But Left Hand isn't gloating. "We definitely like John and are glad that he won for mayor," says Dave Watson, vice president for sales and marketing. "But this is great for us. I think more than anything else, Playboy just selected catchy names and logos. We take it for what it's worth."
As does Hickenlooper. "This is just another example of the entertainment and media establishments continuing bias toward politicians," he says. And laughs.
And here's more evidence. The June 6 installment of late-night yakker Conan O'Brien's show featured the latest installment of a running gag titled "New State Quarters," which purports to reveal the images that will turn up on future coins. The Colorado model? A woozy-looking skier holding a booze bottle, beside this slogan: "Thin Air = Fast Buzz."
Mamma mia! You may not be able to judge a book by its cover, but thanks to Amazon.com, you can certainly judge a city by its reading list. In fact, the site's city-by-city book and music bestseller rankings -- based on what's being shipped to various zip codes -- make for hysterical reading all on their own. Below, a sampling of the current top-ten lists for some of Colorado's most definitive places.
Aspen
Books: Babar's Yoga for Elephants; The DaVinci Code; Life of Pi
Music: Hotel Costes 5, Mambo Sinuendo, by Ry Cooder; Come Away with Me, by Norah Jones
Boulder
Books: Reclaiming the American West; Turning the Mind Into an Ally; The Architecture of All Abundance: Creating a Successful Life in the Material World
Music: Beethoven: Middle Quartets; Dave Matthews Band Live at Folsom Field; The Process of Relief, by Bad Religion
Colorado Springs
Books: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (not yet released); Bush at War; The Last Jihad: A Novel
Music: The Christmas Album, by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band; Christmas Eve and Other Stories, by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra; and Mamma Mia!
Denver
Books: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix; Stupid White Men...and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!; The Secret Life of Bees
Music: Riviera, by Big Head Todd and the Monsters; The Christmas Album, by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band; and Mamma Mia!
Littleton
Books: Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons; Fearless Living: Live Without Excuses and Love Without Regret; The Joy of Juicing: Creative Cooking With Your Juicer
Music: Riviera, by Big Head Todd and the Monsters; The Christmas Album, by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band; and Mamma Mia!
Really mean streets: Just a month ago, Jeanine Smidt, the mean Jeanine behind Mean Jeanine's Bookshop, was full of new plans. To fill the void left by the closing of Pandora's Toy Box, she was expanding her Erotica for Women section. "While we won't be carrying the toys or togs, we are stocked with some choice literate smut," she explained. "Selections include anything from Tropic of Capricorn -- Henry Miller is such a pig; I could not put it down -- to Slow Hand: Women Writing Erotica and the like."
But apparently, Mean Jeanine's, with its bright yellow facade, had already climaxed.
Less than a year after moving the shop from the Platte Valley to Sixth Avenue and Marion Street, Smidt lost her lease -- and after 25 years in the book business, she's not interested in finding a third location. "The hair place next door is moving in," she says. "I believe they were working behind the scenes to get in here. In the flier about my business, I say I can do anything but help you negotiate a lease."
Now the whole kit and caboodle, minus a storefront but including the name, is up for grabs starting July 1 at the low, low price of $25,000. "It's almost like a freeze-dried bookstore for sale," Smidt says. "You pick the location and add water, and I'll set you up in a nice established business with me for four to six weeks of intensive training."
The new owners might want to lay off the smut -- it's got some bad Denver mojo right now.
More from the war: In this installment on the fashion feud that visiting Floridian GMan started between Denver and the greater Miami area, we at Off Limits can't help but point out that all of letter writers have been...men! It seems that Western gents are a bit more insulted at being told to toss their ballcaps than our ladies are at being asked to get a new dress and put on some makeup.
Still, many of the boys agree that Denver is in a sartorial drought. "What a relief to read an article on the disaster that is considered style in Denver," writes one reader who asks to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from his friends. "There simply is no fashion sense or hipness to be found. Drop your typical Denverite into a city like Miami, Minneapolis, Boston, etc., and they wouldn't get away with the trashy, lackadaisical style for too long. Why? Because other cities get it. Funny how I can love the natural beauty of a place so much, yet on the other hand swell with pride when my fiancée and I are told that we don't look like we are from Denver."
And what does a typical Denverite look like? Let us know at [email protected].
Don't fence me in: Who knows what GMan would have thought if he'd been people- -- and fashion- -- watching during last weekend's People's Fair? In the one-block non-profit area on 14th Street between Broadway and Lincoln alone, there were booths for Right to Life, the Maxfund Animal Adoption Center, Bread and Roses A Workers' Cultural Center, the Denver Waldorf School and Jews for Jesus -- and the political debates were fierce. "I was just filling in while someone took a lunch break, and I got hit from all different sides," a Bread and Roses volunteer told our correspondent. "I wasn't prepared for that."
The only booth that seemed immune to the verbal abuse belonged to Maxfund. Noted one passerby, "Right-to-lifers might have more luck if they put out a pen of babies like the animal shelter did with the puppies." Ouch.
At least the actual fencing at the People's Fair was less intrusive than the barriers at last month's Cinco de Mayo festival. "You have to enclose it with fencing because of the liquor requirements," says Tom Knorr, People's Fair organizer and executive director of Capitol Hill United Neighborhoods. "We enclosed about five years ago, because if you have liquor wander off the site, then you're in violation of your liquor license. If you noticed, Cinco had great big six-feet chain-link fences that looked a little, well.... We're going to do four-foot stuff."
At Cinco, the Guardian Angels were responsible for determining who could pass through those six-foot gates. But there was no such frisky business at the People's Fair. "Out of all the events we do, this is the most relaxed and peaceful," says Sebastian Metz of the Denver Guardian Angels. "This isn't a searching event. That isn't meant to cast aspersions at any of the other events, but the People's Fair is just a very peaceful gathering."
Certainly our correspondent hadn't felt very peaceful at Cinco de Mayo when she saw a red-beret-wearing Guardian searching only non-whites -- and she felt even more unease when the Angel told her the "random searches" were being conducted based on who looked like they might be gang members.
"That's absolutely not what we did and not what he did," Metz responds when told of the Cinco de Mayo sighting. "If that Guardian Angel explained things that way, that's dead wrong. Having gone through about 1,000 baby bags and diapers, it wasn't being based upon a person's ethnicity or their potential for looking like a gang member. Our whole protocol was to do it consistently, and that sometimes bothered folks who didn't look like a gang member."
