Of Capitol Hill, moving.... and guitars

Life rolls on. Wendi and I are moving in two weeks to a larger apartment in Englewood. We are crossing our fingers and hoping that it works out; neither of us wants to move again for a considerable amount of time. In the past 4 years for one reason or another, we have moved 5 or 6 times, depending on how you calculate it… needless to say, we are sick of it.

So we are making the long anticipated move to respectability and middle class (ha!) suburban boringness, to a slightly larger apartment in beautiful Englewood, CO. The time has come for this era to end.

Don’t get me wrong – Capitol Hill is still the best, funkiest and prettiest neighborhood in Denver, in my opinion. The problem is that it’s a neighborhood that is friendly mostly to the very rich or very young – a diverse mix of big apartment buildings and VERY expensive houses.

We will miss the trees, the people, the parks, the nightlife, the bands and the friends we have here – we won’t miss some of the shady characters, the petty crimes such theft and random vandalism, and most of all the rich people who have pumped up the price of real estate to the point where it’s all but impossible to own a house here without making more than $200,000 a year.

We simply can’t afford the space we will need when Simon (that’s our unborn boy’s name, in case you didn’t know already) comes along in a few months. My only consolation is that all of the people in this area who tried to get rich from flipping one-bedroom condos for $250,000 are now losing their shirts. Ahhh… schadenfreude can be very soothing!

Capitol Hill is generally a safe neighborhood, although being an urban, inner city area it is home to some amount of crime. It is thick with bars and nightclubs – though these are part of the neighborhood’s character, you can meet messed-up people at anytime of day, and especially when the bars close at 2:00 a.m.

There are also a fair number of weirdos and people wigging out on any number of substances. These people are mostly harmless, though it’s advisable not to talk to them, or shake their hands, which they will sometimes offer to you in hopes of gaining an opening to hit you up for a cigarette or for money. Just say no and ignore them or you'll have a new, needy and unpleasant friend.

The down-n-outers are a species of human life common to the inner city, to even a gentrified, upscale neighborhood such as this. I learned long ago to be very cool towards anybody who approaches me out of the blue trying to be friendly – it doesn’t mean they like you for your charming personality, it means they WANT something. I’m not mean – I just won’t give anybody any money, no matter how heart-wrenching their sob story is. And people do tell some whoppers.

I remember one freakazoid who approached me in front of a rather notorious 7 Eleven on Colfax and York a couple of years ago. He galloped up to me, bobbing, weaving and gasping in what I suppose was intended as a desperate genuflection. “Oh please sir,” he sobbed, “I just need a dollar so I can get across town to see my baby daughter who’s in the hospital. Can’t you help me out?” I was amused by his bizarre behavior, but not impressed. “No, man,” I said flatly as I got into the car and drove off.

Later that week, in front of another store on Colfax, the same guy came up to me with the same weird attempt at eliciting sympathy. This time I was less than amused but I laughed in his face as I was taking my keys from my pocket. A quarter fell out and clinked on the ground. The guy didn’t remember me, misread my actions and thought I was being friendly because I’d laughed. “Oh, thank you sir!” he gasped at me as he watched the quarter roll away. I said, “Dude, I just saw you two days ago up the street. Still haven’t made it across town, huh? Well there’s your quarter!” This guy had absolutely no pride -- he dropped down on all fours groping for the quarter on the asphalt.

I wasn’t trying to be mean, but I do not appreciate it when wastoids like that try to hustle me. Trust me, the guy had no sick daughter. This happened in front of a liquor store. Coincidence?

Some of you may remember that Wendi was mugged about a year and a half ago, while she and I were living apart. Her apartment building itself was very nice, but it happened to be just around the block from a rather notorious, four-block stretch of Colfax between Logan and Washington, which for a while was an open-air drug market. A lot of shady characters aimlessly circling the block and saying “Yo. Yo. Yo. Yo!” when you walk by.

