Aug. 11, 2007 - 19:10 MDT

UP TO DATE ?

Dr. Colorado aka Tom Noel shows his good humor in today�s column he wrote. I shall quote just a bit of it to show his slant on things in general.

QUOTE

CITY COULD USE A TRICK OR TWO �Denver mayor John Hickenlooper has been doing so much for our city that I hate to complain. But even in this pro-growth, business-hugging administration, there is one glaring omission.�

"Our mayor spends a good deal of time courting business and soliciting donations for the Democratic National Convention coming here next August.�

�In flirting with businesspeople and politicians, the mayor could learn a trick or two from Mayor Robert Walter Speer, who first brought the Democrats to Denver 100 years ago. That time the party asked for only $100,000, not the almost $100 million requested this time.�

�Mayor Speer, however, offered something businesspoeple and Democrats expected back then: commercial companionship. Speer knew that every great city has a great red-light district.�

�And so did Denver, just like the magnificent public schools, superb mass transit and first-rate neoclassical-style history museum Denver had, we oncer savored a world-class red-light district. Before the city closed Market Street in 1912, Speer protected a well-defined and regulated sex-for-sale district.�

�Even then, of course, prostitution was illegal. City officials however, looked the other way � unless they needed to raise money by raiding the row and fining its employees.�

UNQUOTE

Having read other books by Tom Noel and also one by Phil Goodstein titled �The Seamy Side Of Denver� and in my youth having been a running board jumper on a Package Delivery truck, which delivered merchandise from the big department stores downtown to places all over town which included houses of ill repute and being offered to �take it out in trade,� their services in place of the cash on C.O.D. deliveries, I think his accounting is accurate.

But tongue in cheek is his column today.

Yet he reminds us whereof we came and that it is not too many years ago when as the miners came, first were the saloons, then ladies of the night, after that schools and churches.

The Oxford Hotel, just a block up from the Union Station is reputed to have had a tunned from the station right into the hotel so that VIPs could travel incognito � who knows if this was true ? Also a tunnel was said to have connected the Windsor Hotel to a Market Street cat house. It is also said that The Brown Palace had a tunnel to the Navarre which was a bit shady.

It depends on whose account you read, but some of it must have been true. VIPs always wanted to appear to be snow white and pure to their constituents and/or customers, while having their R&R the way they wanted it.

Seems like much of that leaning has carried over to these days, although more underground than before. And as well we have nowadays the �Swingers,� which in a way makes the old �houses� obsolete and redundant.

But, you know, what is a traveling man or conventioneer gonna do for fun when away from home and restraints ? ? ? ?

Considering where we are as a city today to the one we were years ago, I think we are much better off - - - - yet there is still crime, illegal gambling, prostitution today, all I have to do is read the newspapers or watch the news on TV. How much have we changed as a city ? And are we just bringing things UP TO DATE ? . . . . . . . . . . . .

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