The following was cut (by me, for length) from my first blog for The A.V. Club on the topic of the wonders of living on Colfax:
“Let me let you in a little dream of mine: I’ve always wanted to live in one of those charming apartments over a shopfront, maybe directly above, say, The Roslyn Grill. Every day I’d wake up, hungover, to the smell of hobo piss and grease from Great Wall, head downstairs—still in my cowboy PJs!—and have a drink with the quirky regulars at the Roslyn while the place is booming during its breakfast beer rush. After finishing my morning routine—can’t start the day without my newspaper, cup of coffee, and a heaping helping of crack rock—I’d cross the street on a red light against moving traffic, making sure to take my sweet time, and head in to work at the day labor office for some drunken, filthy conversation around the watercooler. My co-workers and I would loiter at McDonald’s on our lunch break, doing some healthy networking in the parking lot. All in a day’s work on Colfax Avenue!
Okay, to be fair, I don’t live right on Colfax. I live a half-block up Pearl, a stone’s throw from Tom’s Diner. Overlooking Colfax itself would be the final frontier. When I moved to Denver from the suburbs after high school, my mom half-warned and half-requested that I didn’t choose a place too close to the ‘Fax. A naïve and obedient teenager, I complied. At first. 6th and Pearl: a respectable neighborhood. Then way out at Colorado Boulevard and Alameda: she couldn’t have been happier about that location. But as time went on, financial restrictions dictated—as they so often do for low-income students in Denver—that I move to progressively cheaper neighborhoods. Next was a studio on 13th and Ogden. You could feel a strong bum-wind blowing down the street, but it was still relatively quiet. Finally, years later when all standards and expecations had been crushed out of me, I made the move: Colfax and Pearl. Right in the belly of the beast.
In all honesty, I love living this way. I’m not going to pretend that I’m impoverished or that I live in a real ghetto. Things aren’t that bad on Colfax. Many of the homeless folks are actually pretty friendly, like the man that slept three nights in a dark corner on my porch, after asking my permission. He just wanted to get out of the rain. And from where I live, it’s a 10-minute bike ride—at most—to any of the more upscale (read: gentrified) neighborhoods around the city. Things aren’t that bad. But they’re shitty enough that what I can say, completely truthfully, is that I don’t live in a bubble. I grew up in a whitewashed, suburban town, where everyone had a car, everyone had money, street crime was virtually nonexistent, and everyone always had enough to eat. That’s not the case in my neighborhood, and I prefer it. I see terrible things happen every day, but it’s a necessary reminder that I’m not above it all.”
