenue is so drenched in history and each block has a story all of its own. It has an undeniable energy that encompasses you as you stroll along.
This morning, battling another bout of insomnia, a syrupy, sticky sense of dread seeped through the cracks in my (very trendy) exposed brick walls. Little tiny ants find their way through those same cracks; they’re uninvited but I let them stay because it’s nice to have someone to hang out with.
Colfax is seductive, I talk to her and speak of her as a woman because I believe Colfax is strong and beautiful and complex. She’s rugged; it’s pure poetry out there.
The Characters of Colfax blog is about the people, places, and events that are part of the Colfax mosaic. The following post will be provocative, will tug at the heart-strings of some, while enraging others. We’ll call this character “Chris” (for privacy reasons), who is one of thousands of Characters of Colfax with a story to tell.
I’m in a dark bathroom stall at Charlie’s Nightclub on a busy Sunday drag show night. This isn’t the first dive-y bathroom I’ve been in on Colfax, and so far, I think the best places have the worst bathrooms.