Who Profits Off 'Captive Pricing' at DIA? Plus, 'No Kings' Energy Rising and an Underrated Nugget

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Hey Denver, this is CityCast Ember host, Bri Davies.

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Welcome to CityCast Ember, I'm Bri Davies, and here's what Denver's talking about.

Hey, what's up, Bri?

And we have the founder of the investigative news outlet, the lever, the host of Master

Plan podcast.

David Sarota is back.

Hi, David.

Hi, it's good to see you guys.

Good to see you too.

Today we're talking about the second season of your podcast, Master Plan, and Trump, and

how he's using executive power.

Plus, we're going to be touching on captive pricing at the airport, which we talked about

last week, but we're talking specifically about airports this week.

And then we've got a big hot take from you, David, which I'm excited to hear.

We'll save that to the very end.

Let's start with Master Plan season two, the Kingmakers.

Just launched last season, you talked about money and politics.

This season, you're focusing on this conservative legal theory called, quote, the unitary executive

theory.

David, you need to give us the, give us the quick explainer on what that means.

Okay.

So we're talking right now on the eve of war with the, with the, the no kings protest on coming

up.

And I think there's a lot of talk about kings and do is Donald Trump behaving like a king

and, and what our season looks to do is show that the creation of the president or the

transformation of the president into a king did not happen only because of, or even primarily

because of Donald Trump, that it has been a long scheme to concentrate power in the executive

branch by a specific set of people with a specific set of goals.

They have a vision of a president as a quasi king.

And this started after the Watergate era.

Watergate back in the day was seen as a scandal about executive power.

It was the, the so called imperial presidency.

And it wasn't just a president who was using the powers of the executive branch to target

his political enemies.

But it was in the context of a Nixon presidency that was doing all sorts of things that were

at the time relatively unprecedented, like for instance, Richard Nixon campaigned promising

to end the Vietnam War.

And within months of taking office was secretly without authorization from Congress, without

really public knowledge at all, was secretly expanding more.

Richard Nixon started cutting the budget, essentially withholding funds that had already

been appropriated from Congress for various state projects.

And we remember this.

This all sounds familiar, right, like Donald Trump saying I'm not going to release money.

That Congress has already passed for Colorado.

Donald Trump launching a war with no authorization at all.

He is using some of the powers that were quite familiar to people back in the Watergate era.

And that Congress at least initially had tried to stop after Watergate exploded.

And what we, what we tell in this, in what we show with never before reported documents

and the like.

Show is that the effort to, to rebuild the imperial presidency after Watergate in the face

of those post Watergate reforms, the effort to rebuild it and make it even more powerful

to turn the presidency into a king.

That is a story that has taken about 50 years.

And that's what we uncover.

Well, it's a great podcast so far.

The first episode we listen to is out now and it's just great.

I mean, there's this whole scene about how Nixon tries to supersede Congress's power of

the purse and, and choose like to pull back money from some road projects, leaving literally

roads unfinished, unpaved in Missouri, fascinating chapter in history.

But I want to talk about Coloradans now.

I think that's what people are interested in.

How are Coloradans feeling this now, this, this like arcane legal theory that's powering

the Trump administration?

Well, I think first and foremost, what we've seen in our legislature where the president

is announcing that the executive branch is announcing that it's not going to make grants

that Congress has already put in place, right?

It's just going to simply withhold environmental funding, transportation funding, et cetera, et

cetera.

And I think the suspicion is, rightly so, that the suspicion is that that's being targeted,

those cuts are being targeted, those decisions are being targeted at Colorado because Donald

Trump sees Colorado as a blue state, Donald Trump, for instance, wants Tina Peters released.

And so this is, I think, what we're experiencing here, the instability of, are we going to have

funding for transportation projects?

Are we going to have funding for environmental projects, for climate projects?

This has created a sort of instability in state budgeting, which will ultimately trickle

down to everybody in the state.

And I think what's really bad about this in particular is that it's not even predictable,

right?

It's like, Donald Trump is essentially asserting the right to wake up in the morning, say,

I don't like what Colorado is doing or some Colorado politician out there said something

I didn't like.

And guess what?

