Four Baggers and Foreclosures

With the never ending increasing Denver area traffic, I sometimes have to come up with alternate routes to work. I found this house on a several block detour from my normal route. You see all kinds of old houses when you drive around town. Englewood was established in the late 1800’s, so there are quite a few still standing that are 100 years old or more. And they are disappearing too. Englewood has a good mix of near century old houses that are in various states of disrepair... And a bunch of ugly modern and uber-expensive homes, that are overtaking anything over three decades old. With the real estate market the way it is, the profit margin in buying a crusty old falling down house, flattening it, then building a shiny new one on the cleared lot, could probably make you around $200,000 if you know what you’re doing... Unfortunately, I sure do not… (I would probably end up just living in the falling down crusty house...) In early April of this year, I needed to turn on Cornel...

I'm hungry... Let's get some burgers! Griff's Hamburgers (or Griff's Burger Bar) is a regional chain of fast food burger joints. Founded in 1960 by Harold Griffin, they had nationwide locations at one point, but were mainly concentrated in the south. Known for cheap, greasy and tasty burgers, they had a small cult following here in Denver. My first introduction to Griff's came in the late 1990's. Griff's went well with late night partying back in college... Due to it's central location, Griff's was close to everything, including my job. For a stretch of a couple years, the Griff's dinner run was a weekly Thursday night tradition. With anywhere from 2-7 people placing an order. When we asked at the window, they game us a printed out menu. Now we wouldn't have to spend way too long figuring out what burger dressings and side items they had, as we were getting our order together each week. As soon as they closed the place, I took the...

I was 16 years old in the Summer of 1991. I have distinct memories of sitting at my Grandfather's cabin that Summer, reading the newest edition of USA Today's Baseball Weekly. The issue was covering the recent decision allowing the Florida Marlins and Colorado Rockies to join the National League, starting in 1993. By no means was I bored with baseball, but the addition of two new teams gave me so much more to follow. Both teams would spend the next year and a half hiring staff, finalizing stadium plans, developing logos and uniforms, signing their first players, setting up their minor league systems and a whole host of other things that would be written about and summarily devoured by my insatiable need to read about baseball. Not to mention that I'd soon be seeing cards for two teams I never collected before. Yeah, I was excited by the news. Probably a lot more than any other fan my age. Or any fan that lived outside of either Miami or Denver. I also didn't know ...