Living in a Bohemian neighborhood

 

Like many recent college graduates, I ended up in a Bohemian neighborhood after leaving my home in New Jersey. In some ways, I started my adult life in the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Denver Colorado. Miraculously, I found a job within two days of moving to Denver. Leaving the downtown hotels, I walked around at random and found an apartment with a "to rent" sign on East 17th Avenue. The lady wanted $125 a month and I had my new home in a railroad apartment. 

This area of Northern Capitol Hill had all the earmarks of a Bohemian neighborhood. Within a few blocks was an Avant Garde theatre, a movie revival house, a hip record store, several bars, a nightclub, coffee houses and a vegetarian grocery store. One interesting feature of the grocery store was a peanut butter machine that ground peanuts and deposited the mixture to a jar placed below the machine. It's the only time I saw one of those machines. 

In my spare time I worked for a fledgling radio station that never got off the ground and through my New Jersey contact got invited to a variety of art openings. The food was always good at these things. One lesson I learned is not to allow a fledgling artist to paint a living room. Lessons learned. 

Over time I switched jobs and decided to buy a condo in Southeast Denver and left Capitol Hill. By that time many of the aforementioned haunts had closed and the place lost some of its luster. Today the area, like many bohemian districts, is no longer affordable for the young and recent graduates have to make do with Mom and Dad's finished basement. 

Editor's note: A good guide to Capitol Hill is Phil Goldstein's Denver's Capitol Hill. I remember his walking tours where he walked backwards through the neighborhood,