Dissidents Row

Denver appears to be an orderly city. There are streetcars and busses that run on time. The police keep the jam-packed roads moving, even if slowly. There are volunteers with big smiles and bright blue t-shirts readily available to give you directions. Chipotle, born in Denver is almost as common as Starbucks in New York. A Patagonia store takes up a whole block downtown. They use recyclable plastic cups made out of corn and in order not to waste fuel, you can rent or borrow bikes, dropping them off and picking them off at various spots across the city. So neat. So clean. To the point that things are nicknamed after rows in the convention center – Radio row; talk show row; etc etc.

Four blocks off the 16th strip drag where a free bus shuttles tourists and locals through the shopping district and past the Pepsi center (where the convention's being held) is a grassy lawn in front of an assemblage of big stone government buildings that the majority of delegates and media to the conventions will not see.

Its afternoon, the sun's hot and the air is filled with the stench of BO. And I don't mean the Dem candidate. What's ahead of me? A gathering of protestors, beating on drums, chanting, "end the war" and sporting dreads in every shape, length and color.

It looks like your classic protest. Old hippies and young anarchists gathered together to bemoan the state of the world until a bunch of marines in tan fatigues burst through the protests, running instep and shouting "ten hut."

The dissidents jump back. The marines run in place and then leap into ninja poses. Huh?

Who's high now? I rub my eyes maybe this is a weird by product of altitude sickness?
But no it looks like a bunch of marines are taking random martial arts poses in the middle of a bunch of stinky commies.

(I'll get to the commie part I promise.) The marines then grab each other, grapple and a female marine gets hoisted overhead and carried off screaming. Four armored cars filled with swat team members, carrying machine guns and wearing protective riot gear drive by.

Where am I? When am I? Have I just been warped back to 1968?

And then this scream cuts through the confusion, "What you're seeing is street theater but these marines served in Iraq and this is what they go through everyday?"

Really? Since when do American marines pull Jackie Chns in the middle of airport road?

Vampy Goth girl, chesty, heavy with knee high black boots that have stumpy heels continues to shout. A cop comes over. She rushes forward to shake his hand.

"Hello authoritarian earthling I appreciate your law abiding presence in keeping the peace," she might as well have said.

The cop looks aghast. As if he’s about to radio: “The Martians have landed.”

And the Martians are communists. It’s a code for being cool.

Guy in Che Guevera t-shirt shouts out, “Communism rocks.”

A perky girl with a yellow wrist band flirts with a guy.

“You’re a communist,” she giggles. “That’s cool. I love communism.”

And as I keep walking, it proliferates. Welcome to Dissidents Row. The orderly and polite people of Denver have relegated the outcasts, and the anarchsits, the communists and the we wear Guevera shirts cause its cool crowd to their own little row on and around the grounds of the state capitol no less.

The irony turns me into a political Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. I’m McCarty one moment, turning up my nose at the guy that selling thet-shirts that caricature Cheney and Bush and Obama too as Mr. Burns like figures. Feeling a self-righteous indignation as irrational as their dissonance. The next minute, I’m the girl with the yellow arm band, giggling and winking at the old commie selling “Make Out Not War” posters.

Make out. Make up. Make do. 21st century politics is about a well choreographed dance, and even the flat footed ballerinas have a role to play, thudding across the stage a momentary distraction from the primas primping behind the curtains.