June 2009
303 Magazine welcomes its Summer issue with a splash of romantic bliss, hot fashion and insane talent. Find out the outrageous ways some couples met and fell head over heels in the Summer Love feature. Listen up as The Jim Jims introduce their sounds and Kevin Smith chats about his filmmaking career. Follow a storm chaser through tornadoes and a bookworm through The Bookery Nook. Blast the music decades with Chuck Morris of AEG Live. It’s time to release the summer ’tude by dressing the part in Slaves of New York and Air Force fashion shoots, so bring the gear as 303 welcomes summer.
Featured in This issue.
SUMMER LOVE - I noticed them a year ago in The Cheesecake Factory. Sitting right next to me, nothing seemed strange about them except that once I noticed them, I continued to notice them. Like any socially savvy fella, I know the value of the windshield wiper look. Making continued eye contact brings hostility, glares and generally unpleasant situations. I looked back at my friend and asked him discreetly, moving a hand to the side of my mouth so they wouldn’t hear my question, “How is it, you think, that they got together?”
These two, they seemed to glow. He looked engulfed in her presence, and she seemed the same, like they were on the angelic beauty clock while the rest of us moved in gray real-time. I felt like a kid at the zoo wanting to press my face against the glass.
“I have no idea. How could I know that? Weird question.” My friend was right, but the curiosity remained. I’d seen it before, on a tram in Prague, even felt it with a former flame, but with observation and experience, I wondered… Does such a thing occupy more than moments at a time? Can a person catch that glow and keep it?
Life doesn’t go like the movies. Rather than scripted romantic fluff, we move like depraved lungfish between spells of love-lacking droughts, then breathe fresh water until we get bored and move to the next relationship oasis. Am I wrong? I wanted to know. So, in an effort to understand this ancient mystery—and also for a sure-fire way to find single girls—I, and whoever I could sucker to come along with me, hit the streets of Denver to unravel the questions of what makes couples tick, why we do it, and to find the most interesting stories to that simple question that brings on word waterfalls: “How did you meet?”
When I first began this mission, I had grandiose notions of fantastically energetic encounters involving the crumpled rear end of a car, grimly exchanged numbers, love sprouting like a reluctant seed. And, while nobody’s story is ever simple, many fit neatly under the categories of work, friends and bars. I wanted more. So, I sat back and simply asked the people around me if they knew any great stories of how someone they knew met their significant other.
