Good morning everyone. I registered and elected to speak up because I feel that I have some perspective that may be worthy -- not just to conjecture or speculation, but to solving this puzzle. I did not personally know Adam, even though we have many mutual friends on social media. However, it does happen that I am a former gay bar employee of two Denver gay bars, neither of which were Charlie's. My greater tenure was with the first bar, who vied with Charlie's for the definitive Country Western go-to -- a pretty important image to maintain if you have it, as this is wild frontier west Denver, Colorado, after all. This is not to say we stood much a chance for claiming that title, however, so long as Charlie's continued featuring country line dancing on Fridays/Saturdays with an MC/DJ team that had a very committed following.
For reasons I cannot know because I'm far more an aloof creative type than a shrewd businessperson, Charlie's just up and decided to toss their crown jewel in order to pursue the garden variety Gen Y Miley Cyrus-Rhiannah-135bpm+ demographic that seemed to be doing well across the street at X-Bar. Without ten seconds' consideration, it was arranged that line dancing would be move to our location -- which was struggling to meet baseline sales goals on Friday and Saturday nights up until then, to be honest -- whereupon we immediately increased door count four to ten fold. Our "bar" was really more like a club that consisted of three or four separate bars, depending on the night, with their own attendant feel to them. I was privileged to work behind the bar where the line dancing event was to be held, which I say now because I learned quite a lot about sorts of things that went on consistently over at Charlie's via the refugee staff now under our employ. As the first night wore down, and by 1am and it was really just the DJ, MC, the other bartender, and myself left in the room, the DJ relayed that "even she, a staff member, had been dosed with something more than once" at her prior establishment. The MC corroborated this, explaining that he had to lift her off the ground two nights prior, even though he knows "she can handle her liquor, and only drinks one thing anyway... she has never just chosen to abandon her integrity." The MC went on to cite several other examples of recent memory where people he knew suddenly became drastically altered in ways their characters had never suggested that it was something they wanted. To this, I was amazed, because I had heard from patrons of the "rival" bar on more than one occasion that they did not feel quite right despite doing nothing unusual with their imbibing habits. If the DJ's incident was the only time I had heard of drink-dosing at Charlie's, I would have been a lot more ambivalent about how honest allegations were about the true nature of her former workplace. That allegation was maintained rather forcefully, though, by many of Charlie's
other bartending staff had migrated to us around that time, too, and on their own, these new colleagues one-by-one spoke to me about the abnormal incident rate that happened at their bar as opposed to what they were hearing about other bars. I also am not a total philistine and read the news, and so I know that if it is not one thing, it is another at the 900 block of Colfax -- the muggings and burglaries in the Charlie's parking lot and near the entrance to the bar are sickeningly high.
Let me be clear that I am not here to slam Charlie's, as I have no stakes in the game -- I do not work for any gay bar right now. Let me also be clear that a lot of Charlie's conundrums have a lot to do with their location, which, if you're not familiar with Colfax Ave., could be compared to what San Francisco's Union Square might be like if it was still an ungentrified Barbary Coast; Colfax is very much still a Pirate's street. Just a few blocks from Charlie's, there was (may still be, I don't know) a white supremacist beachhead at 1400 Ogden, from which actual jackbooted skinheads in suspenders would harass people they believed to be Jewish. (
http://www.westword.com/news/willia...rrested-for-vandalism-assault-warrant-9271781) Both antisemetic and homophobic/transphobic graffiti have increased by exponential figures in that Capitol Hill neighborhood from 2016 to 2017 -- and also across America. Leaving the political argument out now, it is not totally implausible that drink spiking -- which I wholeheartedly believe happens at Charlie's from the abundant testimonies of disparate populations that have gone there and experienced inexplicable sickness -- is not just another way that sickos from that neighborhood are targeting a vulnerable population.
But here's the thing about that, then: generally the drink spiking that happens these days when someone claims to have been "ruffied", is from the club drug GHB. Via anecdotes of people that are in the harm reduction business, the mix of GHB and liquor is one that is explicitly warned against by even the most reckless drug users. And when someone does ingest the two together, the resulting sickness would appear immediately.
If someone had spiked Adam's drink, it was probably not with GHB. But that it doesn't mean he did not get dosed. Again, this is going on the recent precedent for drink-spiking at that bar, however downplayed their leadership may make of it. Given the kinds of things you can find right there on the surrounding blocks -- according to the Denver Post crime report, the possibilities are kind of endless -- something that takes a little bit longer to come up like an orally ingested opioid or psychostimulant would maybe explainhow an abstract-thinking and largely self-aware person might hold it together for an hour after leaving the one suspect bar and then suddenly find himself traipsing across a veritable active runway to the metro's primary interstate system. Or why the unlocked side door. Or why the keys inside but no Adam. Or why the phone wasn't placed in a recharge port. Those are basic things someone experiencing a sudden altered state they did not anticipate coming on may fail to perform with their normal effortlessness.
The other thing I need to bring up is that there is in fact another gay bar across the street just on the other side of Alameda, and that is
Lil' Devils. I know this because they are one of the oldest gay bars in Denver, and their bartenders would come into the other bar I tended on their off nights, which is how I know about it. So, maybe my theory about drink spiking at Charlie's is not watertight. There still is then the chance that, with only slightly addled alcoholic intoxication, Adam took off for Lil' Devils in the hope for one more chance at the night. I think it's insane, actually, that no one has examined if Adam had ever frequented that bar, because it's the closest proper gay bar to his home.
There needs to be a lot more scrutiny of the bars he was at throughout the night, not just the alleged final one (Syntax, which is more of a progressive bar than a gay bar, for sure). It is highly suspect to me that the bar where alleged harassment occurred has, shockingly, only one video feed for the front of the bar. Because... no way. NO WAY in the f-----' big blue world can that be the case. Downtown gay bar owners are not that loving and trusting of humanity to not have their facilities monitored to the legal limits of privacy. No way there's not more tapes from Charlie's.
This really sucks and it isn't fair at all. Bless you, Adam. Come back home.
