It’s worth taking an extra day in a city after a major event ends. One can only see so much when a city’s downtown is teeming with visitors and out of town sellers.
Its regular life can speak more powerfully than all the speech making at a major political party convention and reveal more about the commonly referred to ‘American people’ than anything else.
So it was on Friday evening when the throngs of DNC attendees had largely left Denver. It was a different experience walking the sixteenth street mall when only one or two Obama souvenir vendors remained behind to attract lingering visitors.
The city street lights, horse drawn carriages, bicyclers, and outside patio diners still looked pretty picturesque but among all that, a part of Denver’s real life became more visible too.
Here and there, a guy curled up in a doorway asleep, a hippie generation looking girl hawked papers for dollars, a youngish, dread-locked guy politely asked for leftovers from passing people, and a homeless woman trotted along with her dog. The dog had been homeless too, she said, and they adopted each other.
The first piece I wrote in the mile high city was about the convention’s Service Day. I volunteered at the VOA mission on Lawrence and ventured a bit outside the central areas of activities between the Convention Center, downtown, and Pepsi Center.
That Friday night, the homeless folk seemed to come into sharper focus though I knew they’d never been gone; it was reminiscent of LA back in 1996 when the downtown area had been expertly purged of major signs of its homeless folk.
This election year, “middle-class” and “working- class” populations have been the rhetorical points of focus. The ongoing homeless population has not really been prominently featured.
In a year when the housing crisis is a major issue, those who were homeless before the foreclosure catastrophe remain largely off the media and campaign radar.
And yet, the night and aftermath of fleeing vacationers and big summer events reveal pretty much the same thing in every major city: homeless people have become such a staple of the city’s regular flow that they literally don’t register to people going about the serious business of shopping, eating, living, and visiting.
After all the pomp and skin tingling moments at the convention-Michelle Obama’s speech, Hilary’s and Bill Clinton’s grand slams, and the historic Thursday night that gave us Stevie Wonder, fireworks, and of course Barack Obama, I will remember something just as powerful that came in the quiet of a Saturday morning.
I glimpsed her as the airport shuttle pulled up to the hotel and thought that she was another passenger. But then the shuttle stopped and I realized that she was a traveler of a different kind. She was a very dark hued woman, tall and skinny, her arms sticking out of a pinkish t-shirt.
She sat on the bench outside the hotel munching on a bag of chips. It was five thirty in the morning and the woman was barring the cool morning air with a thin blue blanket.
I was struck by the lively eyes looking directly across towards the shuttle where I sat. I saw a security guy being beckoned by a hotel attendant then trek towards the woman on the bench.
She sat on munching and looked up pleasantly when the guy approached and spoke. I couldn’t hear, but I knew what he was saying. She got up quietly, almost leisurely, gathering the thin blanket around her like a sarong and walked off.
The shuttle began to pull off and I kept looking back. Sure enough, she appeared once more heading for the same spot but the guard came back too.
She smiled, pulled the blanket closer to her skinny body, and regally sauntered away I knew for the last time that morning. I knew too she’d probably return to that bench another night.
Of all the magnificent scenes in the mile high city, that’s one I won’t forget. That woman lives in cities all across America, including my own.
Stephane Dunn is a writer and professor in Norcross, Ga. EDITOR’S NOTE: This online-only guest commentary has not been edited. Guest commentary submissions of up to 650 words may be sent to openforum@denverpost.com.
