Canto CDXXXI: Patty Calhoun, Denver's Alt-Weekly Legend

Gentle cabrones:

There are legends, and then there’s Patricia Calhoun.

One of the founders of Westword, the Denver rag that’s one of the country’s great alt-weeklies — and at this point, one of the last ones standing. Founding editor — and still the editor and STILL writing stories big and blurbs small. Has done this since Westword’s founding in 1977, which means Patty has covered it all.

Knew former Colorado Gov./U.S. Senator/Denver mayor John Hickenlooper back when he was a craft brewer fighting the man — knew him so well, in fact that Hickenlooper posed in a zoot suit for a Westword cover for a story I can’t remember right now. Remembered the South Park guys when they were still doing Spike & Mike's Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation and talked to Patty about their “goals.” Once had Joe Rogan come into her office to audition as Westword’s pot critic — yeah.

Genius enough to see that My Former Columna would be a hit in the Mile High City and so made Westword one of the first papers to syndicate it, creating such a hit that Denver became my second-biggest fan base outside of Southern California. Wild enough to suggest that I debate xenophobic Rep. Tom Tancredo (whom one of you gentle readers had as a teacher in junior high!!!) at a packed Su Teatro, the third-oldest Latino theater company in the U.S. — yeah.

Tall. Blonde. Long hair. Always wearing something with Western flair — a jacket with fringe or lines, skirts or blouses with Southwestern patterns. Boots — always boots unless flip flops. Kind enough to introduce me to all sorts of people, places and things over the 13 years My Former Columna ran but most importantly to the Den-Mex food that played a starring role in my somewhat read Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America, which then introduced me to southern Colorado, a place I’ve actually spent more time in since the pandemic than Denver.

I wanted to hang with Patty last year when I drove through the Southwest for my columna but instead settled for Golden, Colorado, the burial place of Buffalo Bill, whom held one of the first pop-up Mexican restaurants in the country at Madison Square Gardens in the 1880s, something Patty didn’t know and which she of course turned into a challenge for a local restaurateur to recreate to spectacular results. So when the University of Denver asked me to speak this past October, one of the first emails I sent out after I confirmed the date was to Calhoun.

That’s what those who work with Patty and know the legend call her: Calhoun. What a name!eNothing against the Pattys of the world, but Calhoun just hits better. Speaks to her love of a few Coronas, a withering exposé, a new writer to mentor and another story to tell from her career.

Could she spare me a lunch while I was in town?

“Better come in early if you want to eat at La Fiesta.”

I did — too early. Calhoun needed to work a bit before we could eat. So I went to the History Colorado Center, a fabulous museum that was hosting a profe who lectured on songs of the manitos, the people of New Mexico and southern Colorado who could trace their lineage to the conquistadors. 

Calhoun suggested the lecture. Of course. Calhoun is always right. Calhoun is never wrong.

We met in Westword’s offices, up the street from the building where they were headquartered in for decades but moved on from a couple of years ago after the landlord upped their rent (how did Lacey and Larkin not buy that building, one wonders…). Off we went to La Fiesta, a legendary Den-Mex restaurant in downtown with a tiki-font marquee that used to be a supermarket and was only open for weekday lunch and Friday dinner for decades before recently opening on weekends because people aren’t coming in as much anymore.

Calhoun, driving her mom’s Subaru with the Montana license plates that announced “CALHOUN,” was on break because she can take a break whenever she wants but also because Calhoun was at an impasse. Westword was changing content management systems and she was effectively locked out “after I touched something and basically blew up the homepage.”

She glanced at me as we drove past the Colorado State Capitol and grinned. “You don’t have to do all that crap anymore. You just write.”

Westword was part of the same alt-weekly chain that bought the Infernal Rag in 2005. When three-quarters of the staff quit because they thought the owners were barbarians from Phoenix who wouldn’t let us be us, I reasoned with those that stayed that if Westword could keep its distinct identity in a sea of cookie-cutter crap, so could the Infernal Rag.

I was right. I’m rarely wrong?

