Something Old, Something New

The New Lakewood Civic Center Plaza

A few days ago I had to stop in at the LPD to pick up my recovered stolen phone and a few other items. The LPD is located in an area that has been developed by the city of Lakewood over the past 25 years into a central town square of sorts that has been named the Lakewood City Commons. 

It is home to the aforementioned Lakewood Police Dept, the Lakewood Municipal Courts, the Lakewood Cultural Center, and the Lakewood Civic Center, which is divided into two buildings, one north & south - what is basically the city hall is in the LCC south (I have no idea why it is not named the Lakewood City Hall), and across the way is the LCC north building where the various licensing, regulatory & permit departments of the city are housed. 

As I had been intending to stop in at the city permits dept to find out what type and the cost of the permit I would need for the half-wall, half-fence dealio I am going to build to replace the ratty old falling-down backyard fence, when I left the LPD I walked over the skybridge to the LCC north building.

Which, I discovered, is now separated from the LCC south building by the nice, relatively new Lakewood Civic Center Plaza, a pleasant improvement over the bare concrete pavilion that was there before.

            Tom Upham's Dance of the Indian Paintbrush from the south entrance to the LCCP

The LCCP is a rectangular concourse that now features statues by various local sculptors (both commissioned by the city of Lakewood for permanent display, and for sale through the art gallery located in the Lakewood Cultural Center (at the far south end of the LCC north building)

                                View of Dance of the Indian Paintbrush from the north, facing south

                                                    The Lakewood Cultural Center

        The tree-lined esplanade that separates the Lakewood Civic Center north and south buildings

                One of the chess/checkerboard benches that dot the paved walkway of the esplanade

The Lakewood Civic Center Plaza must be a great place to enjoy a lunch break on a sunny summer day - the pavers that make up the central concourse/walkway that wends it's way through the esplanade has plenty of stone benches to sit on, some of which feature chess/checkerboards inset in them. 

Handy if you happened to bring chess pieces or checkers to work with you,,,or maybe a lot of coins.

There is also a small fountain/water feature encircled by wooden benches to sit on if you are not to keen on chess or checkers...or hard stone blocks being used as benches

                               Dancing Flame by Harold Linke. 

I took a look around at the features of the LCCP and all of the sculpture on display. The one above by Harold Linke is the only one I didn't get medium used & pricing info for. 

                                    Desert Plants by Michael Mladjan, steel, $2,500

                                   Storyteller by Gary Monaco, steel & copper, $6,000

                                        Sunflower by Ken Stock, mixed media, $3,200

            Time capsule to be opened August 27th 2115 - provided anyone is still around

                           Mari by Beverly Steigerwald, bronze, $3,400

                                     Nix - The Lab by Carl E. Jensen, bronze, $4,000

                                  Looking south from the north end of the LCCP esplanade

                                                   The north entrance to the LCCP

From The Cynic's Perspective

You Can't Ice Skate On Frozen Jello

It's just not feasible from a logistics stand point. Taking into account the poor strength to weight ratio of your average piece of jello, even frozen, you would need upwards of 550,500 acre feet of frozen jello (based upon an average sized circular pond with a mean depth of 4')

Seriously, even if you were in Alaska in the early winter and found a pond that hadn't frozen over yet, and had the means to procure however much jello mix it would take to use the nighttime drop in temperature to freeze the mixture, it would still require very wide blades on the skates (in which case you are probably now simply skiing) or a very, very light skater.

A Tale Of Two Decals

Soul Asylum & The English Beat @ The Ogden Theater, Denver 07-13-2016

2016 has been a particularly good year for concerts so far, and two Wednesdays ago, the 13th, was no exception. Soul Asylum and the English Beat, bands I would consider co-headliners as opposed to an opener and featured act, played the Ogden Theater in Denver, a show ENH and I happily attended.

Soul Asylum, the younger of the two acts (The band started playing as S.A. in Minneapolis in 1983), took the stage first and I was initially taken aback by who I was seeing on stage. 

Dave Pirner looked and acted and sounded like the Dave Pirner who has fronted the band since it's inception, but the absence of Karl Mueller (who had passed away from cancer back in 2005), Grant Young (fired/replaced back in 1995) and Dan Murphy (who left the band four years ago to live a quieter life and run his antiques business with his wife) was a little bit of a shock.

Uhm, I should mention that I hadn't seen the band since they played a dive bar in downtown SD in the mid-'80's, so yeah, it's been awhile.

The new guys playing with Dave Pirner are Michael Bland, a great drummer I saw backing up PDubya on his 2005 Folker tour (Bland isn't really a new guy btw, as he's been SA's drummer for the past eleven years), Winston Roye, a session musician of note who took over on the bass when Tommy Stinson left to reform the 'mats with PDubya, and Ryan Smith, a member of the Minneapolis band the Melismatics, playing lead guitar for only about a month now, as the former SA lead quirtarist, Justin Sharbono, got the axe in mid-June (or rather, to use rock lingo, was relieved of his duties on the axe....)

