Commerce City, CO – When hashing out the logistics of big projects I can always count on one thing: forgetting something important. Halfway to Denver I realized I’d forgotten several important things. First was a jar full of silver change that I save to pay meters, tolls and other small expenses. Next it occurred to me that I’d forgotten the folding table, which necessitated us having to purchase one in Colorado. I also left behind our drink cups and shot glasses as well as our extra cooler. In all, my forgetfulness set us back $100.

D’oh!

These were small things in the grander scheme, but these missteps compel the worry that the stage is set for disasters to come. The only way to mitigate potential pitfalls and make known the unknowns is to diligently gather intel beforehand, something only the most enterprising of the Shakedown vendors do.

The day before Phish’s first show we drove out to Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City, about seven minutes from Denver, to peep the lay of the land. Driving the grounds we observed there were multiple parking lots with just as many entrances and no way of knowing which one would be used. This made it impossible to determine where the vendors would gather prior to the lot opening at 3 p.m. sharp. In Chicago we staged on a street opposite the lot entrance, but being so close was no guarantee against becoming trapped in the gridlock and losing a spot on Shakedown. With nearly $500 tied up in beer and booze in addition to the expenses of travel, landing that spot was imperative.

But no amount of planning can minimize the biggest risk of all: the possibility that event staff or police will put the kabash on your operation. Unfettered vending is typically permitted because the band, as a courtesy to its fans, leases the lot on their behalf. This arrangement helps the venue recoup revenues siphoned from their concessions, while giving fans the freedom to do mostly as they please. Still, rules vary and are often enforced unevenly. Some venues crackdown on bootleg t-shirt merchants. Others hassle those selling alcohol. Sometimes the local health department will inspect the food vendors and require them to purchase a health permit. The Verizon Wireless Center charges a $150 vending fee. At Red Rocks, because it’s technically a city park, no vending at all is permitted.

Because Phish had never played this venue no one knew what the situation would be. Naturally, with so much cash tied up in this affair, the uncertainty spurred considerable anxiety.  In the hour leading up to the lot opening the vendors gathered on a street leading straight into the venue. During this time we double-checked that we had everything we needed, namely enough ice for drinks. My sidekick wrote up The Shakedown Tavern’s menu, while I tallied our inventory, counted out our change and calculated what we need to bring in to cover expenses. As three o’clock drew near, the vendors fired up their engines and at precisely 2:59 p.m., the caravan, with much fanfare, snaked toward the lot.

That first night was nearly a disaster. The parking staff directed us to a gravel lot instead of the grass lot the band had leased. In the absence of clearly designated stalls and staff to ensure vehicles were parked in an organized, symmetrical fashion, people abdicated their common sense and parked wherever and however they saw fit, claiming as much space as they could. By the time event staff realized they’d made a mistake Shakedown was already open for business. With lots of hootin’ and hollerin’ they tried unfucking the clusterfuck, but with people pouring onto the lot it just wasn’t going to happen. An egregious few were made to straighten their vehicles, but staff quickly gave up trying to tighten up the space. Instead the greedy bastards saw in the mess an opportunity to milk more money by charging each vendor an additional $15 for the space wasted on account of their mistake.

As event staff made the rounds extorting vendors the sky grew ominous and gray. The temperature dropped rapidly and the wind whooshed in formidable gusts that sent EZ-Ups and merchandise a-flyin’. Above us was the very edge of a large slow-moving storm that, from the ground, appeared to abut clear blue skies. Shakedown, up and running not even an hour, was a ghost town as people took refuge in their vehicles or camp sites on the other side of the venue, even though no rain was forecast for the area. Vendors nonetheless secured their EZ-Ups against the wind and began draping tarps over their merchandise in case of rain. I didn’t bring our EZ-Up so we loaded our stock in the van.

When the sky finally opened up it dumped on us a heavy rain that blew sideways for a solid 30-minutes. Then just as abruptly as it began, the rain stopped and the sky cleared. In the blink of an eye Shakedown went from ghost town to a bustling hub of commercial activity. A line that never seemed to shorten had formed at our tavern before completing our post-storm set up. A few other vendors peddled beers and mixed drinks, but our variety and prices were not only unrivaled, but unbeatable.

To supplement our standard beer selection I brought along a few select cases of beer from Wisconsin’s New Glarus Brewery, which produces some of the best beers known to man. Because New Glarus Brewery only distributes inside Wisconsin, I was quite shocked by how many people were familiar with the brewery and its flagship beer, Spotted Cow. Along with a case of Cow, I also had on hand several cases of the brewery’s latest concoction, an utterly fantastic black IPA that garnered high praise from those lucky enough to score a bottle.

If business was brisk from the start it picked up in earnest once event staff began enforcing a strict no-glass rule. Beer vendors were told that unless they had plastic cups to pour bottled beer into, which none but us did, they had to shut down. Had the others done a little pre-show research they’d have seen this policy spelled out in big bold Arial type on the venue’s website. Anticipating this crackdown, I limited my bottles to the New Glarus beers. Everything else I had was in cans.

