Stella's Coffee Haus

23 July 2015.

Harper somewhat hesitantly…involuntarily….grumpily agreed to come down to Stella’s with me today. G was cleared for take off by the oral surgeon and headed straight to Jose's. Harp needed to get out of the house, her shoulder hurts and work is not letting her off next  week. They let her off this week because she threatened to sue. That's my girl.

I even suggested separate cars so she could leave when she was bored with me.

We were immediately in for a delightful afternoon when we arrived and I parked, but Harp kept going, passing up empty street spots.

Then I got the text: I don’t know how to parallel park. I never learned. I 'll just go home.

I stood in an empty spot until she could turn around, and it was long enough for her not to need to truly parallel park. I tried to explain to her how to do it, she grumpily shut me down “It literally does me no good for you to tell me if I can’t do it.”

I have no idea how the child took Driver’s Ed without having to parallel park.

A table was empty, which was a nice surprise, and there was shade, even better. We got two green tea arnies and sat quietly until she started.

Started. Because this has been going on all summer.

“I didn’t even get a summer, I work all the time, I didn’t get a summer, it’s over and I have to work six days next week and they only gave me this week off because I threatened to sue. This sucks, I didn’t get a summer.

Oh, Darlin’, you have no idea what it means to Not Have A Summer. But I stayed quiet and changed the subject.

When she grew tired of me I acquiesced and said “Do you know how to get home from here?

“No”.

I pointed west “Broadway’s that way…”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“Take Broadway to I 25 North to 6^th….”

“Whatever, I’ll figure it out.

“Text me when you get home.”

And she’s gone.

She passed me on her way out. She turned left –east---away from Broadway.

What’re you gonna do?

I first came here with Mecklenberg  the Dog after I moved back to Denver in 1991. “Seams Like Old Times” was on the Pearl/ Florida corner, The Margarita Bay Club was on Pearl and Louisiana.

Later I came here and The Sushi Den Took over the empty corner, The Pearl Street Grill had a neighbor called GREENS, and the Vogue was temporarily turned into a live  theatre. I did a show there.I worked at the The Pearl Street Grill.

Later I came here with my children, Mecklenberg had moved on proving he could not be trusted around babies, hauling the double stroller up the stairs, The Sushi Den on the Corner, The Pearl Street Grill now a place I had formerly worked. Greens was something else and the Vogue had been turned into apartments.  Seams Like Old Times is a business space now? Or a trendy trendy shop I cannot afford to go into. It says OTOTO on the glass door. Likely trendy, sounds trendy. Wait. Is it OTQTO? I just checked my facebook locator, it isn’t identified there so it can’t be a shop.

Stella’s has remained unchanged. Brick walls, wood patio, small inside. Room for only the bar and the comfy chairs back in the house. The left side has been “quiet”, and reserved for meetings and held music and poetry. Nothing has expanded. There is no where to go but up, which is what everyone else is doing.  

The house next door to Stella’s is now a weirdly trendy restaurant, they tried to keep the house intact like Stella’s did, but it’s wrong and weird. They built a huge patio out front and….went up.

I’m  here with my youngest, now 17. She was born in the Grant house, so was Genoa. The Pearl Street Grill is gone and it looks like another sushi joint is moving in—although  it may just be a Japanese Restaurant. They have gone UP and built a second story as well as a deck. Next door the former GREENS is under the same type of construction. In these old neighborhoods, unless you can purchase the property next door the only way to go is up. I wonder if you can sell your unused air space like in NYC? Stella's could make bank, they're only using their one story. Hansen’s is what the sign says instead of Margarita Bay Club.

There was no parking down here 20 years ago when the small houses were occupied by couples and starter families like ours. Dogs and owners and strollers ruled the street.

There is still no parking down here 20 years later, and few of the original houses remain, they have been replaced by cubes of duplexes intended to look trendy, and in the two hours I have been here I’ve seen no strollers, several bicycles and men in slacks and button down shirts with one earbud in while their wingtips hurry them past, or up the stairs for a to go coffee. The tables are occupied by equally earbudded twenty-somethings with their laptops open---as I am, albeit not twenty something. Shit, I’m almost fifty. One gentleman sitting happily alone in his  orange sherbet shorts (which annoyingly is not SHERBERT) appears to be about my age, is glued to his cell phone and his pink and white plaid shirt would look trendy on a younger kid, but on him he looks like Chevy Chase. The pretty short haired woman  in the halter dress with the tattoo on her arm smiled at me as I surveyed my compatriots. She is earbudded and  cell  phoned, but has two library books in front of her. I find this oddly comforting even though she has not opened them.

I don’t like change, and I despise it when it is disguised as “progress”. This neighborhood is not better than it was, it is worse.

Gone is the tiny used CD shop. Gone is the hair salon that was my hair salon. Gone are the young mothers , the strollers. I used to take G---and later both girls---to preschool in the double stroller, roller blades strapped to my feet, tooling straight down the middle of the road with no worry of being beeped at by a car, or hit, or anything. The only traffic between our house and the church preschool was local,  or foot, or stroller/roller blade.

Not to mention that when we first moved down here, to the first "little house" on Lincoln we could walk to Herman's Hideaway and stumble home. Of course we didn’t have the expendable income to do that too often, but the opportunity was there, nonetheless. I walked to work at The Pearl Street Grill, and to the show at the Vogue.

One time I foolishly chose to load the girls into the stroller and roller blade them across the highway to Wash Park. It was hot, and not a great choice on a hot day. We primarily spent time at the Decker Library and Platt Park. The library had air conditioning, our house did not. It was only half a block away, and it’s a LIBRARY. Reading is good.

Why’d we leave?

Well, they opened a youth shelter on Acoma and the park became a sex den after dark. On several occasions the girls and I would have to poke a sleeping teenager from off the sand. Cars started getting broken into, vandalized. We had one bathroom and four people, and an architect told us we were not a candidate for a “pop top” due to the poor foundation of our tiny craftsman home. We had only two bedrooms and two growing kids. The electrician who  renovated our tiny kitchen botched the tile AND almost burned down our house with faulty wiring. We had one bathroom. There were reasons at the time.

Damn. I loved that little house.

I loved this little neighborhood.