When you don’t update your blog for a while your last post starts to kind of look like a headstone. It seems that sometime last summer I hit a wall of complacency and stopped updating this blog. I blame it all on having a job.
I started this blog pretty much right when I was laid off in February of 2009. I intended it to be a place where I can talk about how awesome I am at the Internet so people would want to hire me. I’ve been employed now for nearly a year and this joint has been collecting dust for about seven months…see how that works out? The time and motivation slipped through the folds of my brain into chasm 13. Not all of my motivation, mind you; just the motivation to blog.
I work in digital marketing now so blogging should be part of my makeup, but sadly it isn’t. I published two successful photoblogs last year and managed to get them off the ground with nearly no time spent on putting actual words on the screen. I also mess with SEO and Social Media all day, every day, for the company I work for. So how have I gotten by for this long? I have been relying very heavily on the hep of others. Meanwhile my time is being taken up by a bunch of different tasks, plans and events, which happen to be what I sat down to talk about today.
I suppose the first things to address are the two web sites I launched in 2010. I can talk ad nauseam about the time I spent running around through the streets of this city or that. Whether it was Boston, Denver, Richmond or anywhere else, the city street was always my first love. I feel most comfortable in the city…any city. When I moved back to Denver, in November of 2004, I was flooded with the most vivid memories of growing up here. I was exploring Capitol Hill, Uptown, Downtown, LoDo and all of the other neighborhoods with the newness of discovery that I felt each time I would explore a new city. The difference is that I recognized these streets. They looked a lot different then I remember them to be in the late 80s and early 90s. I left in 1994, just six years after LoDo got its designation as a historical district. There was no Beta and whatever the Sports Column was then, it certainly was not the best place in town to pick up last-call tricks. Oh how times have changed.
I wasted unknown hours loitering on 13th and wasted untold dollars on records and t-shirts at Wax Trax, back when they had four stores on the block. Buying sunglasses and shit at Fashion Nation or Imi Jimi, before Tom Hollar was murdered. I ended up living in Capitol Hill for nearly six years after I moved back. I scurried around in the same familiar alleys that I smoked pot and pissed in since I was 14 years old. The difference is that this time I had a smartphone and Twitter.
If you’re reading this then I’m assuming that you know that the rest is history. If you don’t know, then too bad. The story is still too fresh and I tell it too many times. To make a long story short; with help, motivation and inspiration from Amber, Meaghan, April, Jeremy and a few others I created Unseen Denver. I was on the fence about developing this website, mostly because I never imagined that anyone could possibly think these images were as awesome as I thought they were. I realized how cool people thought this idea was at SXSW later that March.
Allen and I had just gotten into Austin and we had dinner with some Denver friends. At the table P.J. told me that he was stoked for Unseen Denver and he felt like he was experiencing the beginning of a “I knew them back when they started” thing. I spent the following week in the filthy streets of Austin Texas, listening to live rock and roll for hours a day… Now I’m just rambling.
Since then Unseen Denver has had 74 different contributors and continues to get more images emailed to her every single day. We (her and I) have a Contributing Editor, mentions in the Denver Westword and even a shout out in the New York Times….Holy shit, right? I also started working with my very old friend Igor from Driven by Boredom on the New York version: Unseen NYC…more on that another time.
Unseen Denver is a year old now and it’s time to fucking party. Through this mini adventure of website management I have met some truly incredible people. Two of these people you will know as Tim Davids and Rachel Romero. This coming Saturday, March 5, they are joining forces to produce a party, the likes of I have never been involved with. Big Top Denver is going to be full of bands, emcees, artists, booze and the very best crowd that you will find this decade. Check out www.bigtopdenver.com to see all of the badass videos and fliers they put together for this joint. I asked them if I could celebrate Unseen Denver’s birthday at their party, and they gave me a media installation at the event and a spot on the flier.
This blog post was supposed to be about the different things I am involved in, so here they are:
- Full time job
- I’m back in school
- Unseen Denver
- Unseen NYC
- Residual freelance
- Podcast
Number 6 is a very slow moving project that may never, ever see the light of day. If it doesn’t come to fruition, I will always look back at it as a crime against my ambition.