All of a sudden, there's not going to be this or that funding that has already been

appropriated.

And what's difficult about that is it's hard to plan for that.

And it's one thing where Congress in a, in a budget cycle says, all right, we're not

going to fund these things.

The legislature, the state government has time to, the local communities have time to

adjust to that.

This is like Donald Trump waking up and saying, I'm just going to use what's called impoundment

power or recision power.

And you harken back to what happened in the Watergate era.

It's exactly right.

As you describe it, there was one of the big fights early on in the Nixon administration

was Nixon decided to simply stop money that was supposed to be funding roads in particular

in Missouri, where roads were literally being built.

And then they couldn't continue to be built because Richard Nixon said, I am using the

so-called impoundment power to not spend the money that Congress has by law told me to

spend.

And there was a huge fight over this.

And ultimately, Congress passed a law explicitly saying, which is kind of ridiculous, like

Dalton suspenders, because it's right in the Constitution, the power of the purse is

Congress is alone, like that's not really up for debate.

But Congress passed a law being like, hey, yo, the Constitution here, like you got to

follow this, you can't just cut money.

But clearly, 50 years later, what Donald Trump is trying to do is trying to reopen that

argument to say that the president gets to decide what spending happens whenever he wants

for any reason he wants.

And what spending doesn't happen.

Do you think we're in even more eminent danger of this just based on technology?

I'm just thinking about how Trump can like wake up and tweet from the toilet, essentially,

you know, without waiting for the evening news to get, you know what I mean?

I mean, absolutely, and I, but I think it's, it's also coupled with the fact that there

doesn't seem to be a real process.

I mean, that like it's, it, it's not, it doesn't, like I don't have the sense that a lot

of the rescission decisions when it comes to, and the impoundment decisions when it comes

to cutting money are really well thought out and targeted by like a, a budget process

and a budget staff.

It is, it, it seems much more simply that like Donald Trump read a headline about Colorado

and just says, cut the funding, right?

Like that, that, and, and that is literally what you do not want in, in a civilization,

right?

Like you want there to be a process, even if you don't like the outcome of a process,

at least there's a process.

I don't know if everyone remembers back in the, in the, in the first few weeks of Trump's

presidency.

And they tried, they, they like sent out like a two-page letter of being like, all federal

funding is just frozen right now.

Like it was like a true, like I don't know, a 500 billion, a trillion, or whatever it was.

And it was like, that, that's not how a civilization, like that is not how a civilization works.

That's not how America works.

I'm used to work.

I know.

Like, well, yes.

Move the course like that.

Totally.

But like the interest, the interesting thing about this is like the constitution does leave

a lot of like vague spaces.

I think they, the, the founders were like, look, the future generations are going to fill

in how this all works.

So we don't want to be too specific.

But on the certain things that they are specific on, I think it was like intentional.

Congress gets to just have the power of the purse because it's bad to have like one

dude sitting on a mountain of money, deciding who gets the money, right?

The constitution at its core, you could say a lot of things about it.

I don't agree with this, this, this.

I think it does that.

I think we can all agree that it's like an anti monarch, anti king document, right?

Like, okay, we can probably all agree on that.

And one of the foundations of that is like the branch of government that's closest to

the people where every each community has a representative who has to come back and answer

to us.

That is the branch that has the supreme power of the purse.

And Donald Trump is like challenging that.

And I think it seems esoteric, but it is really the most important power.

And by the way, that extends to wars, right?

We know, and as we trace in this in this series, master plan that wars tend to not end until

the money is cut off.

And so if if Donald Trump is allowed to sort of set a precedent of the president gets

to decide all the spending decisions whenever he wants at any time for any reason at all,

I mean, that doesn't just have domestic implications.

It's got like, do we go to war because the guy can wake up in the morning and decide,

I want to, I want to invade, I want to bomb like that.

That is again, not the way it's supposed to work.

David, let me pull you back to Colorado.

Yeah.

So, so here's what's interesting about this to me.

We know Trump is doing this.

What the Democrats in Colorado who run Colorado have to decide is how to respond to it.

Right.

And I think that's what these primaries leading up to June are all about is how are we

in response?