The police have thankfully cracked down on that area in the past year or so – I personally can’t figure out why any street dealer would frequent the area, because you can’t go five minutes without a cop cruising by, but nobody ever said that street criminals are gifted with high intelligence. Anyway, that was a very traumatic experience for her (and me!), but thankfully they didn’t hurt her – just knocked her down and took her wallet.

Since living in Capitol Hill, we have been subject to more petty crimes than I can remember – a car window busted for no apparent reason, our locked bicycles stripped, Wendi’s scooter tipped over, etc. But our last straw with petty crime happened a few weeks ago, when Wendi’s scooter was clean stolen from behind our building.

Our downstairs neighbor saw it happen. Three guys and a truck came and just picked it up and took it away. He doesn’t know us (and even if he had, I certainly wouldn’t have expected him to intervene), but did his utmost by contacting the building manager Steve, who knew whose scooter it was and tried to call us – we weren’t at home.

The scooter theft was a big blow to us, because we were planning to sell it and hoped to get around $750 for it. Wendi filed a police report but because it had no registration (under 50ccs and you don’t have to register a scooter in Colorado), we of course know that we’ll never get it back.

It was terribly ironic. We’ve lived in Capitol Hill for a long time and both of us have parked that scooter all over the place for days at a time without incident, and just as we were about to sell it… gah!!!! C’est la vie, I guess.

I am really hoping that our shiny new Elantra won’t be subject to such indignities when we move to our new apartment in a couple weeks, but I can’t be too optimistic. Englewood is a suburb of Denver, but that doesn’t mean it’s free of crime. We are moving to a fairly nice apartment complex. But it’s large, which means that there’s an uncomfortable degree of anonymity, and in fact the nice lady who leased it to us said there has been some “recent activity.” We’re crossing our fingers.

Having said all of this, I will reiterate that Wendi and I both adore Capitol Hill. It is a truly beautiful urban neighborhood, warts and all. We simply can’t afford to live here and get the space we want and need for our screaming bundle of joy – who will be arriving in probably less than 3 months.

Housing prices in Capitol Hill ridiculous. Our two-bedroom apartment, with its tiny bathroom and lack of air conditioning, is priced as it is because of its location, not because it is so luxurious. A family of three simply cannot live in this neighborhood on $40,000 a year.

This is a symptom of the currently imploding housing bubble… which is a subject I have been following with great interest for a long time. But I’ll save my strong opinions on that phenomenon of mass psychology for another blog post in the future ;-)

And now for something COMPLETELY different!!!

My last post was about Led Zeppelin’s glorious “Rain Song”. Yeah I know it’s been a long time since I posted – sue me! Anyway, I thought I would make a few comments about alternate tunings, for those guitar players out there who are bored enough to actually spare a couple seconds to read this.

As mentioned previously, this song is played using a quite different tuning (DGCGCD) from the standard tuning (EADGBE) that we guitar playas know and love and on which we probably learned how to play. While it is possible to play this song in the standard tuning, it doesn’t sound nearly as good and is much more difficult to play that way.

Since my last post (was it really 5 months ago? Wow!), I have had one of our guitars tuned his way, to what I call “D Modal” tuning, and it has been a wonderful, refreshing experience for me. I’ve written a couple of new songs in the “Rain Song” tuning that sound nothing like “Rain Song,” and plan to record them as soon as I can, after we get settled in our new apartment. This tuning has a lovely, melancholy ambiguity, due to its being so friendly to suspended 2nd and 4th intervals. And it's great for getting a nice drone going.

I recommend alternative tunings to any guitar player who happens to find themselves stuck in a rut. All those classic chord shapes you learned by rote get thrown out the window, and you are forced to relearn your instrument. New chord voicings, progressions and harmonic possibilities will open up like a secret garden before your ears. You’ll be exploring the musical wilderness like a newborn wolf cub. It’s just plain fun! Plus, there are literally hundreds of other tunings of one variety or another that you can use to spice things up.

Try one or more of them. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.