Tulo Git 2 Quit

I know its still April and nobody should be overly excited yet, but at 10-2 the Rockies currently have the best record in all of baseball and Troy Tulowitzki is on pace for 95 homeruns.  Whammy!!!!

You Can FINALLY Park Overnight in Downtown Denver

Denver Post  

Responding to what they called "a great deal of frustration" from downtown residents and business owners, Denver officials on Monday unveiled new signs and parking-meter stickers to coincide with a new overnight parking policy.

City engineers will swap out about 3,000 parking meters for programmable Smart Meters and install about 3,500 signs informing drivers that they can now pay to park their vehicles at a meter all night long, including from 2 to 6 a.m.

Parking-enforcement officials previously ticketed or towed vehicles parked during those times.

"It was simply impossible to do this until we got these new little Smart Meters," said Denver Mayor Bill Vidal.

The electronic meters will work in concert with a new street-sweeping schedule released by the Department of Public Works.

Downtown drivers can park their cars on one side of the street between 2 and 8 a.m. Mondays through Thursdays, when sweepers clean the other side. The meters will not allow drivers to pay for time if it conflicts with the sweeping schedule.

Both sides of the street will be available on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, while Sundays will remain free.

Well it's about freaking time.  Seriously...I never understood how this wasn't an option.  Especially with all the bars/clubs/restaurants downtown.  


I mean, here's the standard scenario:  People drive down and park for a couple hours to get dinner/go to a Rockies game/etc.  End up staying out and getting far too drunk to drive home.  


However, those Central Parking lots charge like $25 to park overnight, the Bcycle stations are already closed, RTD isn't running, and cabs are near impossible to get once the bars clear out.  So knowing full well that if they leave their car, it will get ticketed and towed, they end up driving home drunk and making Denver roads much more unsafe.   Potentially seriously injuring themselves or other people.


Sure you could argue that they could leave earlier, but we all know how the nights get away from us.


Seriously...didn't take a genius to figure out this was a problem.  Sometimes I think I should be Mayor.


Coss in 2012!

Mile High Music Fest Cancelled for 2011...Maybe Forever

HeyReverb.Com

The Mile High Music Festival will not bring the rock this summer.

The annual event will take a hiatus in 2011, promoter AEG Live plans to announce this morning. The two-day festival brought the Dave Matthews Band, Tom Petty, Tool, Jack Johnson, Widespread Panic and others to its Commerce City festival site over the last three years.

AEG is citing economic reasons for the break.

This doesn't surprise me in the least bit.  I've been to major music festivals and those seem to be much more authentic than MHMF could ever be.  Both Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo are talked about long before the lineups are released.  And groves of people plan their trips without even knowing who they are going to see.  This could never be the case for MHMF.  I'm not sure what the difference is either, I just can't pinpoint it...but whatever that 'it' factor is....Mile High Music Fest didn't have it.   

I do have some theories

The first year was a debacle with only 1 exit for everyone who drove and no camping offered.  This means you couldn't get drunk because you had to drive back to Denver (or wherever you were going)  and with only 1 exit, it took hours to get out of there.  Add that in with the fact that it was over 100 degrees the first year with little shade, everything from tickets to drinks to merchandise was way overpriced, and the festival had an immediate bad reputation.  In an era where the twitterverse, blogosphere, and facebook addicts have a voice that is easily heard, a bad start is what doomed Mile High Music Fest.  

I am sad to see it go, however, because i thought with a little more history, it could become as big as the Bonnaroos.  And anything that draws people into the city is good for the local economy.  However, location, price, and even the acts just couldn't hold a candle to the big boys.  

RIP MHMF

Would You Drink a Beer that is 41% ABV?

Westword:  ​Sink the Bismarck, the highest-alcohol beer in the world, has finally made it to Colorado.

The "quadruple IPA," at 41 percent alcohol by volume, is made by Scotland's controversial and attention-seeking BrewDog brewery, the spot also responsible for Tactical Nuclear Penguin, a 32 percent ABV beer, which held the record until last spring when Germany's Schorschbrau released its Schorschbock, a 40 percent ABV beer.

BrewDog also created something called The End of History, at 55 percent ABV, but only a dozen bottles were produced. Aside from its alcohol content and $777 per bottle price tag, the beer's most unusual feature was that each was packed inside a taxidermied squirrel.

Yes, a dead squirrel (or stoat).  

Ferment Nation

Totally stoated about The End of History.

One of those bottles made its way to Boulder in early November for the first-ever Beer Bloggers Conference, which was held there. The beer bloggers enjoyed drinking it, but gave it mixed reviews (see one of them, from blogger
Ferment Nation here).

​In addition to their high alcohol content, these beers carry a hangover-inducing high price: Sink the Bismarck retails for around $100 per bottle in most stores.

But despite the price, there has been a high demand for the beers, says Scott Curtis, general sales manager for Wine Cru, a spirits distributor in Commerce City.

"For the Tactical Nuclear Penguin, we only got forty six-packs allocated to the entire state," Curtis says. "For Sink the Bismarck, it was only twenty six-packs. So it's extremely allocated. A ton of retailers didn't get any to buy."

Curtis says Wine Cru tried to spread the beer around, but couldn't name the stores or restaurants that got it. "Most of the big ones knew it was coming in," he adds. The stores that do have it are typically selling the paper-bag-clad bottles one at a time.

At Total Beverage in Thornton, the bottles are under lock and key, according to an employee, and selling for $74.98 for a bottle of TNP and $99.98 for the Bismarck.

If you're looking for an early Christmas present for me.....I'll take a 6 pack of Sink the Bismark.  This has to be the like new Four Loko or something.  Giddy up

PS...Whats with the beer served in the dead squirrel?  Weird

Should Coors Field Open a Snow Tubing Hill?

CS Monitor  The Cleveland Indians are getting ready to open a skating track and 10-lane snow tubing hill at Progressive Field during the offseason.  …Senior director of merchandising and licensing Kurt Schloss declined to specify financial goals. He says the aim is attracting fans downtown during the offseason.


I read this article and was thinking, maybe Coors Field should do this, what a smart idea Cleveland.  Then I realized:  No f'in way, we already have the mountains, and Cleveland is a dump.  Haha, in your face Cleveland, you suck.

LoDo Listed as One Of Top Ten Neighborhoods in Nation of 2010

Denver Post -

It's not just the restaurants and bars that put Denver's Lower Downtown on a national list of 10 Great Neighborhoods for 2010.

"One thing that's really important to us is the continuity of planning," said Denny Johnson, spokesman for the American Planning Association, which gives the award. "There has to be commitment over time. It has to be more than just one mayor's term."

LoDo won points for the Downtown Area Plan of 1987, which was updated in 2007, and the Downtown Neighborhood Plan of 2000.

Ive lived in several places in my life and I do have to agree, LoDo is very pedestrian friendly and all you really need is a bicycle to get around.  And even if you don't have a bike, just get a membership to Denver BCycle and you're all set.


When I used to live in Phoenix....NOBODY went downtown.  And I mean NOBODY.  If you are anywhere near the financial district after dark, you should run for your life.  Similar thing in Milwaukee, just a ghost town after dark.  But here in Denver, there are tons of bars and night clubs and a real sense of safety.  Now I'm not saying there isn't crime, because every city has it, but it has a much safer feel than other cities I've lived in.


So what more do you need....pedestrian friendly shopping, nightlife, parks, and sports arenas.....it's obvious that LoDo made this list.