What is the strategy that the Democrats want to pursue?

So after doing all this research into this history of how Trump and his predecessors have

implemented this theory, what has it changed how you look at say how Governor Polis is

navigating this new environment?

Look, I think that when it comes to a situation like Donald Trump is going to cut federal funding

for Colorado unless Jared Polis releases Tina Peters.

Let's just like use that as an example, hypothetically, hypothetically, yeah, right?

Because we haven't seen any of conversation about that from the polis directly at all.

And I want to overlay on top of this the fact that when it comes to federal money, we are

uniquely unable to raise taxes to backfill potential budget cut holes from the federal

government.

I mean, I don't think it's our table because of table, right?

So we are uniquely vulnerable to the worst impacts of federal budget cuts because we can't

really raise revenue in a way that every other state in the country can.

Now, just as a side note, I don't think you can solve federal budget cuts purely through

state tax increases and the like, but we, but you can, you can mitigate at least some

of them, but we really truly can't because of table.

So when, when, when I think of like Polis, the Tina Peters situation, Trump threatening

cuts, I think at one level trying to navigate, how do I, how do we come to some sort of

day taught with Trump, who is the president, in terms of preventing him from punishing us

budgetarily over something that is not a budgetary matter, I think acknowledging that that

is a really tough situation, I think it, it is a really tough situation.

I do, I tend to think though, once you start saying the president can say who gets out

of jail or how the justice system works, you know, justice is supposed to be blind.

Obviously, it's, it's not, you know, without fear, it's, it's not really in the real world,

but like the basic idea that like a president shouldn't be able to like, pressure a governor

to get his political ally out of jail that, from a trial that happened, it's, like that's

banana republic stuff, right?

I mean, that is really, really dangerous stuff.

And so I come down on, it's a long way of saying, I think it's worth thinking through

how do we come up with a day taught when it comes to, and I don't, and to be clear,

I'm not saying like, you know, appease Donald Trump.

I'm just saying like, Zora on Mamdani is an example, went to the White House with similar

fears of budget cuts in New York and sort of charmed Donald Trump.

Like smart strategy, Zora on Mamdani did not, as far as I can tell, compromise, you know,

his policy values or the like, but clearly thinking through how do I create a day taught?

I think like the Tina Peter situation has to be a red line.

You can't ruin your state's criminal justice system because you've been bullied by the

president because by the way, on top of that, I think if you do that, you're only encouraging

the bully.

Right?

Then the next demand comes down, right?

Yeah.

There's a certain, I guess there's a certain set of issues where you have to say, I cannot

negotiate on these things because negotiating on these things sort of attacks the pillars

of our civilization, like the basic idea that we have a jury trial, somebody gets convicted

and I don't get to be bullied into changing that, like that's a basic pillar of civilization.

But I think we have a little bit different here with Mamdani and Polis.

Polis does have this very specific ask from the president, essentially, as like he can't

really.

But there's no gray area, it's either release Tina Peters or don't.

I know.

You know?

And so I think we're really in a very difficult situation.

And so I think that when we hear our Congress people or our attorney general talking about

trying to legally say that impounding, congressional-y past funds is illegal, is not allowed, and

that using the judiciary, that is what the judiciary is supposed to be for, to a co-equal branch

of government, to say that these kinds of cuts arbitrarily, just by the executive branch

fiat are illegal, to me, that is the first and foremost thing when it comes to these

budget cuts that means to happen, and that is, in a sense, happening.

These are being challenged in court, but I also agree, I also know that relying on the

courts is like, you know, like you don't know how they're going to go and Trump is packing

the courts.

So we're in a tough situation.

We got to move on.

Okay.

We're going along.

We're going along.

We're going along.

Go for it.

On that last note, March 28 is going to be the big day.

So that's the next day to watch on this conversation, but we should move on.

And check out the check out master plan.

You can hear much more of this conversation.

Okay.

We'll take a quick break.

And when we come back, we're talking captive pricing at the airport.

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Okay, we're back.

We talked about captive pricing last week, Paul, when we were talking about the legislature

and the thing that I think we talked about mostly was really like the price of hot dogs

at ballerina.

