SO, Saks is closing. I am really going to miss the looping black- and-white, elegant, cursive sign that towers over Cherry Creek. I can always see the chic sign with flair when walking on First and Second Avenues. Having Saks Fifth Avenue was kind of like having a little piece of New York sophistication in Denver. A little piece of Fifth Avenue.
Its not like I am a regular high end Saks shopper. But I do come from a family dominantly of girls. Between my three sisters and my mother, the men are outnumbered. And like every healthy mother-daughter or sister-sister relationship, we have the shopping bond.
For make-up or perfume, where the price is identical in all department stores, we always enjoyed the once in a blue moon pampering treat of entering Saks and feeling like elegant ladies. Everything is so beautiful and feminine and grand.
When I first starting the grown-up rituals of choosing lipsticks and lip glosses, I never went without my mother. Her guidance, opinion and good taste on these very important matters were always the bottom line.
Whenever any of my sisters and I were in town together, we would band together and go, checking in with each other for opinion and approval. Over the years, my mother and sisters and I enjoyed many such trips there together.
Then there was always that occasional and rare, but amazing and beautiful, bargain to savor.
We would walk out with the then black square paper bags with Saks Fifth Avenue scrawled in red script. Then the bags became more modern, with the signature black-and- white scrawl.
REMEMBER Neusteters? Fashion Bar? May D & F? What about The Denver? Now that was a classic. I remember Cherry Creek Shopping Center when it was The Denver, Woolworths and (I think) Montgomery Wards. Not to mention a portion of some wilderness.
What about Cherry Creek Sidewalk sale and the childrens boutiques, Merry Simmons and Jelly Bean? And Papagallo!
Remember the bright striped yellow blue-and-green shopping bag with the pink parrot on it? (While other girls collected stickers I collected decorative bags and wallpapered my room with them decoupage style dont ask). The grosgrain ribbon watch bands and the reversible quilted round fabric purses with tiny whale prints on them and buttons at the lip of the purse to attach to dark wood handles? I used to get these from my cousin Dianna.
And Celebritys on Colorado Blvd? Passing childhood or teenagehood in Denver playing skeet ball there was practically a rite of passage.
Remember when Columbine meant the state flower, instead of pain and tragedy? When Stapleton meant the airport and not a neighborhood? When REI was on Alameda, before LoDo?
When Lowry was an Air Force Base with planes landing and the best view for July 4th fireworks? I was walking with some Denver transplants now living in Lowry a few Friday nights ago, and they had no idea it had been an Air Force base! Ouch!!
Then there was Third and Holly. I just loved that! Walking over there to choose some candy or cards from Aylards. Fixing your bike at Big Wheels. Drinking French pressed coffee for the first time ever at Lickity Split.
Sitting there with my sisters or childhood friends Malky and Chumi, boy did we feel grown up! The little round provencal-like table and chairs, the whole glass coffee contraption and the elaborate and magical coffee pressing for each of our individual servings we sat up just a little straighter feeling all grown up.
And Alex English of the Nuggets. I remember a high school Melave Malka being a treat to a Nuggets basketball game and somehow my friends and I ended up sitting near Alex Englishs wife. She was so gracious, and chatted warmly with us high schoolers. Of course, there was Fat Lever. And Mile High will always be Mile High regardless of what it was re-named. Invesco Shemesco!
Which brings me to The Denver Bears. Remember those baseball games and that mascot? Lakeside (the Laughing Lady), when it and old Elitch Gardens, that actually had gardens, were the only games in town? Skating on the glassy ice rink downtown on 16th St.? Cinderella City (the merry-go-round), FunPlex, the Tivoli Trolley and the grand opening of The Tabor Center? Central City before it was a gambling town, it was the best to roam through shops for old classic books.
OF course, Denver has grown a ton. LoDo is great. I adore The Rockies. And then there is Enstroms new and expanded since the eighties. The charm of re-opening the century old Union Station, trains up and running.
Thankfully, some things are the same, and will always be the same. The fourteeners, the Continental Divide, knowing you are driving East when you see the majestic Rockies in your rear view mirror, that natural compass knowing you are going West when you see the panoramic snow crested mountains.
Wearing snow boots and sunglasses at the same time. And waking up in the morning, knowing from the scent in the air whether it will snow or rain that day.
One last thing. Tattered Cover. Saks is a New York franchise, but Tattered is our very own book store and reading nook. Remember when it was on Third Avenue? And then how it moved to the four storied jade carpeted honey wood banistered mansion-libraryesque feel of a place?
Well, Cherry Creek has never been the same since Tattered Cover moved. Tattered brought hundreds, if not thousands of people to Cherry Creek every week. It was a place of culture and reading and growth. Tattered Cover injected life, personality and soul to the neighborhood.
Now Cherry Creek is mostly consumerism and retail, more one dimensional, and leaves out a whole community of people, of readers, who would otherwise be there. Denver is not Aspen (although I bet Aspen has a book shop!).
At Tattered, every night at 10:50 p.m. when the staff would announce it was 10 minutes to closing time, furniture began to creak because tons of people who were sunk deep in sofas and immersed in their reading. They would reluctantly shift back to reality and get up to put their books away or stand in line to pay for their new reading purchases.
Bostons Newberry Street with its elegant old brownstones has at least two book shops (although I have not been there in a while). New York with all of its fashion and retail, is dotted with them, further enriching New York Citys flair of cultural-intellectual-artistic curiosity.
For those who are invested in designing and developing Cherry Creek into a more chic area, having Tattered would only add.
I say, if we are bidding Saks farewell, then bring Tattered to Saks, back to its home in Cherry Creek where it belongs.
Copyright © 2011 by the Intermountain Jewish News
