Adventures with Eutimia

Eutimia (or Timi) was one of my RAs at Stanford – she was in the small group of RAs that I trained that year. I mean, I trained all the RAs, but I had a group of 15 or so RAs who I worked directly with and she was in that group. The following summer, she worked in the Residential Education office before moving home to Denver.

Leslie and I ran into her at the Outside Lands concert a couple of years ago and I could tell what I already knew – she would be a fun person to hang out with and go on adventures with. I could tell that she was a kindred spirit and would probably get along well with a bunch of my friends. So when I knew I would be in Denver, I emailed her and she immediately replied and even offered her place for me to stay.

Our plan for the night was to make it to the Art Walk, the monthly art festival held in Denver’s art district (first Friday of the month). It ran from 7-10pm, so our leaving at 6:30 should have afforded us plenty of time to get there, at least before it ended, despite any threats to sobriety. After stopping for a drink and getting caught up on the World of Eutimia, we walked down to the 16th Street Mall for some food and beer.

By that point, we were a bit toasty and started to head to the Art Walk. The bus we wanted was taking to long, so we decided to walk. The weather was warm, though a bit overcast and it got my “Ain’t No Sunshine” song obsession kicked into overdrive. When I mentioned Bill Withers to Timi, she started singing the melody to Use Me, so I had TWO songs stuck in my head (though both good). By the way, Timi is an amazing singer – for those of you who are Stanford folks, she sang for Talisman.

We finally got to the Art Walk about 8:45 or so and started poking around. The Art Walk is really cool – all the art studios stay open late and some serve free refreshments and wine (others charge for the wine). There were a couple really cool artists on display – Dean McCready had cool colors and there were several photographers whose art I really liked (including Greg Thow). We also checked out some live music here and there, some were decent, some weren’t.

We were about to go check out some more live music or a bar when we decided to go to one last art studio…

We walked up a narrow stairway and opened a door to the coolest studio of all containing mostly leather masks by Mike Romoth. The whole studio was awesome – cool masks, cool jewelry, cool paintings. All around, it was a great space and one I could easily see in the Mission or Berkeley. Mike told me that he is able to make masks fitted to goggles for use on the playa at Burning Man, so I’m going to get one (probably the sun devil mask). We ended up hanging out on the balcony for about 30-45 minutes with Mike and a few of his friends. He brought out a drum, Timi did a little freestyle singing, and one of the other guys started doing some spoken word stuff. It was an awesome way to spend a warm Denver evening.



On the walk back, we passed a skyscraper that had a really cool concave design. As we got closer to it, Timi told me that they built the building around an old church that was preserved, so as we got close, I could see the church that was dwarfed by this enormous building. I don't remember what it was called, but it had a cool feel to it.

And then we were back at Timi's place after a long walk from the Art Walk. It was a terrific adventure!