Colorado is absolutely beautiful in spring. Unlike the East Coast -- where spring will come on hot and wet and odorous, the land itself like some live thing waking after a long sleep, desperately in need of a bath -- and unlike the North -- where the first spring thaws are teasing, flirtatious things and the first real warmth arrives like a mercy just ahead of madness -- spring in Colorado turns up like a gift. Down south, spring is fragrant and damp, somewhat too flowery for my taste. In the high desert, it comes slow. In California, it’s just another date on the calendar: 72 and sunny rather than 70 and sunny. But in Colorado, it breaks warm and clear and blue and gorgeous. Night-time rains, high, scudding clouds, breaths of cool air coming down the mountains. It’s enough to tempt a man (like me) who cares nothing at all for patios, for rum drinks, for daylight leisure or, in general, the sun, to rouse himself from his usual daylight torpor, shake off the hangover, find a pair of sunglasses and actually get out in the world, to eat well and drink well and to do it all while the sun is high and the day waxing.
It’s enough to make a man even get his wife in on the act.
“See?” I asked Laura as we were seated on the near fringe of the very cool patio at Second Home, on the last full week of a Colorado spring. “Isn’t this nice? I told you it would be nice.”
Unfortunately, the fine weather and that lovely patio were just about the last nice things I enjoyed at Second Home, where the kitchen couldn’t even get a jumped-up mozzarella stick right, as you’ll learn in this week’s Café review. And the lesson spills over into Bite Me, where I talk about my love for the Corner Office and how that love made my disappointment in Second Home even more acute.
But after that, the section is nothing but smooth sailing, with stories of underground Japanese bars, the trials and tribulations of the boys at Swimclub 32 (discussed at length in an upcoming blog), and a surprising closure in Littleton.
Another surprise: Only one of you has agreed to join my cult, the Anti-Resistance, which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago here. Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to be a cult leader with only one follower? Or how annoying it is to try and get just two super-cool Anti-Resistance T-shirts knocked up? I’m sure that if the Candy Girls asked people to join their cult, they’d have followers coming out the wazoo…-- Jason Sheehan