But this is an issue that exists in other spaces, particularly the airport, which Steve

Steger at 9 News did some investigating into and found that there's a policy at DIA that

says anything sold inside the airport shouldn't get priced at more than 15% of the street

price.

So no more than a 15% markup of what you can buy outside of the airport.

So if you get a coffee at Starbucks or no voc coffee, it shouldn't cost more than 15%

of what they charge for that same cup of coffee outside the airport.

More on Starbucks later, that's a whole other issue.

But Steve Steger and his team found that many items in the airport are being sold way

above this cap.

David, I assume you're at the airport a lot.

Periodically, yes.

Is there a thing that you buy that you're just like begrudgingly buying when you're at

the airport because you need it, but you're starving or you like your phone charger?

What's the thing?

The thing is the coffee machine, the automated coffee machine, it starts with an I, it'll

something.

It will.

It will.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's expensive.

It's not cheap.

It looks like a device from the Jetsons.

It's like the coffee.

Robot coffee.

Yeah.

It's like robot coffee.

Look, I think when it comes to these captive pricing discussions, I think we often forget

that where we're being gouged is on public property.

The airport is a public, a piece of public property, meaning we all figuratively speaking

own a little piece of it.

It's the same thing, by the way, for the ski resorts, right?

Like the ski resorts are on public land.

You could even argue that some of our stadiums are publicly subsidized.

And so I think that part of the bargain should be, if you're doing business on public property,

you have some obligation to the public.

Like we have a right to say there are certain conditions in which you can do business on

public property.

If you don't want to do business on public property under those conditions, then leave

or don't have your store there, right?

So this is not like the government saying what prices have to be everywhere.

We have to narrow our thinking about this as what should we allow on public property?

And I think it's fair for the government to say you essentially cannot price gouge at

a certain level, beyond a certain level.

Because let's remember one thing.

At the airport, when we talk about prices that are 15% higher than quote unquote street

prices, please let's remember that the street price is a profitable price already.

So we're saying like you can't add 15% more on top of the profitable price just because

you can, just because people are behind a security line waiting for their, you know,

their plane ride and therefore they are captive.

That seems to me to be the least we could do.

And I love that you brought that up because that's actually when it changed, right?

Is 9.11 changed how the airports were essentially functioning because prior to that, you could

go hang out at the airport.

I mean, I remember doing this as a teenager.

It's like a mall.

So they had a wider audience.

Well now you literally have this captive audience.

So Paul, do you want to talk really quickly because this sort of links back to something

that we talk about a lot, which is the concession, who can sell in there and those contracts,

who they're awarded to and Denver is very proud to say all of the local businesses that

get these concession contracts, which is cool, but the auditors office actually looked

into how these contracts were awarded to these businesses and Paul, what did they, what

did he find?

I mean, well, he found a lot of things.

He found that there have been chronic problems at the airport for like 25 years ever since

it was built in the 90s.

But gosh, this is one of my favorite topics.

After we talked to, we're represented.

Controller yourself, Paul.

I know I could.

I got so distracted by the stadiums and the hot dogs.

I was like, when are we going to, I didn't get to the airports, but the airport is its

own thing.

And I think with a representative ZOKI, I was, I was making like, I was saying I didn't,

I didn't think that the prospects of the bill were very good because it's very easy

to make a pro business case against it.

And you know, at the legislature, that makes it a tougher road.

But had she just focused on the airport, I think it might have been a different situation

because this, this whole like how much profit you can make, how much you can jack up

prices.

Like, I think there's some misaligned incentives going on with the system, with their contracts.

So the way that it works is the airport puts out request for proposals when they have

a space for lease, when a contract expires or a business fails.

They'll say, Hey, everybody, we got this new space.

It's great space.

They got, you know, electrical outlets, there's a sink in there.

You could open a restaurant if you want.

And then anyone can sign up and who typically gets these contracts in, it seems like two

thirds of the cases at the airport are concessionaire companies that operate multiple brands or

license brands from local restaurant tours.

Like for example, a mercantile founded by Alex Sidel, a claim local chef, he licensed the

brand for his restaurant that operated at Union Station to the airport and now operates

in Concourse A. It was the fifth most profitable restaurant in DIA last year, $12 million

in gross sales.

