Spotting the meth den while in the DNC's Invesco line

Meth ahoy! Those waiting to get into Invesco Field at Mile High last night to hear Barack Obama’s acceptance speech went on quite an odyssey as the queue snaked this way and that through the stadium’s asphalt wasteland. Attendees were forced to clamber down hillsides, guard against line cutters at...

By Joel Warner

August 29, 2008

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Meth ahoy!

Those waiting to get into Invesco Field at Mile High last night to hear Barack Obama’s acceptance speech went on quite an odyssey as the queue snaked this way and that through the stadium’s asphalt wasteland. Attendees were forced to clamber down hillsides, guard against line cutters at parking-lot switchbacks, fend off hordes of T-shirt hawkers – and, unbeknownst to many, amble by a former meth den.

At one point, the line ran through the trash-strewn alley behind Angel’s Sports Bar. Along the way, line-goers may have spotted a few boarded-up doors adorned with orange tape and warning signs (see photo). That’s where the bar’s owners found a squatter doing meth in the summer of 2006. While the Denver Department of Environmental Health determined there was no lasting contamination to the building, apparently no one’s ever bothered to remove signs of the bust – providing Invesco’s attendees with one more unusual spectacle along their long, winding journey toward history. – Joel Warner

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Joel Warner is a former staff writer for Westword and International Business Times. He's also written for WIRED, Men's Journal, Men's Health, Bloomberg Businessweek, Popular Science, Slate, Grantland and many other publications. He's co-author of the 2014 book The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny, published by Simon & Schuster.

Contact: Joel Warner