BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME

Former Boulder Weekly staffer Dale Bridges sets mystery novel in familiar environs

BY BART SCHANEMAN

When Dale Bridges was working as the arts and culture editor for Boulder Weekly in the early 2000s, he couldn’t have predicted he’d publish a novel loosely based on some of what he experienced here.

With The Mean Reds, out now from Stephen F. Austin University Press, he’s done exactly that, finding inspiration in some of the people and places he knew during the job, and setting it all in the Boulder-esque fictional town of Mountainview.

The story follows hapless alt-weekly movie reviewer Sam Drift, who skates through life getting high and watching old movies. Sam’s world is thrown into chaos when the editor of the paper assigns him an investigative piece to uncover the story of an exotic dancer who died outside a lounge not unlike Boulder’s real-life Nitro Club. The result is part The Big Lebowski, and part hard-boiled detective story, in the vein of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.

Bridges says writing the novel was a lesson in letting go of his real-life experiences and allowing the story to develop independent of his memories.

“Sam was definitely supposed to be me,” he says. “When I started writing the novel it was based on my experiences and my own internal struggles and issues. But … at some point, I had to let it go.”

The novel began to coalesce once Bridges delved deeper into his characters’ backstories and let them become different people. Same with the city. Once he changed the name, he felt the possibilities for the story open up.

“This city needed to become its own thing,” he says. “Then the imagination takes over and you make things up.”

But creative license aside, there’s plenty here Boulder readers will recognize. For instance, this passage in which the narrator waxes on the fictional Mountainview of yesteryear:

“Once upon a flashback, Mountainview had been a sleepy little college town nestled at the base of the Flatirons like a baby tucked into a mother’s bosom … In those days, the university focused primarily on agricultural studies, and the tourists who quirky style, it doesn’t really matter to me what the book is about, I’ll keep reading it,” he says.

BLACK-AND-WHITE CHILDHOOD

One of Sam’s quirks is his obsession with old movies. He processes his life by making comparisons to Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant alongside many other classic films and their actors. That all comes from Bridges’ childhood growing up in the ’80s in Yuma, Colorado, the son of a fundamentalist preacher.

As a kid, Bridges wasn’t allowed to listen to secular music or go to the movie theater. He wasn’t even allowed to go to dances, a la Footloose

“The internet didn’t really exist at that time,” he says. “So it felt like the rest of the world was so far away out

“When people have nostalgia for their childhood, it’s usually of their era,” he says. “But mine was for an era that I never had borne witness to.”

Bridges used that childhood nostalgia to flesh out Sam’s character in The Mean Reds. The title of the novel comes from a line in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, when Audrey Hepburn, as Holly Golightly, asks, “Do you ever get the mean reds? Suddenly you’re afraid and you don’t know what you’re afraid of.”

Letting Go

To bring Sam to life and let the story take on its own trajectory, Bridges says he had to learn to stop forcing the novel to follow his direction.

For example, when he was trying to write the character for the owner of the dance joint, Bridges was relying on his memory of the proprietor of the Nitro Club from many years ago, whom he remembered as a small, bald man with very soft hands.

Bridges knew the club well, because people threw a fit when it opened on Pearl Street in 2007 — a story he wrote about at the time for Boulder Weekly. Then he started hanging out at the club because it was one of the only places in town that stayed open late.

Bridges says he kept trying to write the owner as the small, soft-handed man from his memories, but it wouldn’t work. So after months of struggling, he made the fictionalized owner into a woman, and things began to fall into place.

trickled through were mostly bearded men with checkered hats and rubber boots pulled up to their testicles as they prepared to fish the Colorado River. It was just a town. A nice town, a pretty town, but just a town.”

As the above excerpt highlights, Bridges’ novel is driven by a distinct voice, with Sam often making Chandler-esque quips as part of his internal monologue. Bridges says that’s a matter of taste.

“If you give me an interesting voice, something with dark humor and a on that prairie where it’s just that nothingness as far as the eye can see.”

They had a television with a rabbitear antenna and four channels at his house. On Saturday, after the morning cartoons, he was allowed to watch old black-and-white movies. No cursing, nudity or sex. So when Bridges went off to college at the University of Northern Colorado, he watched everything he could — from John Hughes films to The Simpsons — but those classic movies stayed with him.