He got between two and seven percent of that money.

That's the licensing deal.

The airport took between 15 and 18%.

These numbers are from the den repost a couple of years ago who reported on this.

And then the concessionaire company, which actually hires and fires the employees, buys

all the materials, buys all the food, operates the space, does any build out that's necessary

of the space, they get the rest.

So when we're talking about the markup that these concessionaires are permitted to offer,

which by the way, the airport increased from 10 to 15% according to Steve Stager, I thought

that was the most explosive detail that the airport increased that in 2022.

It's a misaligned incentive because the airport profits when the price goes up as well.

That's right.

So if the airport is in charge of enforcing the contracts and they're profiting off of

people violating the contracts, they perhaps do not have any reason to crack down very

hard.

That's, I mean, that is a great point.

That is such a great point and such a problem because then it becomes a question of who

is the airport, who is the airport serving, is it serving itself or is it serving the

public?

And I'm guessing the argument from the airport is the more money that we make, the less

money we have to find from the public trough, if you will, to fix the airport or upgrade

the airport.

But I got to say, going to the airport and looking at their billion dollar like ballroom

project, like the making the first terminals super, like it doesn't strike me as an

entity that is spending money in a way that's respectful of like the public.

Like do we really need a really nice stand for this?

I think if they did a great dream, it's, it's, it's, it's beautiful, but like do we really

need to spend a billion dollars on that?

Why don't we, like it's, yes, the ballroom is nice, do we really need a bit to have spent

a billion dollars on that?

I think we are creating a very hospitable environment for these businesses to thrive.

This airport is a huge driver.

These restaurants that have these contracts are so lucrative, the Smokin Bear Lodge, Smokin

Lounge, one of the most lucrative restaurants in the entire country.

They made 20 billion dollars, let me just challenge you.

Let me ask you, let's, let's use the, the, the, the terminal billion dollar project.

Did you prefer the, the project, the, the one that existed before they're, you know,

they renovated it, save a billion dollars and have everything at the airport be a basically

street priced?

Or do we want a really nice giant, you know, you know, spectacle, a sort of convention

center style thing?

And everything at the airport fleeces us.

Like I'll take option A and not option B.

That's me.

I think that's a great, go on, go on, well, go to it, go to a shitty airport and you

might feel a little differently in your middle ground, like, isn't, isn't there a middle

ground?

That's the problem.

What we have is a, and this is one of the reasons why I think the regulations are messing

up this market so much is because the supply of leasable restaurant space is limited by

the airport.

If we were, if we built a second airport, we would have more competition.

Well, that's, that's true.

That's true.

But I guess I would argue like, there has to be a middle ground between like the old

LaGuardia that was like a disgusting bus station.

And like, you know, a crown jewel, sort of beautifully appointed airport that's funded

by fleecing everybody who passes through it.

Like there has to be a middle ground.

That's my, that's my thing.

I have reached out to the airport people to talk about this and I hope that we get a

chance to talk to their head of concessions because she's the one who responded to the

auditors report that you were mentioning a couple years ago and they did make some changes.

What they used to do, they, they let like, they had a whole program for preferred concession

heirs who they didn't make reapply for their spaces after the contracts were expired.

So they basically were grandfathered into these nice deals and weren't ever reassessed.

And then also what they did was when they were assessing new potential contractors to take

over spaces, they would like score them, write down scores and evaluate them.

And then they would shred the scores.

So if ever there was a lawsuit, like there was famously a few years ago, no one would

be able to go back and look at that documentation.

Can I, can I also say one very quick thing, one very quick point about this when we talk

about captive audiences, okay, captive customers, this, this cannot be forgotten.

You can't take a certain amount of liquid or, you know, liquidish food into the airport.

So talk about it's one that like, that is a level of captivity that I think we need

to underscore here.

Part of the reason why you have captive pricing rules is because you've set up a boundary

that says you can't bring in a basic necessity of life into this space.

And so therefore if you need that basic necessity of life, we're not going to use that,

that the fact that you're trapped to rip you off, like, like, let's not forget how captive

you are at the airport.

Yeah.

