The Downtown Experience.

• Author: RUNDLES, JEFF

Like many other people, I was home watching the New Year's Eve festivities around the world on television, and was amazed, dazzled and excited by what I saw in Paris, London, New York, Washington, D.C., Rio, Singapore -- everywhere. Everywhere, that is, but Denver, Colorado, where police and city officials managed to scare away nearly everyone from welcoming the millennium in a full-scale celebration.

First they told us that LoDo would be closed off to traffic. Then that was rescinded, but the parking meters were all hooded to discourage street parking. What everyone in officialdom feared, I suppose, was a repeat of the boorishness that took place in LoDo after the Denver Broncos won the last two Super Bowls, It worked. On New Year's Eve, no one went to Downtown Denver and the city was saved from over-celebration.

It may indeed be saved from such nonsense forever. As the New Year dawned here in Denver, the wise city administration and other members of the civic bureaucracy announced a plan to require visitors to Downtown Denver -- a huge area defined by Colfax on the south, Speer and Wynkoop on the west, 20th Street on the north and Broadway on the east -- to pay parking meters until 10 p.m. every day of the week, all year round. A day later Mayor Webb withdrew Sundays from the proposal, because churches objected, but we will all be saved now all the other days of the week.

The meters will have just two-hour limits, so no feeding the meter. Those scofflaws who don't pay, have the meter run out, or try and get away with more than two hours will have to pay a $15 parking ticket to the City and County of Denver. All these fees, I'm sure, will be a great enhancement to the city's coffers and benefit us all. It will save us from excessive celebration.

Thousands of people, who previously came downtown to celebrate one of the most magnificent rebirths of an inner city in the United States, have been outed as the culprits who jammed our streets, spent way too much money in the clubs and restaurants, and just had too much fun at the...