We arrived at La Fiesta — the huge black velvet painting of a señorita still hung on the wall surrounded by Christmas lights, thank God. We had barely settled into our Naugahyde booths before people began to approach Calhoun. Few people can recognize the editor in chief of their local paper. In Denver, they have an icon and treat Calhoun accordingly.

Someone mentioned La Fiesta’s 60th anniversary two years ago.

“A lot of former governors were there. Hickenlooper. [Richard] Lamm. One time I had to bail out [Bill] Ritter” from skipping payment on his order at La Fiesta “because he had no cash. “He was the DA at the time. Ritter was here the other day. He comes by himself, often.

“Patty!” one of the waitresses yelled before La Fiesta owner Robert Herrera, Sr. and his son, Robert Jr., walked over to pay their respect to Calhoun. Robert père remembered me.

“Any time you two are here, we luck out.” 

He had kept La Fiesta open just for the two of us.

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“Mexican hamburger, no beans, smothered green – you know the routine,” Calhoun told the waitress, referring to Den-Mex’s most famous dish, a smothered burrito (what we in Southern California would call a wet burrito) stuffed with a hamburger patty and covered in Den-Mex style green chile sauce, which is really more of an orange color. Found nowhere else in the United States, which is why I was going to ask for the same before the waitress mentioned the daily special: chile caribe, a specialty of New Mexico cuisine that’s a smokier version of the its famous red and green.

“Is there anywhere else in Denver that has it?” I asked Robert Sr. No.

“Los Dos Potrillos, I think,” Calhoun responded.

The table salsa and chips were fabulous as we talked. We barely discussed journalism because Calhoun is more than journalism. When you’ve covered a place as long as she has, you become an institution. But when you’re like Calhoun, you don’t rest on that designation, even if you acknowledge it. You WERK.

Over sturdy chips and a wonderful table salsa, the Chicagoland native decried how the Mountain West had turned into a landscape of bedroom communities and second homes for out-of-staters in her time at Westword but especially since the pandemic, calling Bozeman “Bozangeles.” I mentioned my trips over the past couple of years to southern Colorado, noting that the last time I ate chile caribe was in Trinidad, a small town on the Colorado side of the Ratón Pass.

“It keeps getting fucked over and over again,” she said, sharing a couple of meth stories before shouting out Dr. Stanley Biber, the doctor who pioneered gender-transitioning surgery in Trinidad during the 1970s: “We’d do a story about him every 10 years just because we could.”

Calhoun’s cell phone rang, its clanging tone sounding just like the landlines of yore. Spam.

She jotted down notes every once in a while on the paper place mat where her Mexican hamburger landed when I mentioned parts of Colorado culture she didn’t know about. The Maestas case out of Alamosa that was the first successful school desegregation case in the United States. Polito’s Beer Barrel in Pueblo and their legendary chicken tacos on white — tacos on flour tortillas as thick as pita bread and far saltier. Not even found in Denver.

Had I gone to the original Chipotle? I had.

“I remember Opening Day. A friend said to go. It was okay. No green chile.”

Phone rang again. It was her sister. “Guess who I’m here with? Mr. Former Ask a Mexican, Gustavo Arellano, at La Fiesta!”

The chile caribe was fantastic — smoky, spicy, brilliant. I also ordered one of their legendary chile rellenos, small and fried in a wonton wrapper and smothered, a style found nowhere else in the United States. I asked Calhoun about Denver’s cooler burritos culture. For decades, vendors stood at street corners selling burritos from coolers or visit office buildings across downtown to hawk their foil-wrapped goods.

“That died with the pandemic,” Calhoun replied. “Now we have to go out and get them. But it was talking to you that I realized it wasn’t everywhere.” 

We bid farewell to La Fiesta. Calhoun grabbed her place mat full of notes.

“Where are you staying?” she said. Hyatt Place in Glendale, a city on the eastern edge of Denver. No Google Maps needed.

Calhoun saw a Thai restaurant on the way toward Colorado Boulevard, which would take us to my hotel.

“We had the first Thai restaurant in the United States, you know.”

“Denver?”

“Denver had a really good resettling program.”