Well, this is why the post 9-11 moment is so instructive is because the social contract

changed on the customer, but it didn't change for the, the concessionaires.

Yes.

And it's created this system of like misaligned incentives.

And I, if I were a lawmaker, if I were a city official, I would be looking at enforcement

of these, of these rules and, and putting some more guardrails on these rules that I think

that's a perfectly reasonable conversation.

Yes.

Great.

One, can I say one last note on this?

Yes, one of the way after the character involved in this whole world who, when I discovered

this guy when I was reading up on this, I think I need to make space for him on my list

of the 21 most influential dendrites of the 21st century.

His name is Rod Tafoya.

I had never heard of him.

But he owns all the most lucrative contracts at the airport.

The Timberline, bro.

Wait, what's his kids?

Is he like a concessionaire company, is he one of these?

His company is called Mission Yogurt.

It was founded with just a yogurt shop in our vata in the 80s.

And he first got his first airport contract in 95 when it opened.

And he was like, here's where the money is.

Ever since he tapped a rich vein, he has a company of like hundreds of employees.

He's the one that operates the root down, the Timberline steaks.

He operates an Einstein brothers, KFC, pizza hut.

This guy is making so much money at the airport.

And he's like, he sounds like like the, like the DIA power broker you never knew.

I want to meet this guy.

That's what I'm saying.

I was like, we got it on your show.

We got it totally.

I have to know this guy.

Hi CityCast listeners.

This is David Plots.

I'm the CEO of CityCast.

But I also have another job.

I'm one of the hosts of the Political Gap Fest, Slates Politics Podcast.

Every week I get on mic with my co-host Emily Baselon and John Dickerson.

And we talk about politics and a lot more about other things that we care about.

The Gap Fest has been going for more than 20 years because the three of us love talking

to each other.

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Stream it on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast.

We're going to move on.

And David, for this last segment, you have a hot take for us and I have not been prepped

at all.

I have no clue what you're going to give us.

Shoot us your hot take.

Okay.

So my hot take is if you, I'm a big Denver Nuggets fan.

If you're watching a video, you can see I've got a Denver Nuggets jersey on my wall.

I'm huge.

You got a Maxie the minor on your shirt.

Yep.

Huge Denver Nuggets fan.

I got the Christian Brown Bobblehead at last night's game.

I showed up like three hours early to get the Christian Brown Bobblehead.

So I'm like deep in this.

And I think that a lot of the discussion about the Nuggets and whether they're going to

go to the championship, et cetera, et cetera, has been a lot about Yokeuch's health.

It's been a lot about Aaron Gordon, A.G's health, Will Jamal Murray stay healthy.

But I actually think the skeleton key to unlock the Nuggets championship potential is the

much less discussed Cam Johnson, who of course, Cam Johnson, we traded for, which we got

him in the MPJ trade.

And there's been a lot of discussion that MPJ is in New Jersey doing really, really well

and was this a bad trade because Cam hasn't done, hasn't done, put up numbers like MPJ

and Cam got injured.

And if you've been watching the last, I don't know, week, week and a half, and after Cam

Johnson came back, he went through this spell where he like, he couldn't hit anything.

He couldn't make shots like he like he was rattled like he had what do they call it?

They called it like the Yips, right?

Like he couldn't make his old jump shots.

Now he is like making the shots he needs to make and he's got more confidence.

But it has opened up the whole floor.

It has opened up the team is like, like 10 times better.

And so my hot take is if you want to understand whether we're going all the way, watch Cam Johnson.

Like he is the barometer here.

Like yes, A.G.

Yokech, Murray have to stay healthy.

But like Cam, I think is like the secret key I'm pulling for.

I thought you were going to say David Edelman was the secret key everybody's been watching

the coach.

Yeah.

I mean, he's had like people have been down on him.

That's what I was seeing, but so I think it's Cam.

I think by the way, Cam hosts a great podcast, old man in the three.

Everybody should go listen.

He's a great host.

It sounds like it's already better than MPJ's podcast.

It's definitely better than it actually good lips, attention, great episode where he

interviewed MPJ.

But they were talking to each other as like they were traded for each other.