“What really happens is you let that subconscious brain of yours, where a lot of the creativity happens, let the story take on a life of its own,” he says. “You have an idea of where it needs to go and what needs to happen. But if you try to force it down that path, it often just doesn’t work.”

18

LGBTQ+ HIKE: WONDERLAND LAKE

11 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 18, Wonderland Lake, 4201 N. Broadway, Boulder. Free

Want to build community in the great “out” doors? Out Boulder County and Boulder Open Space & Mountain Parks present this LGBTQ+ nature event at scenic Wonderland Lake. Participants can look forward to “fun recovery activities” after the short North Boulder hike, complete with snacks and hot cocoa at the nature center.

18-19

BOULDER OPERA: MASSENET’S MANON

7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 18 and 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 19, Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder.

Boulder Opera presents a stirring performance of Manon by Jules Massenet at the Dairy Arts Center — a story about innocence, love, betrayal and tragedy. Get there early at 6 p.m. for an introductory talk with stage director Gene Roberts to kick off this moving night of music.

21

TUNE INTO NATURE: DARK SKIES

6:30-7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 21, Lafayette Public Library, 775 W. Baseline Road.

Dark Skies Colorado, a nonprofit “dedicated to preserving the exceptional quality of the natural dark skies of the Wet Mountain Valley in Custer County, Colorado,” comes to the Lafayette Public Library on Tuesday night to talk about light pollution and its effects on migratory bird populations.

22

HIKE FOR SENIORS:

Winter At New Heights

10 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 22, near Nederland; location provided when registered

Volunteer naturalists with Boulder County Parks & Open Space invite up to 20 participants on a moderate hike to explore and learn about the geology, history, plants and wildlife around Nederland during this outdoor event designed for older residents. Limited transportation available from Boulder.

18-19

ROCKY MOUNTAIN RECORD SHOW

11 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 18, and 10 a.m.3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 19, Denver Sports Castle, 1000 N. Broadway. $6 Saturday / Free Sunday

Calling all cratediggers! The Rocky Mountain Record Show returns for a weekend celebrating all things vinyl. The two-day blowout is estimated to feature more than 100,000 LPs from punk to free jazz and points in between, along with other music memorabilia, food trucks, local DJs and more. Early-bird entry ($25) begins at 9 a.m. on Saturday. Registration required.

19

NAACP FREEDOM FUND: NASHVILLE AFRICAN AMERICAN WIND SYMPHONY

3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 19, Macky Auditorium, 1595 Pleasant St., Boulder. Free

NAACP Boulder County presents the Nashville African American Wind Symphony, featuring more than 50 classically trained musicians, for an afternoon performance at Macky Auditorium. The symphony will feature classical music highlighting the influence of African American culture on American folklore.

21-23

BANFF CENTRE MOUNTAIN

Film Festival

7-10 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 21 through Thursday, Feb. 23, Boulder Theater, 2032 14th St. $25

Like your movies with a little stoke? Head to the Boulder Theater for this year’s Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival, an awe-inspiring compilation of adventure films that will transport you from picturesque remote landscapes to intense mountain sport thrill rides.

22

Double Ipa Tapping Party

6-8 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 22, Boulder Social, 1600 38th St., Boulder. Free

Heads up, hop heads: Boulder Social is hosting an IPA-themed tapping event you won’t want to miss. Participants will get one free 5-oz. pour of the local brewery’s Social Double IPA. Full drafts of the new offering and other in-house beers are $5 during the event.

Top 10

Found Sounds

What’s in Boulder’s headphones?

Another week, another round-up of the bestselling new vinyl releases from Paradise Found Records & Music (1646 Pearl St.) Millennial arena emo standard-bearers Paramore snag the top spot with their first album in half a decade — plus the new one from indie rock icons Yo La Tengo, reissues from Avril and Whitney, and more.

1. PARAMORE This Is Why

2. YO LA TENGO This Stupid World

3. WIDESPREAD PANIC Huntsville 1996

4. IGGY POP Every Loser

5. WHITNEY HOUSTON Whitney Houston (Reissue)

6. PIERCE THE VEIL Misadventures (Reissue)

7. ANDY SHAUF Norm

8. OSCAR PETERSON Night Train (Reissue)

9. AVRIL LAVIGNE Let Go (Reissue)

10. REX:C Rose