Sofi Needs A -nother Show in Denver!

Sofia Toufa - Vocal Artist on 'Sofi Needs A Ladder'
Photo courtesy of:  thatchickelle.com

By: Kristine Condition
In my last post about the Denver Nail Lounge I made reference to a show I saw at Beta a few weeks ago.  Tommy Lee was in town that night, mixing it up with DJ Aero.  I was super enthusiastic about my first opportunity to see him in an electro environment.  Having met him and seen him perform at many Motley Crue concerts, I was certain of the good time I was about to have.

I’m a rocker at heart, but I also grew up dancing to a lot of techno.  It was HUGE when I was a teenager in the mid 90’s, and if you danced – you danced to techno.  You did it looking like David Bowie meets Tim Burton, and that was a highly unusual look at the time.  There was no Lady Gaga, no Rhiana, no one in popular culture making it okay to be oddly colorful and somewhat disconcerting.

Today’s teenagers view an avant garde personal appearance as admirable and desirable because modern media gives them the courage to do so.  Mainstream kids in my day, the cookie cutter mother fuckers, had no appreciation for the eccentricity that was central to the way my friends and I looked, dressed and lived our lives.  They were incapable of understanding our romance with theatrics and the underground, and we were frequently shunned.   Thank God, because that was the point.  Most important to this article is the fact that they did not ‘get it’ with regard to the long nights we spent dancing.

Sofia Toufa
Photo courtesy of: twitpic.com

When I dig past the inevitable painful memories of my teen years, I can find exquisite moments wherein I was dancing.  Moments when I was aloft in smoke and lights and music, feeling beautiful and at home on top of the highest speaker I could climb.  Sharing it with everyone in the room, yet blissfully alone in my pretty techno bubble.  Personal freedom came courtesy of those secret nightclubs and illegal raves and we consumed it ravenously.  Often without all the drugs people assume were part of the experience. The dancing was the drug.

Eventually the kids who kept the GAP in business got hooked on a couple of the techno anthems that were huge at the time.  One night I showed up at my prized underground dance club and every unoriginal fuck I hated in high school was standing in a line that had never before existed.  They were soon to be at the raves too, and the scene met its demise for a while.  C’est la vie.

In 2011 electro music is enjoying the good life again, flowing in the major artery of the mainstream.  As a result, though, the problem of posers is as real as ever.  Except they now try their damndest to look LIKE the subculture.  In short, it is now normal to be weird.  Because this is the case, it’s all the more difficult these days to discover artists and music that are engaging in an authentic way.  I’m always hunting for that raw, genuine edge that is detectable because it emanates from within its source – as opposed to being put on by someone trying to emulate it.

Tommy Lee and DJ Aero
Photo courtesy of: flickr.com

When I saw Sofia Toufa perform at Beta in Denver I surprisingly discovered that flavor of originality and verity that is so elusive.  Needless to say, I was thrilled.  As I said, I went to see Tommy and exploit the opportunity to revisit a strobe light induced oblivion.  Tommy, along with DJ Aero, did not disappoint.  As I danced and pushed drunken bimbos out of my way in the front row, I could see Sofi standing nearby.  I didn’t know that she had any relevance to the show beyond being Tommy’s girlfriend.  I’d encountered them backstage at a different show in the past and their fondness for each other was evident then.  Little did I know that she was about to

Denver Nail Lounge - The Nordstrom Of Nail Salons?

Photo courtesy of:
flickr/negativityabundant

 A few weeks ago I was buzzing around the Denver Pavilions shopping area in search of a hot little number to wear out that night. As I passed the Denver Nail Lounge I glanced inside and noticed a sign indicating a discount. Seeing three Asian women standing behind the counter, I was suddenly hopeful ownership had changed. When I’d tried to schedule an appointment under the previous ownership the bitch who answered the phone was so hateful and nasty that I never even considered paying their exorbitant prices. As a downtown resident this pissed me off because I really wanted the option of getting my nails done in such a lovely little salon. The interior is full of light and color.

I walked in the door and the new owner of the salon, Puna Javzandolgor, greeted me right away. She clearly and POLITELY answered my questions, including the cost of services. Not only were her prices better, but when I asked her about the bubble tea that was part of the previous owner’s offering, she stated, “No. We don’t do bubble tea. We do nails.” I liked her right away. Satisfied with my assessment of the changes at Denver Nail Lounge, I decided to give the salon a try the following day.

Tommy Lee and Sofi Toufa
Photo courtesy of: TommyLee.com

At 10:45 the next morning I officially became a huge pain in Puna’s ass. I hate to admit the following but I must do so in order to give her the credit she deserves. My appointment was to begin at 11:00 a.m. and I called her to say that I wouldn’t be coming as I had overestimated that time slot. We rescheduled for 5:30 p.m. In the meantime I still hadn’t found an outfit that was befitting of the long night of dancing that lay ahead. Tommy Lee was brining DJ Aero and Sofi to Beta and it was certain to be a hell of a show. (When else can you mashup your rocker heart with your dancing body?) I wanted to look sultry because experience has shown that Tommy likes to ...