Whoa.

It was super interesting.

He's a great host, but I'm like, dude, you've gotten like, it's a little worried that

he's a little bit like, not a head case, but like he's been so rattled.

He couldn't make basic like 15 foot jump shots.

I'm telling you, this guy is the key to whether we're going to the championship.

That's my hot take.

And I would just say to a podcast is a good place to start because if we know anything

about sports as we want to know the personalities of these people.

And we want to know who we're invested in.

And like I have to say, I don't know a ton about Cam Johnson as a person or like what

his aura is like, I mean, he seems like such a cool dude.

Okay.

It seems like such a cool dude.

It doesn't take much for me.

I'll buy in.

Okay.

Like you should try to get him on the pod.

I mean, he talks about like what would be actually I'm now pitching you.

What would be cool is a pod about like what his impressions of Denver are as like somebody

who hasn't lived here and get his like takes on like best and worst of Denver and someone

who just moved here.

That was like, I was totally tuned into that.

That could be a, that could be a tricky one because you can be really a hater and then

people will really hate you or you could be Bruce Brown and be like, I've been wearing

this cow.

I had my sleep.

I've been waiting for you to take me back.

So Bruce Brown, I mean Bruce Brown, that's another good, but, but here, but I love Bruce,

but like I'm not sure that would be an interesting interview because he loves it.

Like I would love to.

I am like, no, what are you not like?

What do you like?

What do you think we could improve?

Like, I want to hear that.

That's my, that's my pitch for you.

Okay.

I did hear a tip on this.

Someone commented on one of our, our post on TikTok the other day, my friend of mine, Ryan.

He was like, apparently he goes to the Raisin Keynes on Colorado Boulevard a lot and he sees

Peyton Watson there regularly after midnight.

Yeah.

So okay.

I love a celebrity sighting.

You'd be better not lose Peyton Watson.

I mean, that, I'm for the officers and nights.

It's like a foregone conclusion, right?

They chose Brown.

No, don't, don't say it.

Don't say that.

No, you're killing me because Peyton Watson is the future.

If we lose Peyton Watson, I'm like, I can't handle Peyton Watson going to the Lakers, like

I'm going to, I can't, I can't stand the Lakers.

Peyton Watson is from LA.

Like I feel like we're going to, we're going to screw this up like the clockies need to

not allow this to happen.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I know in anything involving the Lakers.

I don't want to see Peyton Watson in the Lakers jersey, like the cronkeys have to not allow

that to happen.

Here I am.

Listen to me.

Here I am begging billionaires to, to prevent something from happening.

I'm, I'm, I'm good.

Do you get a hot dog at the game?

What was your concession strategy the game last night, David?

My concession strategy was I got there super early.

I was up at the altitude sports bar where they, they do the show up there and I got, I

love that.

I love that.

We got, I got hummus and vegetables.

My dad got a hot dog.

The hot dog is actually weirdly not horrifically priced.

It was like, I think it was five bucks.

There you go.

That's a five dollar hot dog.

Yes.

I think the thing that I, I can't stand about, you talk about pricing, charging me 17 or

16 bucks for a can of beer is wrong.

Like that is wrong.

Like I am captive.

Literally there's a no reentry policy.

I can't go out, get a beer and come back in.

Yeah, but I can, people will pay anything for beer.

They don't even care.

They're like $27 course light fine.

I'm at a game.

Oh, I, like when I have, I'm having a tough week.

The main thing I focus in on, like I put in my mind, like at nuggets game holding beer.

Like I'm going to like that's, that's like my zen state, right?

Like that's, and like you're, you're, you're charging me 17 bucks.

Like you got a pre game, man.

I think that's really the case.

I mean, I know it's not as, it's not as fulfilling as sitting there in the visual, the creative

visualization you're doing.

I know, holding the beer.

I know.

I know.

It should put, like that's a, that's a captive audience thing.

I just can't tell.

And it's a can.

It's not even coming out of the draft.

No, it's just a can.

Like it's just, you're just pure profiteering here.

All right.

All right.

All right, David Paul.

Thank you.

This was great.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

See you all next time.

Hey, Bri here with Elizabeth Martinez from Compass Real Estate.

