Civic Center Blues

Civic Center Blues: Chain link: 'More cages'

The Park has shrunk. By two-thirds. Chain-link fencing forms a choker that isn't very pretty. The interior is completely sequestered. Set-up for the Taste of Colorado has begun. So has outrage. And resignation. But the pulse continues. Here is a stethoscope. Listen. . . .

Stroll in park turns colorful

Tuesday. Business as unusual in The Park. People, activity, hostility, whismy. Swarming images. Convention kaleidoscope. Hang on. We play news ticker. . . .

Images bridge cultures

Over his shoulder, the City and County Building is aglow in morning sunlight, but the smiling man with the fringe of beard and the Dixie Chicks T-shirt doesn't notice and just hangs near the teenagegirl with pink lipstick, gel'd hair and a mouth full of braces.

Not exactly a run-of-the-mill day

OK, maybe the first clue that this was not your everyday Sunday in The Park was the star-spangled cowboy hats juxtaposed with the guy selling political baseball cards. And maybe the second was the 10 police horses wearing Plexiglas visors and padded fetlock boots, while four lions in blue, green, pink and silver sequins cavorted near Seal Pond where almost everybody was breaking the no-wading rule.

• SPECIAL REPORT: Civic Center Blues

Park no newbie to political scene

(Cue wolf whistle.) As The Park girds its loins for the embrace of Democratic National Convention proponents and protesters, it's important to note that the last week in August won't be the first time it's been center stage. Even if the last time Denver hosted a convention (1908), there was no Civic Center, The Park is no political virgin.

• SLIDE SHOW: Civic Center Blues - week 5

Clues to Park's users reside in their refuse

Playing Trash Scene Investigation at Civic Center gives a good idea of what happens there.

• SLIDE SHOW: Civic Center Blues - week 5

Ignoring rules: That's the ticket

There she sits, buddy, just gleaming in the sun - a ruby-red Honda, parked nonchalantly in a 3 Hour Parking / Official City Business Permit Required spot in the rectangular piece of asphalt that hangs off The Park's northwest flank like a case of shingles.

• SLIDE SHOW: Civic Center Blues - week 5

The Park gets a scrubbing as DNC approaches

Before the Monday morning sun can cast anything but oblique shadows, there they are - no less than 20 able-bodied men in 12 trucks, one golf cart and one honkin' large power lift, all coalescing in front of the Greek Amphitheater, fully engaged in sprucing up The Park.

• SPECIAL REPORT: Civic Center Blues

Park becomes a Sunday afternoon soapbox

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Park's Speakers' Corner, a loose collection of orators who believe that, as J.J. Swiontek says, "If you don't use your First Amendment rights, you'll lose them."

Policing in The Park

Sometimes you can see them and sometimes you can't. Sometimes they're on horses. Or bicycles. Or in cars cruising slowly along concrete corridors. Sometimes they go undercover, blending in, bumming a cigarette, scoring some weed before they break out the handcuffs.

• SLIDE SHOW: Civic Center Blues - week 4

A cash crop in Denver

Semi John is watching the cops bust some guys for weed as he rolls a joint. Figures if they're busy arresting other marijuana dealers they're not watching him, right? Which makes sense. Which you could say about a lot of Semi John's philosophy.

• SLIDE SHOW: Civic Center Blues - week 4

Statues are silent sentries

His spear was broken and someone had stretched a condom over his horse's flaring nostrils, but the proud Native American didn't have nearly as much cause to complain as a bloodied Christopher Columbus, or the lion whose tail had been brutally severed - no fewer than three times.

Joe Renteria waves baton in a symphony of plants

Somewhere between the saliva and the salvia, between his dichromacy and others' debauchery, between hostility and hosannas, Joe Renteria has managed to sow the seeds of job fulfillment. Or, as he puts it, "When people come here and look at the flowers and smile, it makes me feel good."

Photogs find strong creative vibe

On the road to Mandalay, they find texture, organics, sheen and geometry. They find immovable objects nearly a century old and hurtling teenage bodies. They find nature's beauty and mankind's edge. They find themselves at "the crossroads of everything in Denver."

• SPECIAL REPORT: Civic Center Blues
• VIDEO: Art students photograph Civic Center Park

A champion for The Park

The pit bull in the Chihuahua's body is crying and she can't help it. That's just the way she is. Passionate. Intense. Driven. Especially when the subject of The Park comes up. Which it has. Which is why Cathy Donohue, the feistiest, zestiest 4-foot-11, 69-year-old woman you - or maybe anyone - ever met is a little bit weepy at the moment

McNichols Building awaits a transformation

For a jewel in a crown it sure doesn't sparkle much.

• SLIDE SHOW: Civic Center Blues - week 3

Homeless men talk about their hardscrabble lives

If you look, you see them. Under trees. On benches. Beneath balustrades. Some lost. Some this close to finding themselves. Some drunk. Some sober. Some content. Some resigned. Some indifferent. Some hopeful.

• SLIDE SHOW: Civic Center Blues - week 3

Trash can menagerie

One thing you can say about walking in The Park is that it is not an un-canny experience.

Pigeon poo a big problem at downtown Denver park

The Park's pigeon problem is enough to make anyone fume in different languages.

Budget a park maze

Somewhere in a tiny windowless office, there may be a man in a green eyeshade and arm garters who sits with his quill pen and account books by the light of a flickering candle and actually knows how much money is spent maintaining The Park.

• SLIDE SHOW: Civic Center Blues - week 2

Navigating hazards

The sound of the guy vomiting into the lion fountain isn't exactly a Brahms sonata to the jaded ears of Jose Palma. His normally serene and cheerful face takes on an expression that mixes exasperation with seen-it-all-before resignation, probably because he has seen - and heard - it all before.

• SLIDE SHOW: Civic Center Blues - week 2

When sun sets, new players take stage

Drug dealers disappear and neighbors come out to play in the waning hours of the day at Civic Center.

• SLIDE SHOW: Civic Center Blues - week 2

When Park visitors gotta go, they gotta go

Truth be told, there are times when hanging out in The Park can be a relief. But not if you have to relieve yourself.

• SLIDE SHOW: Civic Center Blues

Rule 1 - Forget all rules

All is not copacetic in The Park. At least not if you subscribe to the Gospel known as (a tad redundantly) Denver Parks and Recreation Park Rules.

A brief respite from fear

Something was odd. Might have been the emu oil. Might have been the horsehair raku pottery. Might have been the upscale s'mores getting gooey in the sun when usually that's the province of month-old chewing gum. But, no, what was strange about The Park on a midweek day was this: People.

• SLIDE SHOW: Scenes from the park through the years
• SLIDE SHOW: Civic Center Blues

Beaten by the demons in the park

His name is Michael, he's 52, and he's sitting in the faint shade of a 97-degree day, pouring Hurricane High Gravity Lager from a can poorly hidden in a brown paper bag.

The secret language of Civic Center

Somewhere in The Park, it is written, there is a zillionaire. Actually, there are several zillionaires. Even a chamillionair. And it's just possible that one of them might be Crazy Frito. Or Sandman. Or even Pogomojo Ho.

• SLIDE SHOW: Scenes from the park through the years

Squalor in the grass: A look at life at Civic Center

She is half-naked and friendly. Probably clean, too, since she is merrily soaking in the Seal Pond. The woman who, FYI, is naked from the waist down is sharing the pool with the seals at Civic Center.

• SLIDE SHOW: Civic Center Blues