1. Most neighborhoods have at least one place that’s (according to lore) haunted. What the haunted place in your neighborhood (or in the neighborhood where you grew up), and what’s the story?
Not sure about haunted in my neighborhood, but there is this old abandoned house on Iliff next to a firewood business. It always looks pretty spooky and dilapidated. It has been vacant for over 10 years – there must be a ghost in there somewhere.
2. Most neighborhoods have at least one place where some kid (according to legend) did something daring, dangerous, and most likely stupid. What’s the place in your neighborhood (or in the neighborhood where you grew up), and what’s the story?
Out west of Craig where I grew up there was a uranium mill tailings processing plant that was closed up and abandoned. It was eventually named an EPA Superfund site. But as a child it was a popular place for folks to go and ride their dirt bikes all over the mounds of uranium. Now, if that isn’t stupid, what is?
3. Most neighborhoods have some lame building (like a bank or a gas station) where there used to be something much, much cooler. What’s the place in your neighborhood (or in the neighborhood where you grew up), and what’s the story?
I was just thinking of this in a different light the other day. Down in Cherry Creek on Filmore and Second there is a big old building that is now offices and mostly vacant. But once upon a time it was The Tattered Cover bookstore and one of the most magical places in the world. That store was so cool, with three floors and basement of retail space, filled to the gill with books. The three Tattered Cover locations that have replaced it are no where near as cool and my love of “The TC” has waned a bit without the old main bookstore.
4. In most neighborhoods of our youths, there are a few places that almost always cause us to say, “That’s the place where I _________.†What’s one such place in the neighborhood where you grew up, and what’s the story?
My childhood hometown doesn’t change much. I can still walk around it and point to things and say “That’s the place where I …” The first place that comes to mind is my elementary school a few blocks up from my childhood home.
5. Where in the neighborhood where you grew up would you most likely run into someone today who knew you when you were a kid?
Next door neighbors to my childhood home would know me, though not necessarily as a kid. Scanning the memory banks, there may be no one in the immediate vicinity of the neighborhood who knew me as a child, but maybe a block up, their are still a few old families where I was their paperboy and delivered their daily paper. They may remember me, though a few would be pretty old by now.
1.) Garibaldi Lodge and Mount Whistler Lodge. My parents operated both business and we lived in them as a family in British Columbia, Canada. Garibaldi Lodge had three floors and 13 rooms, the 13th room alone and dark at the top of the staircase and house. (We called it the “attic.”) We saw ghosts, black scary shapes, and my mother witnessed a floating, smiling head by her bedside, as well as plenty of college students barfing after one of the many rock concerts my parents held there back in the early 1970s. Really and truly, the scarriest place I’ve ever lived, always a sense of dread and being watched. Scary old Canadian lodge. Yep, Garibaldi Lodge was more haunted by dead things than Lindsey Lohan’s vagina. And Mount Whistler Lodge also had ghosts, black spectral shapes, full body apparitions, drug addicts, and people so loaded on LSD that they wrapped sticks of dynamite to the structural supports of the Lodge, while the place was packed with people at a rock concert my parents were hosting, so that they could blow it up so that the Lodge would slide into Alta Lake–they wanted it to be the first floating lodge in Canada. It’s a good thing my father stopped them before they lit the fuses or Mount Whistler Lodge would have had more ghosts in it than Garibaldi Lodge. Both Lodges no longer exist. They were bulldozed back in the 1980s.
2.) We were always doing something daring and stupid, like pounding bullets with rocks so that they would explode, and because of that it’s amazing that I’m still alive.
3.) My parents owned and operated a motel in Tucson called The El Corral Motel and it blew up, so it went from a crappy old motel to something much, much cooler. Does that count?
4.) Because I moved around so much as a kid (more than 25 times by the time I was 18), I can only associate this question to a place close to Frisco, Colorado, off of I-70, a cliff on the side of the highway where I stood on the edge and worked on my lines for a play. I stood there, on the edge, looking down, going over my lines because the character I played was an “edgy guy.” Colour me Mr. Method. Hours pass and a local pulls up in his car and asks me not to jump. Turns out, the cliff I chose was the local suicide jumping off point. All that to say, whenever I pass that cliff on I-70 I point it out and my friends, like Roy and Tony and Adrian and Trevor and Greg, among others, tell me to shut up.
5.) Cairo, Egypt.
These were harder than usual. . . .
1. This one is a little too easy, RW. As many of you know I live on an old cemetery that’s been converted to a park. As many as 2,000 bodies were never removed (it’s a pretty grisly bit of Denver history), and remain in the park. I’ve never had any supernatural experiences down there, but there is one phenomenon that’s difficult to explain. On the hottest days of the year, you can wander into freezing cold spots—the air become frigid. Ghosts? Microclimates? Who’s to say.
2. The truth can now be told–Barry Bailey crapped himself outside of Mrs. Beaver’s classroom. Code brown. Ewwww. Wonder whatever happened to that scatmaster?
3. The destruction of the old May D&F plaza was one of the worst architectural / economic development blunders in Denver history. The plaza, contained three early I. M. Pei buildings. All were different, but they were in perfect balance. It was replaced by an ugly cube, and further turned into an eyesore by an awful “sculpture†of three emaciated ballerinas. Boo on you Denver for letting that happen.
4. We used to live near a bunch of noisy train tracks. Down the street was a man-made hill that was used as a loading ramp, to dump truckloads of stuff into railroad cars. On those rare occasions when I venture down there, I look up at the dock, and think, “That little hill is so small, and we used to sled there.â€
5. Most of those people have all moved on.