We're breaking down some great Denver neighborhoods for people who are thinking about putting down

roots.

Hey, Elizabeth.

Hey, Bri.

How's it going?

So good.

What neighborhood are we talking about today?

We're heading over to Ruby Hill and Southwest Denver.

Awesome.

Okay.

First question.

What's your favorite piece of history that you like to share about this neighborhood?

Hello.

Since my dad grew up here, he always reminds me that Ruby Hill, the park, was actually a landfill

up until 1968.

You know, my mom also grew up here in her middle school and Southeast Denver was also

built on a landfill.

So there you go.

It's a pretty, it's a pretty common story of that, yeah, that creative reuse of a space.

Okay.

What kind of buyer is going to gravitate towards Ruby Hill?

For the most part, it's going to be first time home buyers and some downsizers as well

since the homes tend to be smaller and they have big lots, I think, starter home.

Okay.

Okay.

And what would be the price range for the average home in Ruby Hill?

So looking at 2025 numbers, just to give the actual case study, the prices are from 260,000

to 755,000.

And in that, at 260, you're finding something that needs total fix up.

And then 755 is an anomaly because it's a farmhouse built in 1939 on half of an anchor.

So let's talk about the average.

So the average is about $450,000.

And for that, you get a two bedroom, one bathroom, about 700 to 900 square feet, give or take

a garage.

And that could be totally fixed up and ready to move in.

Yeah, that's definitely well under the average median price in Denver proper.

So that is definitely a good place to start.

How would you describe this neighborhood?

Is it urban?

Is it suburban?

What's it like when you walk around?

So since it was built in the 1950s, it was built more like suburbia, what, you know,

in terms of Denver definitions, because the commercial strips are on the main streets of

federal or Evans, you don't really have a lot of commercial within the neighborhoods,

which the urban feel has.

Okay.

And, you know, speaking of that feel, one of the big parts of this neighborhood, one of

the features I would say is Levitt Pavilion, which is inside Ruby Hill Park, what should

perspective neighbors know about this concert venue?

So Levitt Pavilion came in 2017, it was an amazing addition to the neighborhood built

by Denver Parks and Rec, and it provides free concerts as well as paid concerts.

So it's great for people all over the city, but especially those within walking distance

to just go hang out at the park in the summer.

Mind you, you have the sound, but the Hill doesn't transfer as much sound into the neighborhood,

which is great.

Or you can sit at the top of the home, always hear the concert, but it's really fun just

to get your friends together, get your family together, and just go take a picnic for

the evening.

And speaking of this park, there's this other really cool feature that I think also

a lot of folks may not know about, which is the rail yard.

What is the rail yard in Ruby Hill Park?

It's so cool.

It's a free urban ski and snowboard park built by the Denver Parks and Rec, and Winter Park

Resort.

It opened in 2007, and you can just bring your skis or your snowboard or your sled.

And go ahead to the Hill.

Now the funny thing is, they actually do have a snowmaking machine, obviously when it's

affordable to do so for the city, but it is really cool that they make their own snow

so that kids that don't always have access to the mountains, because it's an expensive

sport, can go and learn on the rail yard.

I think that's the beauty of Ruby Hill Park itself.

It's like concerts in the summer.

You could snowboard or ski in the winter, what I like, two things that Colorado is really

known for.

Yeah, I love that.

Well, Elizabeth, thanks for being here again.

Check out ElizabethMartina's.co to learn more.

We'll have a link for you in our show notes as well, so you're just to click away.

Thanks for listening.

That's all for today here on CityCast, Denver.

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We'll be back tomorrow morning with more news from around the city.

Bye-bye.

And obviously as a running theme, better off dead, very GeneXy.

My favorite clip is this two seconds you use of Jeremy Piven from Singles when he's yelling

at Campbell Scott.

You are the king while he's buying, he's trying to buy a pregnancy test, and it's-

It's a deep cut.

It is a deep cut.

Yeah, that's my joy.

I mean, that's all like what I, those are all the movies that I grew up on.

Okay, I appreciate it.

I appreciate it.

I actually really appreciate you knowing that exact clip of Jeremy Piven.