After I had completed my first radio job interview in the Denver area, I had nothing to do but sit and wait for the owner to call me back. (I did not get the job.) I decided to do something I'd never done before and that was to go to an alternative nightclub. All the so-called clubs in Clovis played either Country/Western or Pop/Rock. I wasn't interested in that because I listened to that all the time at my old radio job.
I got out the Yellow Pages and looked up "Nightclubs." I called a few. One of them turned out to be a fancy dinner club that I would have had to dress all formal for. That certainly was not what I was looking for. After calling a few more, I asked one guy which club featured alternative music. He said "Rock Island." I was able to find them and get the address.
It was in the Downtown Denver area, where I hadn't been yet. Actually, I hadn't been in any part of Denver the city up to this point, except to drive through on I-25. The address was 1614 15th St. I didn't know this at the time, but there were two different sets of streets that were in the teens. There was 13th Street and 13th Avenue, 14th Street and 14th Avenue and so on. There was no 15th Avenue, but there was a 15th Street. I just didn't know how to get to it.
After driving around all over the place, I parked outside a Walgreen's and went inside to ask for directions. I saw this woman at the counter and asked her if she knew where 15th was. She said that Colfax (the street where the pharmacy was located) was actually 15th, but she didn't know where this club was. Just as I was about to leave, she asked, "Did you go to school in New Mexico?" I said, "I went to ENMU." She said, "I graduated from there in 1983 and I saw you almost every day in the cafeteria during lunch." I didn't remember her. I commented on how strange it was that I happened to walk into the place where she worked. I don't know that I could have hooked up with her, but that's not what I was there for. I left the Walgreen's and I never saw her again.
I kept finding 15th St., but every time I drove on it, I wound up on a kind of bridge-like structure that took me out of the Downtown area. I did this back and forth about three times until I noticed that there was a street next to the bridge before I got on. I took that street and I found this place underneath the bridge (which I found out later was called the "aqueduct") where there were a lot of people outside. I yelled out the window, "Is that Rock Island?" They responded affirmatively. The next thing I had to do was find parking. I turned left on the next street and I found where several cars had parked. I parked in the next empty space next to this pickup. There appeared to be plenty of parking spaces on my right side. I went in the club and paid the cover charge.
They were definitely playing my kind of music, but I didn't know what the procedures were for dancing. It wasn't like people were dancing as couples. They danced in groups. I wasn't a part of any group, so I knew I would feel odd going out on the floor and dancing with myself, Billy Idol-style. (Although, that's actually a song about masturbation. I really would have looked weird if I'd started doing that on the dance floor.)
I hung out at the club for about an hour, but I didn't talk to anyone. I was just admiring the atmosphere and the excitement. All of a sudden, a thought occurred to me. I remembered all those empty spaces next to my car. I wondered if all those spaces were empty because they had towed cars away and mine would be the NEXT IN LINE? I ran outside, but my car was still there. Whew! However, I was so shaken by the concept that my car might be towed that I just went home before anything bad happened.
I would go back to Rock Island several times over the next three years. At one point, it had closed and a club with a different name opened in its place. However, the brand recognition of Rock Island was so strong that it reverted back to that name and kept going for the next several years.
A few years after I had left Denver, the city had taken down the aqueduct when it was building Coors Field. This probably made it a lot easier to find. I actually liked that I had to do a lot of hard work to locate it. It made it seem like it was really underground, although everyone in town seemed to know about it. The club finally closed in 2006. Their website indicates that they are expecting to return, but it's been nine years.
I know that there are a lot of people in Denver who look back very fondly at the time spent there. It's kind of odd to think about how perfectly I fit in back then, but wouldn't now.
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