rockmount my world

sometimes i'm lucky enough to have experiences in my life that i'm not even sure of why i'm worthy. one such experience occurred last week while i was in denver.

i know you are all well aware of the fact that i grew up in the great southwest. it's a fact that while i was living there i did not appreciate nearly as much as i do now that i can look back on it in retrospect.

when i was growing up, all of the men in my family wore the western style snap front shirts that have recently made their way back up the fashion ladder. and even though i am not so much into the western style of dress, i've always had an appreciation for it because that is the way cowboys dressed up and expressed their sense of style, for which i'm all about.

my grandfather was dressed in such a manner when we laid him to rest and most of the other male guests were dressed in this style and i was wearing my finest cowboy boots that i had purchased specially for the occassion.

my point is that an appreciation for western wear is not lost on me even though i don't often put on my annie oakley gear any more.

oh yeah, back to denver...

i met the owner of rockmount western wear while i was in town and i was so surprised by how excited i was to have met him and to visit his old historic store in downtown denver. if you're not familiar with rockmount, it is the oldest western style shirt still in production and the first to be designed with the snap front detail. there is even an original in the smithsonian collection in washington d.c.

rockmount is in it's third generation, now being run by steve weil, who's grandfather started the company in the forties and just passed away last year at the age of 107. steve's father also passed away last year, leaving him at the reigns of the ever growing business and taking over the main design work as well. i was surprised to learn that a company this old is run so small and that steve is a very hands on person. if you email the company's website, you most likely will get a response from steve, directly. that is so cool!

and, as unassuming as steve is, i could tell that he was very excited about the celebrities that embrace their designs including bob dylan, eric clapton, the pretenders, mark chesnutt, heath ledger and jake gyllenhall (in brokeback mountain) and the white stripes.



so, if you are ever in denver, i highly recommend a visit to the historic rockmount western wear store. it's a store and museum all in one and very cool to boot (no pun intended)!
1626 wazee st 303.629.7777



and i can't forget to mention our dinner after visiting the store at tamayo. this is a modern mexican restaurant with a heavy spanish influence. when we talked about going there, someone mentioned that their portions were not very large. umm, not true! i thought that for a tapas style restaurant, they had really great portions and i couldn't even finish everything. i started with the halibut ceviche and then had an amazing chile relleno for dinner and it was more than enough. although, that could have been due to the fact that i had a ton of their yummy guacamole to start out with. you can find tamayo at 1409 larimer 720.946.1433