“Well, L.A. gets all the attention in the United States for Thai food.”

“Yeah, well they don’t get the first Thai restaurant in the United States.

(Calhoun was right. Calhoun is never wrong).

Traffic crawled until we saw on the horizon a garish gold-toned office tower that I mentioned looked like the Wynn in Las Vegas. Glendale.

“We’re going to pass a strip club near your place — Shotgun Willie’s. The mayor’s wife runs the strip club.”

No way.

“You don’t know about where you’re staying? You gotta know!”

But the further we drove, the more it seemed that Calhoun got the Hyatt location wrong. For the tiniest of moments, she seemed unsure. “I think it’s past the strip club,” she offered.

Two seconds later, there was Shotgun Willie’s and my hotel on our left.

“Yeah, it’s past the strip club.”

Calhoun was right. Calhoun is never wrong. I wanna be Calhoun when I grow up!

Postscript: I wrote a columna for Westword about my Den-Mex adventures, which she loved. A few days later, Calhoun sent me an email laughing that I was “still a troublemaker.” I can’t reveal what happened, but let’s say some folks weren’t happy with my summation of some spots in Denver. I didn’t apologize but reminded her that if it was who I thought was upset, that fookin’ ingrate forgot the favor I did for him a decade ago, a favor few in Denver would ever grant them but I would because I’m rarely wrong about things.

It was alright, Calhoun said. She’d recount the incident at an upcoming panel.

I want to be Calhoun when I grow up!

**

Enough rambling. This was the semana that was:

IMAGE OF THE WEEK: Terrible photo of AMAZING jar of homemade nocino — green walnut liqueur — distilled by my brilliant Los Angeles Times colleague Corinne Purtill.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “You too, if you can grow pale in studying learned works, I promise, will raise your name to the stars” — Aldus Manutius

LISTENING: “El Macho Panzón,” Beatriz Adriana. Nothing like a good man-hating song every once in a while, especially if it’s funny with a mocking clarinet! Adriana was somewhere between Paquita la del Barrio and El Piporro on the whimsical scale, but a way better voice than the two of them. Underrated as an artist — ¡ora pues! Hence included in Gustavo Arellano’s Weekly Radiola of Randomness YouTube songlist, where I’ve included every song I’ve ever featured in a canto — give it a spin!

READING: “Now Discern This: Carving a Jack-O’-Lantern Spirituality”: One of the many columnas I read is by Eric Clayton, deputy director of communications for the Jesuits in Canada and the United States. It can be a bit cutesy at times, but it always hits moral lessons I and others need to hear. And every once in a while, it’s a delight — like this one.

BUY MY NEW CO-BOOK! People’s Guide to Orange County tells an alternative history of OC through the scholarship and reporting of myself, Elaine Lewinnek, and Thuy Vo Dang. There’ll be signings all year — in meanwhile, buy your copy TODAY. And, yes: I’ll autograph it!

Gustavo in the News

“LBCC names new performing arts center after Jenni Rivera”: My long-ago Infernal Rag feature on La Diva de la Banda keeps getting cited!

“A California newspaper, back from the dead”: A Los Angeles Times newsletter you should subscribe to plugs a columna of mine.

“At Valley High School, Students Turned Ethnic Studies into a Public Statement”: The Harbor Institute for Immigrant & Economic Justice shouts me out in an IG post about what I wrote about last week.

Gustavo Stories 

“Grítale a Guti”: Latest edition of my Tuesday night IG Live free-for-all.

“With his un-Christian Rob Reiner insults, Trump proves he’s the real ‘Meathead’”: My latest L.A. Times columna talks about the Christian farce of this administration. KEY QUOTE: “No, Trump is more than imperfect. He is a throbbing mass of malevolence, turned up — to reference Reiner’s “This Is Spinal Tap” — to 11.”

You made it this far down? Gracias! Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram while you’re down here by clicking on their logos down below. Don’t forget to forward this newsletter to your compadres y comadres! You can’t get me tacos anymore, but you sure as hell can give them — and more — to the O.C. Catholic Worker!