For three hours we moved beers and mixed drinks at a furious clip, our tip jar so stuffed with bills that people simply walked away without their change. In Chicago, no matter how much beer we stocked we never seemed to have enough. I made a point this time to double-down on inventory but before the show even started we were down to less than a dozen beers. And the no-glass policy caused us to burn through more cups than usual, leaving us without anything to serve drinks in. With nowhere nearby to re-up, The Shakedown Tavern packed up for the night to the disappointment of many, including us.

I love Denver, t00. As far as cities go it is clean, easy to navigate and the people are notably polite and helpful. I was called ‘hon’ more times here than in Hon Town, Baltimore and the bums say ‘thank you’ whether you give them change or not. No one in Denver ever seems in too much of a hurry, not even waitresses. On the highways, drivers tend to keep to the right unless passing, which keeps traffic moving.

Another nice flourish are all of the medical marijuana dispensaries. Many advertise in the local weekly deals on ounces, eighths, hash oil and Cheba Chews. All of this in addition to being minutes away from the Rocky Mountain foothills makes it hard to not regard the Mile High City as some kind of paradise.  For me, the worst part of visiting Colorado is leaving Colorado.

We arrived in Denver late afternoon Wednesday, following a seven hour cruise from Lincoln, Nebraska. Unsure what exit to take let alone where in the city to go I got off at Colfax Avenue only because I remembered the street from previous visits. We needed to find a place to hunker down. I feared that for the cheap rooms we’d have to hit the ‘burbs or the ghetto but using my Droid I zeroed in on the 11th Avenue Hotel and Hostel, located downtown near the state capitol building in an area known as the Golden Triangle, one of Denver’s oldest neighborhoods.

The hotel, built in the early 20th Century, had a grand wooden staircase with plastic-covered carpeting. For an extra charge we got a room with a bathroom and a $6 deposit netted us a bath towel each. There wasn’t an ice machine or any other amenities, including soap or shampoo. A few derelicts lurked about waiting to use the lobby payphone.

For $56 and proximity to downtown, it didn’t bother me that the wi-fi didn’t work or that a screaming woman was subdued by police in the hallway, cuffed and carted away on a stretcher. It’s part of the urban experience. And I later learned the hotel caters to recovering drug addicts, alcoholics, the homeless and others on the bottom rungs of the institutional ladder.

Its billing as a hostel attracts young travelers with means. These two very disparate clienteles made for a strange integration of characters who kept largely to their own worlds.

The hotel was as clean as an old hotel can be. My biggest concern was that one of the resident alcoholics would discover the $450 worth of liquor of beer I had stashed in Purple Thunder for the purpose of selling outside Dick’s Sporting Goods Park during the Phish shows that upcoming weekend. After the successful launch of The Shakedown Tavern a few weeks earlier in Chicago I decided a sojourn to the Denver shows was in order. If anything, I’d get a free vacation out of it, meet some cool people, party a little, take in some sights and see some old friends.

I have two friends in Denver, both of whom I called after checking into the motel. Mark didn’t answer, but De’Nay did. We took the free shuttle to the top of the 16th Avenue Mall – the nation’s largest outdoor pedestrian mall – and met her outside of a bar on Blake Street. Her hair was longer than I remembered. Beyond that she appeared more or less the same.

De’Nay and I met more than ten years ago in Telluride, CO. We ran with a crew of transients that lived residentially in the forested hills surrounding town, which itself had an altitude of nearly 8,500 feet. I was friends with her ex, Jonathan and another kid named Drew, and spent much of my time tooling around Colorado with them. Some time later after leaving Telluride I ran into De’Nay in Arcata, California. Actually she found me. I was sitting in the plaza when I heard her call my name.

She’d befriended some middle-aged  guy who owned a considerable amount of land there in Humboldt County. On this land were many small cabins he rented to people who lived off the grid. De’Nay and I hitchhiked back there from Arcata. Dave seemed displeased that De’Nay had returned with me in tow. That night De’Nay, myself and several others ate around a campfire. Well into the night we swapped stories, sipped wine, played guitar and smoked joints filled with locally-grown weed.

Dave, who owned the land, didn’t like dogs, but was fond enough of De’Nay that he allowed her dog Bela on the property. That night De’Nay and I returned to her cabin. As I got comfortable in the top bunk, Bela got loose and ran off into the deep dark forest.

“BELA! BELA!” she cried drunkenly into the ink black night. “BELA! GET OVER HERE NOW!”

Dave soon arrived to address the commotion. De’Nay explained what happened and Dave’s response was to ask if she didn’t have friends or family who could care for the animal. She rejected this idea outright and Dave returned to his cabin. Inside, De’Nay began pacing, worried that Bela might encounter a bear or mountain lion. She tried lighting with her shaking hands a kerosene lamp, but knocked it over. Kerosene spilled down the counter top and on to the floor. One of the mantles ignited the fuel and I watched as the flame traveled along the countertop. A fiery drop ignited the puddle on the floor.

