Vandrea Does America: Day 79 (Friday 9/7/12)- Denver, CO

I took up the reigns of planning for a change. According to the city of Denver's website in the evening of the first friday of the month ten of the city's museums are free. It turns out the museums themselves are unaware of these promises. We bounced around the Golden Triangle District like pinballs being turned away at every museum, except those that were even more maliced and had already closed.

Though the museums weren't free or open late, many of the galleries in town were. At the Byers House museum we were treated to cookies, cheese, crackers, infant sized water bottles and a showing from three local artists. Afterwards we wandered in an effort to find more studios or a more substantial serving of water. In our wandering we came across a friendly and well dressed drug pusher. Maybe drug salesman would be more accurate. He really wasn't very pushy. We passed the salesman in smart business attire and with an illegal smile he commented on what a happy couple we seemed to be (this must be true, that or people in Denver are depressed, or perhaps happy and single, because this is the second time in the city our happy couple status has been commented on). He continued that if there was anything that could possibly make us even happier, he knew what it was, and quite conveniently he had some of the magic marajuana right there with him. We politely declined. He countered by asking me to at least smell the quality of his product and whipped out (on a busy sidewalk in daylight) a bag of glaucoma treatment. I inhaled (the scent). "Oh that's stanky!" I said. Perhaps it was this comment that assured him he would not be closing the sale. Still he wished us a good day. During several walks through the streets of Denver we have been solicited by many people with many causes, claims and products- this was by far the most pleasant encounter yet.

On our way out of downtown and to our van we happened upon a few more galleries and viewed some interesting artwork. The mostly suprising "piece" was the display case full of naked Barbie dolls intertwined in excrutiating looking positions with, to put it tamely, foreign objects in delicate places. Isaiah's most interesting find was the work of two artists with the last name of Felix, who, in their own ways, had colorful and cartoonish takes on the mountainsides of Colorado.