Wirds of Denver: Westword

Uh … in any mid-sized, culture-deficient American city, the one thing thinkery folks always cling to—nay, embrace—is their alternative weekly. Ours is called Westword.

In their own words:

Back in 1977, Denver was booming. Thousands of Baby Boomers were fleeing the coasts, lured to Colorado by the climate, the scenery, the promise of endlessly flowing Coors. But with the deluge came a dilemma: so many young, active people—and so little that told them what was happening in their increasingly dynamic city. That’s why we started Westword.

Twenty-five years later, Denver is again booming, welcoming another generation of young adults lured by the climate, the scenery, the country’s highest concentration of microbreweries. Westword captures the city for this group, too.

Every week, Westword serves up stories on everything from dirty political deals to great entertainment steals, the hottest new bands to the latest consumer scams, backed by gutsy reporting, stylish writing, and the most comprehensive calendar listings along Colorado’s Front Range. In college classrooms and corporate offices alike, the papers are snatched up by faithful readers who appreciate hard-hitting, award-winning journalism. And beer.

We’ll buy into most of that, but where’s the nod to all the EXXXTRA NAUGHTY sex worker ads and the hot quarter-pagers of fetching young lads reaching for one another’s taut little nipples? Pretty sure that’s the only section the corporate sector reads.

We’re 100-percent backing the gutsy reporting claim, however. Mostly because of staff writer Adam Cayton-Holland’s recent cover feature “Bye Bye Birdie,” which chronicles the plight to get the Gunnison sage grouse declared it’s own species and added to the endangered species list.

Cayton-Holland is no slouch. He’s a journalist, stand-up comic and an avid bird-watcher. How’s that for a WTF trifecta? Needless to say, his story got us thinking, so we posed him a few pointed(ish) questions:

How deep was your bird-love going into this article?

Pretty deep. I’ve always dug birds, but in the past few years it’s really turned into an obsession. Books, binoculars, pissing friends off when traveling internationally by taking us out of our way to see a certain bird—I’m hooked.

You are afforded a shiny, pill-shaped time machine and the option of hanging out with either a flock of dodos or a flock of heath hens-in their native habitats, of course-which do you chose and why?

I would hang with the dodo because they lived on an island in the Indian Ocean named Mauritius and that sounds more foreign and alluring to me than Springfield, Mass.

Do you think that male and female Denverites have their own lek-mating system in place that we aren’t even cognizant of?

Yeah. Male spikes hair and bench-presses. Female tries to reveal as much as possible. Male drinks until shirt comes undone and pecs are revealed. Female drinks until succumbing to overpowering urge to remove impractical high-heels. Coitus transpires. Neither remembers. The lek is called LoDo.

Quoting from your piece:

Every spring at sunrise, the male of the species spreads his spiked, black tail, tosses the feathers atop his head and inflates two egg-sized air sacs in his chest to create a rapid-fire popping sound, like someone repeatedly flicking the inside of their cheek with their index finger

Did you get a boner typing this [we just did]?

No. I reserve boners for humans. Well, pileated woodpeckers and humans.

Do you ever just want to blow in bureaucracy’s collective ear and say, “look man, these birds are dying … dying! You know, I may not understand your committees or you procedures-and yeah, maybe I can’t make sense of all these minutes-but I do know one thing, this beautiful chicken of a thing could be gone forever if we don’t do something about it right now. Do you want to wake up one day and tell your grandson, ‘sorry there aren’t any Gunnison sage grouses left, Jamojito, we did all we could’ and know that the words are as hollow as an egg-sized air sac? Now is our time, man. NOW! Let’s save this quirky little fucker.”

Yes. Yes I do.