10 JANUARY 19-25, 2023 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | in Vietnam, and ran a nearby body shop; he’s now serving life in prison. “Such a sad story,” Watts says. That episode aside, she and Buckstein have enjoyed owning the property. “It’s been a good investment, but it’s also been good to rent to people who need a place like this to live,” says Watts. “Working people, nice families. It’s been a good way for us to give back a little.” But now they plan to sell, because they both want to retire. And in this hot market, it’s unlikely the next owner will want to play landlord to just fi ve tenants when there are more lucrative possibilities. The current occupants who could lose their homes are cut from the same cloth as many of the residents who’ve lived here through the decades. Next door is Yan Nuang Soe, a Myanmar refugee who drives for Uber and works on EDM in his off-hours. The middle apartment is where Katy Chapo lives; she’s a poet and a chef. One apartment down is Cory Sahr, who is also in the service industry. On the other end is Manny Lakanu, a chef by day but a rap artist, too, with a sonorous baritone voice perfect for spoken-word art. Together, they are and aren’t a family; they come from different backgrounds and ended up in the same complex by circumstance. But they share that common backyard: They put together a garden last summer, and have a fi repit where they can visit with each other. Carl helps Yan when he runs into language barriers, on visits to the DMV and other spots. Katie shared a poem with Carl when he moved in as a gesture of welcome. They are united, for now, by place, both geographically and in life. Carl says he doesn’t know how long it can last; he was only able to move in because the previous tenant anticipated that the rowhouse would soon be sold and relocated before he was forced to. Carl hails from Queens originally, and yes, Bruce Wayne is his real name. “It got me in a lot of fi ghts as a kid,” he recalls. “I didn’t use it for a while, but it’s my name, you know? So I’m embracing it.” And Gotham — or New York City, to the non-comic-book world — wasn’t his scene. So he traveled around a bit and ended up in Portland, Oregon, for about ten years; in 2013, he moved to Denver because he needed a change. “The Pacifi c Northwest can be a gloomy place,” he says. “When I heard how much sunlight Denver gets in a year, I decided to get out of the rain and head toward the light.” He lived in Arvada before relocating to 3747 Marion, a move propelled by a situation familiar to renters in metro Denver. “A new owner had just bought the place I was in and wanted to start renovating,” Carl says. “She wanted to make changes and raise the rent, so they didn’t renew my lease. This place came up; it was exactly what I was hoping for, and I did everything I could to get in here. It’s the way things work, right? Something bad happens, something good happens. It was perfect and amazing and serendipitous.” Carl used to bartend at the Mercury Cafe under original owner Marilyn Megenity, before she retired and the club changed hands mid-pandemic. He still works in the service industry, while also developing his music career. “I’d always written poetry,” he says, “and then the poetry turned into songs. The music culture is so strong here in Denver that it inspired me to jump into it.” One of the fi rst songs Carl released — un- der the name Warbler BC; he’s since gone back to using his real name — was “Starry Gown,” which was included in collection #3 of Timestamp, a compilation album series of regional music made during the pandemic; that program was a collaboration between Free People Records, the Underground Music Showcase and Loudspeaker. “That was amaz- ing,” Carl says. “I got a lot of great feedback, and it opened things up nicely.” He says he was never aiming for a specifi c genre of music; he didn’t know how to describe it until he got some input from reviewers, who said that it most closely resembles “dark dream pop” with some gothic infl uences. He now calls it indie rock, but at the same time dislikes labeling it. “It’s still evolving, I think. On the plus side, a lot of people have remarked that it’s very authentic, but it’s also not specifi cally my goal,” he explains, adding that he likens it to making soup: “You never quite know how it’s going to turn out, but you keep adding ingredients, and hopefully it’s a wonderful surprise, something that’s never been tasted before.” Carl has been making that soup on Marion Street for only about a year, but he’s still borne witness to a lot of changes to the skyline. “When I moved in, that skyscraper over there that’s constructed up to its third fl oor now was just a hole in the ground,” he says, pointing to the nine-story “multifam- ily project” in process to the west. “Before that, my neighbors say it was just old houses with squatters, homeless people living there. It’s all going up so incredibly fast, which of course is making everything around it change just as quickly. It’s remarkable. And it’s everywhere.” He’s heard that the owners of the fi veplex will probably sell this summer. “We’re all hoping it lasts a little longer,” he says, “but it probably won’t. They’ve already told us it’s inevitable.” What’s also inevitable is the loss of the creative community when creatives can no longer afford to live in the community they’ve helped to build. It’s an old story in RiNo, and all over: Artists of all stripes come into a part of town because it’s affordable; they make it attractive because of their energy, because of their creative works. Prices go up, developers come in, and the creatives are priced out. Carl doesn’t begrudge the property own- ers wanting to make a profi t off his place, but as he points out, “This is a creative town. We couldn’t even live here without places like this. The people right next door in the condominiums with the Tesla chargers and the chrome gates and everything, everything, everything — they throw away stuff that we couldn’t afford with a month’s pay.” But there’s a more incalculable loss. “It’s a kind of lifestyle that’s going away,” he says. Shared yards, incidental communal living, knowing your neighbors to a degree that they become your friends. Most buyers and well-heeled renters today are looking for their own space, not one that they share. But absolute privacy is a perk; it’s the opposite of what American life used to be, before six-foot backyard fences and divided patios. “Things are always changing,” says Carl, but change begets change, and not always in the way a city might want. “Things are always in fl ux here. I think that adds to the creativity, keeps things from getting stagnant. We’re all just living and working and trying to enjoy the time we have left here. “That’s what we do. Live moment to moment. Deal with the future as it comes at us. It’ll be sad to leave this place. But what’s even more sad is that there’s probably very few places like it left to go.” These last holdouts are disappearing fast in Denver. Email the author at [email protected]. Squeezed Out continued from page 8 Bruce Wayne Carl in his apartment in one of the last old rowhouses in RiNo. EVAN SEMÓN EVAN SEMÓN EVAN SEMÓN
