“Everything happening in Portland and Austin right now — and even San Francisco and Brooklyn — really started in Denver a decade ago, and it’s high time we recognized it.” (File photo By Helen H. Richardson/ The Denver Post)
Dozens of artists, restaurateurs and tech startups from Portland, Ore., and Austin, Texas, co-signed a formal letter today apologizing for their longtime theft of Denver’s cultural heritage.
“We collectively recognize that beard competitions sponsored by flash-in-the-pan craft breweries, chiming indie-folk soundtracks, ironic tattoos and all-white yoga festivals are exclusively and originally a Denver thing,” they wrote in the letter, which was published as a full-page advertisement on Friday. “We’re sorry for not giving the Mile High City credit for it sooner.”
The unprecedented letter — which was preceded by the #DenverFirstIGuess campaign on Twitter, as well as 10 years of bitter, mumbled asides at — was approved by a cross-section of Portland and Austin’s music, art, food, beer, DIY-crafts and progressive vaping scenes.
“Denver really was the first to elevate all these things to the next level,” said Marigold Pants, the founder of Portland’s Carousel & Crumpet Fest Hosted by Doritos, which poaches a number of Denver acts for its three-day celebration of sour beers, Haim look-alike competitions, food-truck death matches, and 12-hour jags of pleasantly mediocre stand-up comedy that’s legally required to mention Doritos once an hour.
“Everything happening in Portland and Austin right now — and even San Francisco and Brooklyn — really started in Denver a decade ago, and it’s high time we recognized it,” she added.
Pants then made a hand sign like she was smoking a joint and added “Get it? That’s an altitude pun and a weed pun. Respect.”
As developers buy up empty warehouses in Portland and Austin for high-priced housing, they’re looking to Denver’s legacy of historic preservation and unique, thoughtfully designed, affordable new condos to retain their city’s unique character.
, for example, has all but reversed as CrossFit gyms and raw-juice bars have voluntarily ceded property to low-income housing developers.
“Denver was the match that lit that fire,” said Noelle Enlousaire, a manager at Moonbeep’s Fair Trade Coffee Ashram & Kale Barcade in the Portland neighborhood known as Cat Scarf.
“This letter proves we’re still teaching cities how to grow without getting too expensive for white millenials and California tech refugees,” said Slim Van Ello, a 24-year-old guitarist known as “Slime Vanilla” in Denver’s widely respected party-rock scene.
In many ways, the apology letter was telegraphed at recent events in Colorado, including last month’s 10th annual Typewriter & Telegraph Con, held on the urine-stained ashes of a former newspaper printing plant.
Since last year’s Bluebird riots, which left Austin artist Alejandro Rose-Garcia (a.k.a. Shakey Graves) and his team of stylists severely wounded on East Colfax Avenue, Denver artists have been lobbying for respect in the controversial public-awareness campaign #DenverFirstIGuess.
Billboards, buses and popular, thriving local media like The Denver Post have carried the splashy images and messages, including “THE ORIGINAL DISRUPTOR,” an all-caps cartoon-bubble flanked by an illustration of a bug-eyed horse on a toilet. Another reads “Not ready to make nice!” with an image of a giant blue bear in an infinity scarf crushing a Korean taco truck and custom-made ukulele.
“Without The UMS we wouldn’t have SXSW. Without Bud Bronson and the Good Timers we wouldn’t have Spoon,” said longtime Austin promoter Lubby “Honkytug” Bowfuddler. “We owe so many things to Denver and its solid, unchanging culture — even if everything was better in the ’90s.”
