Hey!
I've had this idea brewing for a while, & have finally set on a date for the first pour. Yes, it's Labor Day weekend & many of y'all will have slogged your way up I-70 the previous afternoon to your lakes & cabins & campgrounds, but if you are still in town, show up, whydoncha.
We've had Drinking Liberally going for awhile, but it turns out that there are people who aren't all that into bars, or even beers. So, for those of you more into kicking off your weekend by going out for coffee, this is for you. This will be a monthly event; I hafta look a little bit ahead to plan the upcoming Saturdays, but that'll happen before too long.
Place & Time for 8/30:
Common Grounds Coffeehouse, on 44th Ave at Vallejo
(adjoining Feed Denver's garden; Feed Denver is open for business on Saturday morning, so you can snag local produce). I'll be there at 8 to represent the reserved table, but I have no expectations for any of y'all to be there at that time, as it's regarded by some to be an uncivilized hour for a Saturday morning. The official start time is thus 9, & the official end time is whenever you leave (for me, 12).
Common Grounds has decent food options for breakfast & lunch, one free refill & honor-system .50 refills after that on self-serve coffee, AND a selection of items along the traditional Drinking Liberally theme, so you can enjoy your breakfast sandwich with a Guinness or somethin' from New Belgium if you so desire.
My ...vision is too pretentious a concept; my idea for this is a gathering of community-minded, activism-inclined people to hang out & talk, share projects we are working on, & find projects to join. To that end, we'll have scheduled speakers on whatever topic you want to discuss. Dennis Gallagher is a CG regular, & will join us if he can make it, & you can bet he'll have stuff to talk about. Feed Denver's Lisa Rogers will give us some scoop as well at some point.
Democratic electoral politics will of course be a component, but in terms of scheduling speakers, I really do want to focus more on issue-based community building to get more people more involved, as so many people are initially repelled by the partisan angle, even if they are wrong to feel that way:-) Actually, it'd be great to have elected Democrats talk about issues, bills, etc. more than the election, although of course that'll be easier after the election.
So that's my spiel for now. Lemme know if you're coming, because I need the best number possible to reserve an appropriately sized table.
UPDATE: I have some semi-Kossack lurker types coming for sure, but not sure on a count. Probably 3 or 4.