Choking on Pizza With Leon and the Revival

Karl Christian Krumpholz

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Paul Leon Ramsey of Leon and the Revival: “There was a blizzard outside and around thirty folks in the bar. During our set, I saw a guy I know sitting in the front row turning purple. He was choking! I stopped singing and shouted into the microphone: ‘Call 911!’ Different audience and band members were trying unsuccessfully to administer the Heimlich. Fortunately, the firefighting paramedics from DFD Station 11 showed up in minutes and successfully extricated an entire pizza wedge (he was so drunk he forgot to chew) from him. They took him out on a stretcher. Obviously, this was a showstopper.

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Karl Christian Krumpholz

“About a month later, I asked the bartender about the guy’s well-being. He said, ‘Oh, he’s fine...but he’s permanently 86’d.’ It seems that the next time the guy came to the bar, it was once again cold and snowing. At closing time, he walked out the back door, where one of the servers had started her car to warm it up for the ride home. The guy got in the car and drove it to his house. All of this was caught on camera. The cops found the car running in the street in front of the guy’s apartment three blocks from the bar.”

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Karl Christian Krumpholz

Leon and the Revival will play the Broadway Roxy — three blocks from the scene of the crime! — on January 23. It’s Leon’s birthday show.

Editor's Note: The Denver Bootleg is a series chronicling the stories of local bands by longtime Denver cartoonist Karl Christian Krumpholz. Visit Krumpholz's website to see more of his work.

Listen to Leon and the Revival and more favorites from Westword writers on our Westword Staff Picks playlist.