Stateside: Raise a glass to the past

Watching sets of skis orbit the luggage carousel, I wondered if any of my fellow travellers would be stopping in Denver. Judging from their impatient looks and eagerness to get into the mountains, it seemed unlikely.

Passing through its vast and uninspiring airport, it’s hard to believe Denver has anything much to offer apart from a quick route to the Rockies, but if you’re one of the thousands of Brits who simply pass through every year without stopping, you’d never know.

Stopovers are a growing phenomena in the ski market, spurred on by everybody’s love of a bargain. Not only do you get an extra city break for not much more cash, you also get to make the most of the weak dollar while it lasts. But while obvious choices such as New York and Boston thrive on holidays to New England (likewise Vancouver or Montreal if you’re skiing in Canada), Denver is an unknown quantity.

My interest was spurred by a love of 1950s Americana. Beat icon Jack Kerouac paid homage to the city on numerous occasions, notably in the 1957 classic, On The Road, the first account of his many frantic journeys across the US. Denver was the home of hell raiser and womaniser Neal Cassidy, who Kerouac idolised, and who provided the inspiration for his fictional anti-hero Dean Moriaty. I secretly hoped some of Kerouac and Cassidy’s Denver still existed.

Checking into the Hotel Monaco was a good start. Built in 1917 as a railway office, it’s been through several guises, including a doss-house for railway workers. Kerouac himself worked as a railroad brakeman on occasion, surely a good omen for my visit.

The building was fully refurbished a few years ago when Kimpton turned it into a boutique hotel, but the view from my fifth-floor window still took in a glorious slice of downtown America as it used to be. Gargoyles adorned the 1930s office block opposite, staring back at me in mock-Gothic horror. Optimistic, I headed out onto the 16th Street Mall – Denver’s main street.

At first glance, it’s a fine looking place. The mile-long thoroughfare connects Lower Downtown at one end with the State Capitol at the other. The 15th step of the gold-domed Capitol building is exactly a mile above sea level, hence Denver’s mile-high city tag.

Along 16th Street, red brick, warehouse-style buildings jostle for space with grand old Art Deco hotels and 50s department stores. It’s a far cry from the homogeneous steel and glass style that plagues modern city centres – it feels like a tiny, long-lost district of Manhattan. But that’s where the comparisons with New York end. After a while it feels a little odd, like part of a civic improvement project in which the private sector hasn’t played along. It’s kept scrupulously clean and there’s a free shuttle bus that runs the length of the mall, but there’s something missing.

The centrepiece is the Denver Pavilions, a shopping and entertainment complex that opened in 1998, but there’s not much there beyond the obligatory Virgin Megastore, Victoria’s Secret and a multiplex cinema. Where are all the other stores so commonplace in other US city centres? Where are the friendly little coffee shops? Most importantly, where can I get a cut-price iPod? The answer: Cherry Creek.

This suburban development, about a 15-minute cab ride away, is home to a great mall with familiar names such as Urban Outfitters and Abercrombie and Fitch, as well as the upmarket department store Neiman Marcus. It’s all very nice, but I couldn’t help thinking how great it would be if a few of these stores opened up downtown.

That’s the bad news about Denver’s gentrification. The good news is what it lacks in daytime attractions, it makes up for at night. For a relatively small city, it punches above its weight for bars and restaurants, largely thanks to one man, local entrepreneur John Hickenlooper.

Hickenlooper opened the Wynkoop pub a few years ago in what was once the most run-down area of Denver – Lower Downtown. In doing so, he sparked a gentrification programme that saw former warehouses and industrial spaces spruced up and turned into bars, restaurants and smart boutiques.

LoDo, as the area is now called, takes up several city blocks and encompasses Larimer St, a former skid row about which Jack Kerouac waxed lyrical.

Quite what he would have made of the gentrification I don’t know, but it’s obviously been a hit with city residents. In 2003, they elected John Hickenlooper mayor and today the Wynkoop is one of the largest micro-brew pubs in the US.

There’s a bewildering selection of ales to sample, from Monkey’s Fist IPA to Captain Hickenlooper’s Flying Artillery Ale, or the rather more direct sounding SOB. I ordered a pint of Patty’s Chilli Beer and raised a glass to Jack. Whatever he might have said, he couldn’t have argued with the kick on that beer.