I leaped from the top bunk to smother the flames with the only blanket I had. The fire was quickly extinguished and that chilly September night I slept under my now charred blanket that reeked of kerosene. I left the next day and didn’t talk to De’Nay again until years later when we re-connected through Facebook.

De’Nay told me she stayed in California a while before returning home to Colorado and eventually moving to Denver, where she began doing heroin and was once severely beaten by Denver police officers who had spied her buying dope.

Clean now for two years, she is still poor and lives along a shitty stretch of Colfax Avenue where open-air drug deals are the norm. But De’Nay, an eternal optimist, looks on the bright side. “The nice thing about having crack dealers around is that there are no kids in the neighborhood,” she explained on our walk to Pete’s Monkey Bar, where we pounded back $1.50 PBRs. “No one wants to raise kids here. The neighborhood is full of people in their twenties and thirties who don’t have kids.”

We don't have cows this big in Wisconsin.

While my friend De’Nay has made great strides in her recovery my other Denver friend, Mark, has resumed his vein-spiking ways. I met Mark in college when we were both promising students. I dropped out to become editor of a newspaper. Mark dropped out due to a heart aneurysm discovered on a chest X-ray taken during a bout of pneumonia. After a slow, painful recovery from heart surgery, during which surgeons discovered and repaired a leaky valve, Mark was on the rebound.

But then he began doubting his wife. Suddenly she was buying new perfumes, getting Brazilian wax jobs, and traveling more often for work. When he confronted her after finding a stash of lingerie and a pair of crotchless panties she moved out. Without any further explanation she filed for divorce.

Seriously depressed, Mark one night called a crisis hotline, but hung up after becoming irritated with the person on the other end. Fearing that Mark might end his life, the crisis prevention worker dispatched police to his house but Mark was asleep by the time they arrived. After pounding on the door for some time, Mark stirred from his sleep, opened the door and was yanked from his house and thrown to the ground. Police cuffed him then drove him to a hospital for evaluation.

A week later he blacked out when the wine he drank didn’t mix well with his new meds. Once police had him in custody they told him he’d broadsided a bunch of cars, nearly mowed down a pedestrian, then drove his car through his garage door and proceeded to trash the house. Upon his release the sheriff served him with a restraining order his wife filed to keep him from entering their home, which they were trying to sell.

When his probation ended in 2010 he returned home to Denver to continue his descent. He sounded like hell when he answered my call, and more than a little surprised I was in Denver. I invited him to dinner but he said that he was in no condition to receive visitors. For starters, he admitted to being strung out and said he didn’t want me to see him like that. Additionally, he was living out of his car following an eviction. “I’d love to see ya,” he said. “Things just aren’t good right now. I’m dying, Nate. I’m really dying this time.”

“I understand,” I said before hanging up. “Good luck.”

The asshole that greets you at Pete's Monkey Bar in Denver

We walked down the 16th Avenue Mall up to Colfax Avenue, to Pete’s Monkey Bar, one of two hippie bars on the block. It was open mic night, which brought out a handful of really great musicians who tore it up all night. De’Nay and I strolled down memory lane rehashing our more memorable moments in Telluride. I asked about Jonathan and Drew, my two buddies I’d lost contact with after leaving. De’Nay said she’d seen them not long ago sitting outside the Art Museum looking for dope.

“They didn’t look good,” she said. “I think they’re still living in Telluride.”

This was disheartening news. The first time I met Jonathan he was shooting cocaine between his toes. And Drew was just a transient like the rest of us. When I returned the following summer Jonathan had cleaned up and Drew was still sleeping in his Karmann Ghia. All summer we traveled around Colorado in Jonathan’s Volkswagon Vanagon until I returned to Wisconsin for school. In those days, before Facebook and cell phones, it was easy to lose touch. I haven’t spoken to either since.

We met up with De’Nay again the following night at Pete’s Monkey Bar for the pre-Phish party, tossing back $1.50 PBRs and waiting for that night’s band to go live, a wait that wasn’t really worth it in the end.

We didn’t stay out late though it was our last night in Denver. My sidekick and I had spent much of the day hiking around Red Rocks state park. It was the first time in months I’d worn shoes. Consequently I developed some gnarly blisters on my feet and toes that pained me with each step.

There was an ambulance outside of the hotel. As we climbed the stairs to the second floor, we overheard some muffled screams and commotions from above. Moments later, two Denver police officers and a paramedic were escorting a woman down the stairs. Then for whatever reason the woman collapsed on the second floor and began to wail. I poked my head out of the room to watch the frustrated officers cuff the woman then lift her to her feet. This must’ve caused her great pain as she let out a great scream as they dragged her down the stairs. From our window we watched as they loaded her into the ambulance. By then she seemed sedated and calm. The officers chatted amongst themselves then laughed a little once the ambulance door closed. And before long it was all over.