18 weird Denver things we learned in 2018

Not all of them involve bugs. There were also illegal lemonade sales, stickers and too-big inflatable rabbits.
11 min. read
Denverite’s first-ever membership happy hour at Understudy downtown, Feb. 13, 2018. (Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite)

All years are weird. There's nothing especially weird about 2018. But it is the year we most recently experienced so in honor of it ending we'll all talk about how weird it was.

What we specifically want to talk about are all the weird things we learned about Denver in 2018. There were illegal lemonade sales, ugly fish, odd geese, a bench desert and so much more.

If you follow Denverite closely, you may be wondering now, "Is this going to be the Kevin and Ashley Show?" Yes. Yes it is. The Kevin and Ashley show feat. Allan, Andy and Esteban. Grab your truffled parmesan popcorn.

The guy who sold all those "NATIVE" stickers is a transplant

Eric Glade, a transplant from Utah, is the man behind the stickers. And as Andy learned, they sent him on a wild ride.

Eric Glade's first order form, published in the Rocky Mountain News, for his "NATIVE" bumper sticker invention, May 24, 2018. (Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite)

There's a robot that eats trash and rolls around Cherry Creek

As I said before, when the robots come for us, they will remember we made them eat trash.

Professor Rafael Sanchez (right) leads a group of University of Colorado Denver engineering students to test their first model of a trash-eating water wheel on the Cherry Creek, Aug. 20, 2018. (Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite)

Related: We will be remembered by our trash

I mean this figuratively as well as literally.

Kevin just means it literally.

It was illegal for kids to run lemonade stands without a permit

Someone in Stapleton called the police on some poor kids just trying to be kids in May. (Which, what? Who hurt you?)

In September, nearly five years after Colorado legalized recreational marijuana, Denver legalized the sale of lemonade by un-permitted children.

There are some weird geese waddling around City Park

I became obsessed with these storybook-lookin' geese within weeks of first spotting one, and quickly convinced Dave to let Kevin and me go on a literal wild goose chase.

Greylag geese wander City Park, Nov. 29, 2018. (Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite)

And apparently, rabid skunks were waddling around too

As Allan reported in March, there were nine sightings of the rabid stink-cats in Bear Valley, Harvey Park, Athmar Park and Overland.

:(

Denver has an ugly fish pageant and it's called CARPSLAM

OK it's just called Carpslam but I think it should be said/heard in a monster truck rally radio commercial voice.

Naturally, Kevin attended.

"Grandoozy" was a thing we were going to have to type and say now

It's still how I imagine someone's very Western grandpa describing a large music festival. And now we're stuck with it.

Ashley Dean in Denverite's portrait booth during First Friday at Renegade Brewing Company, Aug. 3, 2018. (Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite)

It's now easier than ever to eat locally grown bugs in the Denver area

This is at least the second time Kevin wrote about edible bugs.

A man named Enver visited Denver

While he was here, Enver Siddiky took a lot of photos near big Denver signs in such a way that the letter D was blocked out. We were so delighted we made him our first and probably last Denver Tourist of the Week. (Anyone want to take a shot at the title in 2019 is of course welcome. But you're gonna have to get pretty weird.)

Enver Siddiky at the Denver Pavilions. (Courtesy of Enver Siddiky)

The RiNo Art District didn't have a single public bench

Seriously. Not one place to sit down and hang out without buying something.

In an effort to fix it, Allan reported, they built a pop-up park.

There's a great art collection inside a downtown Denver office building

Kevin was in the Colorado building to photograph someone at their office when we stumbled upon the Dikeou Collection.

Siblings Devon and Pany Dikeou established their private collection in 1998 and opened it to the public in 2003.

Art at the Dikeou Collection inside the Colorado Building at California and 16th Streets, Sept. 26, 2018. (Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite)

Capitol Hill has a lot of stone lions sitting around because Denver was trying to be fancy

A reader asked, so Kevin went around asking: Why are there so many lion statues in Cap Hill?

He also bothered the owner of Lion's Lair about it.

The Lion's Lair co-owner, Tony Meggitt, at the bar on a Friday evening, March 30, 2018. (Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite) bars; nightlife; colfax; denver; colorado; denverite; kevinjbeaty;

No relation.

I like to imagine a timeline in which Denver is referred to as a lion town instead of a cow town.

There are very deadly mushrooms just hangin' around out there

They're not even supposed to be here. But an Aurora man and his son found one. Then they found another.

It's the first time the Destroying Angel mushroom has turned up here, that we know of, and finder Lazarus Bell donated his specimen to the Denver Botanic Gardens. He also told me he plans to get the mushroom tattooed on his body.

There are elves, leprechauns and gnomes hidden throughout the Denver Museum of Nature & Science

Apparently a lot of people already knew this, but we did not, so Kevin and I went looking for them.

I also spoke to Kent Pendleton, who painted the little dudes into the exhibit backgrounds.

Dung beetles have some stuff to teach us about Colorado's past, present and future

Or as Kevin called them, "charismatic little potty-mouths."

One of the world's leading dung beetle experts, Dr. Frank-Thorsten Krell, calls Denver home.

He has a lot of beetles and Kevin learned a lot about them. For example: Denver's dung "isn't their style."

Aphodius erraticus, an invasive European dung beetle species, in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science's Zoology Collection. (Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite)

The planter boxes that house the trees at Red Rocks Amphitheatre are kind of a big deal

I learned so, so many things about the boxes I'm often relegated to standing on during Red Rocks shows. Mainly: there's a battle over the best way to preserve them and make them safe, and it dates back to 1999.

One man really can make a difference

Er- one man and his buddy and some T-shirts.

We followed Rob Toftness on his quest to save the chile they once made at Breck on Blake after the restaurant closed and reopened as Cherry Cricket Ballpark.

Spoiler: He won.

Chris Lombardi (left) and Rob Toftness shake hands after winning, sort of, the Cherry Cricket's chile cookoff, July 19, 2018. (Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite)

Correction: this story originally said Devon and Pany Dikeou are sisters. Pany is Devon's brother.

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