All photos by Bob Starrett |
By Bob Starrett
That’s not true; I admit it right off. Replacing the radiator in my car whupped my ass, or rather my right shoulder and neck. So when we did arrive at Civic Center Park, too late to get a place in the ampitheater and me brandishing a new camera, it wasn’t long before I realized that my goal of getting a bunch of great shots of the event was in jeopardy; I could barely lift my right arm to manipulate the camera. A crippled wannabe cameraman with an erroneous date stamp on his pictures.
I bought a new camera small enough to slip into my pocket in case we had to mix it up with the authorities. Of course that never happened and I really didn’t expect that it would, and I wouldn’t have been able to do much mixing even if it had. The Denver 420 event was a permitted two-day event and the cops were a small and quiet presence on the perimeter.
Because of our tardiness we were relegated to the Stoners section of the park. That’s how I characterized it. Activists and Stoners. As my companion put it, “Those aren’t political people, those aren’t activists. Those are just kids getting stoned. Babies.” And she was right. Wrapped in the protection of a crowd that knows it is largely safe from raid or citation, the folks that we ended up with looked like high schoolers.