The new Soul Asylum line up played all the biggie's of course, and they played them extremely well. The hits included my fav, Somebody To Shove, but they also played a new tune from their new album (I had no idea they had released a new album - I really gotta keep up with Minneapolis area bands not named the 'mats a little better). 

The new tune is titled Supersonic, and it lived up to it's title - great power pop punk number. I'm going to have to track down the new album.

The English Beat took the stage about twenty minutes after SA wrapped up their set, and they too were comprised of both a recognizable veteran (Dave Wakeling, still front and center as he was when I saw them thirty years ago in SD) and a stellar new line up (well, new to me...)

Will finish this later, gotta jet

Serious Downpour From The Other Night

We've had a hot, dry spell these past few weeks, so it was quite the surprise when the skies darkened on Tuesday evening and rain started coming down in barrels. Flooded the streets within minutes, and of course I tried to get pics of it. Hard to good good pics of rain though, just doesn't photograph well

Sketchbook Page From Earlier This Month

Still haven't figured out how to upload pics from my new phone to the computer, but the LPD did recover my phone (along with the rest of the stuff that was stolen from my car) and it was all returned to me yesterday. I'm going to keep the new phone, as it has an excellent camera and eventually I'll figure out how to load the pics. However, for the time being I will carry the old phone with me as well, and use it to take pics as it loads to the laptop lickitysplit.

Super props to the Lakewood PD, btw, for getting the thieves who were stealing stuff out of cars parked in driveways of residences throughout the Lakewood area, and for getting my stuff back to me - especially my Rock Bottom growler - gotta have the growler.

When The Earth Goes 'Round

The Long Wait

O'er The Ramparts

Still haven't figured out how to load pics from the new phone to the laptop, so I'm just going to post pics I'd taken earlier while I still had the Samsung. This pic was taken near the Arrowhead golf course in Roxborough Park. The ramparts are part of the Dakota Hogback, a sandstone ridge that runs from Wyoming south through Colorado and into New Mexico (or maybe it runs from New Mexico north through Colorado and into Wyoming,,,depends on how you interpret maps I suppose).

Me vs. The New Cell Phone

Had to get a new cell phone, as my old one was stolen. The new cell phone is a Motorola, a brand of cell phones that I've never owned before. Now, it being an Android, I figured everything would be similar in terms of features and their uses.

I was wrong.

It seems there is a vast difference between the Samsung I had, and the Motorola I have now.

And that sucks. as I'm going to have to figure out how to upload pics to the laptop from the phone...which is a pain, ya' know?

The Old Man And The Model T

He referred to the '23 T-bucket as "she"

When I asked how fast it could go

"I put a '49 flatty with the 4-inch Mercury crank in 'er, then added Ardun heads, now she gets 150 in a straight"

I understood nothing he said.

A Pretty Prickly Situation

The Fourth-Most Something Somethings Out Of New Zealand

Went to see the Flight of the Conchords at Red Rocks tonight, and it was just in the nick of time - I desperately needed help washing away the stress and disquiet of the past month or so, and the humor and music of McKenzie & Clement was just what the Doctor ordered.

I wasn't able to see the entire show due to a job commitment, but what I did see, about an hours worth of the world's best folk-rap-rock-funk-whatever-you-call-medieval-music-funniest stage-banter-ever, was pretty damn awesome.

The duo and their accomplished accompaniment (referred to as the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra), had the sold-out amphitheater rocking and laughing with every tune they played, and everything they did and said in-between.

I caught about half the show according to the friends I met up with. I enjoyed Jemaine and Bret punching out the comedy lights with Mutha'uckas, Hurt Feelings, The Seagull (which turned into a hilarious interaction with a "Freebird" shouting fan - not me, I swear - after Jemaine asked the audience what they wanted to hear next, someone shouted "Freebird", and Bret replied "No, we can't do that, we just did a bird song, Seagull. We can't follow one bird song with another bird song." Which led to Jemaine musing aloud, "Hey, why not shout 'Seagull' out at the next show you go to? You can yell out 'Seagull!' when the band you're watching next asks for requests, and see what kind of reaction you get from them."

Uhm, it was funny, seriously. Guess you had to be there.

I think that was followed by Business Time, which was followed by Bowie - a song that was now both poignant and hilarious - and that was then followed with non-encore encores, Think About It and 1353 (Woo a Lady). 

I state they were non-encore encores as Jemaine & Bret discussed walking off the stage and waiting until the cheering was loud and long enough to return, as musical acts usually do, but then decided to show how rebellious they were and talk about walking off the stage but actually stay on stage and perform a couple of encores.

All-in-all, while I was only at the show for an hour or so, I'll tell you what, it was one heckuva rejuvenating, soul-refreshing hour.

Any Ol' Way You Wanna Show Your Colors

The Candidates Motorcade