Denver Nail Lounge - Mongolian Dynamo Ditches Master's Degree For Manicures

Photo courtesy of: denver.metromix.com

The Denver Nail Lounge changed ownership recently and the woman who is now in charge has serious cojones. We are impressed by her here at Denver Subculture because she is doing things HER way!  Her name is Puna Javzandolgor and she's a wicked smart, goal oriented, driven woman who is bound for success.  What makes her courage evident?  She took the entrepreneurial plunge in a big way when she decided to buy the Denver Nail Lounge.  It is located in the Denver Pavilions shopping center, on the 16th Street Mall, in downtown’s Central Business District.  Low rent it is not!  A lot of pretty fingers and toes will have to march out her doors to cover costs, but she doesn’t seem fazed.

So, you're asking yourself, with a location as mainstream as the Denver Pavilions, how is Puna fit to be part of Denver's Subculture?  It's all in the approach.  She is originally from Mongolia.  After the borders were finally opened in the 90’s, she traveled to America.  She entered the country with nothing less than a Master’s Degree in Computer Science. Unfortunately, she quickly found that the job market was too competitive; particularly because she was competing with U.S. citizens who were also seeking steady employment.  Rather than piss and moan about what some people would view as misfortune, she made no hesitation in ditching her degree in favor of something more lucrative.  Humble and hardworking, she decided that a steady income could best be had doing nails.  So, she went to work in Korean owned salons, learning bit by bit what everyone was doing right, and more importantly, what they were doing wrong.  Seeing that the shop owners were finding success in spite of their poor business management skills, she determined that she could certainly find even greater success utilizing her sharp intellect, natural business savvy and superior English speaking skills. 



Photo courtesy of: kmgh.cityvoter.com

We have to admit that her English speaking skills go a long way.  It’s a breeze to make appointments, express likes and gripes and, shoot the shit with her.  (If our willingness to note the annoyance of communication problems in nail salons offends you, you're reading the wrong blog.  We embrace every walk of life, but we tell it like it is.) We also love the way she’s smartly taking advantage of the immediate benefits that are inherent in her adoption of the Denver Nail Lounge.  Such as the existing interior design concept.  With her few added tweaks the Denver Nail Lounge reminds us of Twister meets ...

Mile High Macabre: Now that everyone likes skulls they're so CHEESY!

CHEESMAN PARK
Photo credit:  Cyrus McCrimmon - The Denver Post
(We love this photo Cyrus!  If you have more we'd love to see.)

There are those of us who simply love GRAVEYARDS.  The sense of history, the unease, the silence... It is so interesting to imagine all the scenarios that might have characterized a person’s life between those two dates carved in the stone.  We can spend hours taking photographs, reading epitaphs or just sitting quietly, awaiting something more.  Similarly, CEMETERIES demand quiet respect and a creative mind that can appreciate the mental candy that death serves up.  In case you’re curious, cemeteries differ from graveyards primarily because they are larger, and they are publicly rather than religiously affiliated. In our opinion here at Denver Subculture it is the BURIAL GROUND that evokes the greatest sense of the macabre.  Urns, coffins, caskets, and many of the other traditional vessels of death were often foregone when the dead were interred in burial grounds.  For one reason or another, an overwhelming number of bodies might suddenly require disposal and the only reasonable solution under the circumstances was to bury masses of people together.

In the middle of the 19th century Denver's wild west ways were catching up with the city and bodies were becoming a burden.  This problem gave way to the Mount Prospect cemetery - Denver’s first.  Although the task of burying so many bodies was accomplished, it seems that record keeping was not a high priority.  This proved to be a huge problem when a handful of decades later, Denver decided that the site would be better suited as a park.  To facilitate the plan the city began exhuming the remains, only to find that a lack of records wasn’t the only problem.  Apparently the undertaker associated with the task was less than respectable and took it upon himself to chop the bodies up in order to cram some of them into coffins.  Essentially he combined the concept of cemetery and burial ground in a grotesque example of efficiency!  Needless to say the removal of the bodies was a slipshod effort that was neither precise nor thorough.

This is great news for those of you in the Denver Subculture who love a good dose of creepy.  Guess where this all went down…Cheesman Park!  That’s right, one of your favorite places to meander is a great place to mingle with a skeleton or two.  As a result of the aforementioned ‘sloppy body incident’, skeletons are found in Cheesman Park to this day.  Just last year FOUR were found.  So on one of the upcoming warm winter days that uncharacteristically keep occurring, skip the tired metal detector and become a bone collector for the afternoon.  While the predictable other Denverites are tossing a Frisbee with the dog or getting hammered on a bar patio, you can be spending your time on a treasure hunt like no other. Fuck the mainstream! 

(Disclaimer:  Denver Subculture read about the components of this post in various accounts.  Not all accounts were in agreement, leaving us uncertain as to the exact dates and names associated with the cemetery and park.  As such, we recommend that you further investigate if you want to become an expert.  We whole heartedly feel that the point of importance is the fact that DEAD BODIES are surfacing at Cheesman Park!!!  Rad!)