Road Trip! - Mile High City Part I

This is the actual statue that greets you at the Denver Airport. Really. I hope you weren't planning on sleeping tonight.

My travels take my to some random places for random reasons, and this time they took me to Denver in the middle of October. I figured I'd take in the sites, see a game at the Pepsi Center, and down a gallon of microbrews like a yuppie in the Marina.

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Here's the good news about Denver - there's nothing but sports, beer, and artery-clogging pub food. And the bad news? There's NOTHING but sports, beer, and life-shortening, cheese-laden, breaded and deep fried pub food.

Quick aside: Men's Health disagrees with me. Maybe when you choose to sit idle for 3 hours at a time and throw down Monte Cristos dipped in maple syrup, that's more of a lifestyle choice than a condemnation of an entire city. Do I look like a public health official? Fact: there's a lot of shitty food there and I ate it.

Here's a fucking amazing pulled pork grilled cheese sandwich and an amber ale microbrew. Guh so good.


But BY FAR the finest culinary treat Denver has to offer is Biker Jim's Gourmet Hot Dogs. Here's Biker Jim's unassuming hot dog cart:

More importantly, here's Biker Jim's batshit crazy menu:

Southwest Buffalo. Alaska Reindeer. Friends, you haven't eaten a street vendor hot dog until you've had Biker Jim's Elk Jalapeno Cheddar dog with cream cheese and carmelized onions.

The dog/sausage bursts with a hugely unique flavor. There's just enough cream cheese to give it a slight sweetness. And the bread. Oh, the bread! So soft and fresh. On top of all this, Biker Jim was probably the friendliest and most helpful person I met in the Mile High City. GO HERE NOW.

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When I wasn't bringing obscure land mammals closer to extinction, I was at The Sports Column, a popular downtown sports bar. The Sports Columns is a vast, open bar with an impressive array of HDTV's - by my count 5 70" TVs and a few smaller ones too. The bar was just a few blocks away from my hotel and thankfully carried Center Ice. I hiked over there to watch the 10/22 game vs. Tampa Bay. 2 rants:

#1 - On the uselessness of hotel bars - I travel a lot which means I stay in a lot of hotels. Hotels, by definition, are inhabited people who are from out-of-town. So why the fuck don't hotel bars carry Center Ice, Sunday Ticket, etc.? I don't want to spend 30 minutes googling for a goddamn bar where I can watch my hockey team play. In Washington D.C. I took the fucking Metro to Arlington, Virginia to watch 1 Sharks game. If you're a 4-star hotel, order the packages, charge me $8 a beer, and we'll all be winners. Got it?

#2 - On San Jose, Beer, and Bars. I love the City of San Jose with all of my heart and never want to live anywhere else. But holy fuck, we do not have our shit together when it comes to watering holes. Take the Sports Column - they took a huge red brick warehouse, gutted it, then filled it with stools, giant HDTVs, and goofy shit on the walls. They order all the major sports packages, basically run happy hour 24/7, and huge surprise - they've got a fun place to be that's packed with happy, drunk revelers. Why is this so hard? Why was our best pregame drinking destination (Tied House) shut down due to lack of profitability? Why is our current best pregame destination (The Brit) overpriced and have the floor plan of the furniture section of a Goodwill? I just want a fun place to drink.

Anyways, the point being, The Sports Column was a fun place to drink at and San Jose - Tampa was a godawful atrocious game.

Check back tomorrow for Part II where I invade enemy territory and explore Denver's weird fascination with burritos. Until then, I'll leave you with a quiz... In the Mile High City, exactly when is idling allowed? I'll give you a hint: