Jordan Altergott (@jordanaltergott)
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I moved to Denver in November 2007. The partner I was with at the time was going to attend grad school at the University of Denver, and I had agreed to leave the neon lights of Las Vegas for three years to facilitate that.
I pretty much hated my first twelve-to-eighteen months here and was patiently waiting until I could move back to Sin City — when, in the summer of 2009, we saw an ad in Westword for a local music festival in a part of town we were not familiar with, South Broadway, and decided to attend the Underground Music Showcase for the first time.
In a word, UMS was Magic. I immediately fell in love with South Broadway and UMS.
I become an unofficial UMS missionary. Each year, I would drag as many people as I could down to experience the neighborhood and the festival.
So many incredible memories that will last a lifetime happened at UMS: from seeing Nathaniel Ratliff & The Night Sweats in the Meese backyard, to itchy-O taking over Ellsworth Avenue, to brunch at the Irish Rover or the Hornet, to Gregory Alan Isakov, Chella Negro, and so many more playing unforgettable sets at the South Broadway Christian Church, to 1 a.m. pizza at Pie Hole, to an epic A Tom Collins set at 3 Kings, to the best sushi in Denver at Go Fish, to sweaty hi- dive sets by Eldren, the Ned Garthe Explosion and The Yawpers…UMS created nothing but Magic in my life for a decade.
“Don’t let your aim ever stray”
I didn’t miss a single UMS from 2009 to 2019. And then COVID hit, and my favorite South Broadway venue, 3 Kings Tavern, closed. By then, I was a partner at the Oriental Theater and felt it was important to keep an indie venue in 3 Kings’s place. A lease was signed in the summer of 2020, and HQ was born.
UMS returned in 2021, and now, as a venue owner, I could not have been more excited. But as the next few years went by, things started to change. Suddenly venues that would traditionally charge rent to anyone wanting to use their space were being charged a “venue fee” by UMS. Each year, more costs of the festival were pushed onto venues, generally with only a few months’ notice, removing any realistic option to push back. “The festival loses money,” we were told, and had no choice but to push more of its expenses onto venues.
Then 2025 came. HQ’s venue cost doubled to over $3,000. Again, we were told that UMS had lost money for years, and this was the only way to make it profitable. At the same time, UMS proudly proclaimed that it brings “10,000 people to the neighborhood.”
I couldn’t understand why a festival that was so successful at selling tickets, along with having huge corporate sponsors and collecting the bar sales at the outdoor stages, would keep increasing the costs on the small independent venues that were so vital to the event, and to the neighborhood. Venues like the Irish Rover and South Broadway Christian Church, which had been an important part of UMS history, stopped being venues after 2021. The Magic of UMS was dying.
Then the other shoe dropped: 2025 would be the last UMS. It was repeated ad nauseum…to venues…to the media…to the fans. It was the talking point of the entire 2025 festival.
I was skeptical. I kept hearing rumors…that UMS had approached the Broadway Merchants Association and demanded a payment of tens of thousands of dollars or face the festival moving to RiNo or the 16th Street Mall, or that UMS was trying to sell to AEG or Live Nation.
I asked questions. Owners and executives at UMS swore that none of that was true, and that this was, in fact, the last UMS. They said the same thing to others, from our district’s Denver City Council representative, Flor Alvidrez, to other business owners on South Broadway, to fans and artists.
“And if all your hopes survive, destiny will arrive”
Then, on February 9, UMS announced that it is moving the festival to RiNo in exchange for the RiNo Business District paying $250,000 a year for four years. That raised questions.
RiNo had to submit its public budget to the City by September 30, 2025, and that budget included $250,000 for an unnamed festival. This leads me to believe that the rumors so many of us had heard were true. Deals this big take months of planning and negotiation, and BIDs plan their budgets in July and August in order to get them submitted to the city by September.
It is impossible for me to believe that UMS and its stakeholders did not know the event was moving to RiNo before the 2025 event that they claimed was the “Last UMS Ever.”
While South Broadway would have always been hurt by UMS leaving, the way it happened matters. The deception, the lies, using “Last UMS Ever” as a cynical marketing ploy to try and sell more tickets…it was was unacceptable.
Businesses exist to make money, and a million dollars over four years is a huge boon for UMS ownership. I honestly do not blame UMS for taking the money and moving. I just think South Broadway — the business owners, as well as the artists and fans — deserved more honesty and transparency. Losing UMS while longtime local businesses like Senior Burrito, the Hornet, Mutiny Information Café and Decade have recently closed is brutal.
Luckily, South Broadway is resilient. We have the Hi-dive, the Skylark, Bar 404, Illegal Pete’s and HQ as authentic indie music venues that do the hard work of supporting local artists. We have dozens of locally owned restaurants, bars and shops that create a culture unique to South Broadway.
So come down to South Broadway, grab some food, do some shopping, catch a concert…and maybe, with a bit of Magic, a new music festival will be born on South Broadway soon.
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