Denver Civic Center remains desolate on a beaming Saturday afternoon. Those passing by look suspiciously at me and my camera, as if I’m a tourist one week late to a renowned event due to miscommunication or wrong turns. I’m not supposed to be here.

But I wasn’t even embarrassingly late to a renowned event. There wasn’t one at all.

Denver has always been a place bursting at the calendar seams with weekend happenings, especially during holidays. Community and the love for being outdoors is what brought me — an infiltrating East Coaster — out West. This Labor Day weekend, there’s little-to-nothing happening, a strange occurrence we haven’t seen since the COVID shutdown.

A Taste of Colorado – a sprawling food and art festival that held its 39^th iteration during Labor Day weekend in 2022 – is not happening. A Denver staple, the event once five stages of live music, countless food trucks, vendors and other activities. Around 500,000 people attended the three-day festival annually. Now, nothing.

There’s four people passing through the Civic Center park. Even the oncoming tumbleweed seems hesitant and perplexed.

Parking — a hair-pulling task in the Civic Center region any other year — was as simple as pulling in.

I speak to Ro, a woman from Canada who moved to Colorado Springs in July. I explain the former festival as if a folktale of legend.

“That would have been incredible,” she says. “Where do I find a petition to sign to bring it back?”

Taste of Colorado was reportedly incorporated into ¡Viva! Streets, a collection of street shutdowns during summer weekends with local vendors and music.

I never heard of it.

The Denver Chalk Art Festival, another Labor Day weekend staple that was held just two blocks from A Taste of Colorado, moved its dates to back in June.

A quick glance at our Things to Do schedule shows an eerie lack of Labor Day events, outside of ticketed concerts and farmers markets that occur outside of the holiday.

And the desolation isn’t just in Denver. Boulder’s beloved Boulder Creek Hometown Festival was also cancelled for 2023. The Labor Day festival, another home to live music and vendors, will miss its 24^th year due to several different factors.

“The event had fallen upon hard times; it had become unsuccessful and had acquired much debt over the years,” Boulder Creek Events announced on Facebook.

As a reporter, I’ve cut my teeth covering events. It’s one of the best parts of my job. A day of sunshine and happy faces can help break through the doom and gloom of daily life for anyone, not just reporters. But, as summer comes to a close, there seems to be no way to celebrate with other Denverites.

And my Saturday was free enough to write this piece — obviously.

Five Points Flavor, a food-based event held by Mile High Festivals at 2821 Welton Street, looks to fill some hearts that are missing the food festivals of the past.

“It’s definitely sad that an event like A Taste of Colorado, that we all have enjoyed, is offline,” said Norman Harris, CEO of Mile High Festivals, an African American-owned company that puts on events to benefit local communities and create cultural integration.

“But it opens the window for new programming, new activities and new ways for communities to come together and have a good time,” he added.

The festival is being held from Friday to Monday from 2-10 p.m. and features food trucks and music with the spotlight set on “Caribbean flavors, notably by the presence of ‘Fritay Haitian Cuisine’ and an Afro-Caribbean beats soundtrack,” according to the Mile High Festivals press release.

On Sunday, the festival will hold its Rum Punch after Brunch, providing bottomless rum drinks for $30.

Harris didn’t plan the Five Points Flavor festival in the wake of A Taste of Colorado’s cancellation. He notes there were food trucks looking for a place to go on Labor Day weekend and he considers the Five Points neighborhood to be a “food desert.”

“As an event planner, there have been years where we said to not do anything during Labor Day weekend because hundreds of thousands of people will be at A Taste of Colorado,” Harris said. “Things change, though, and we’re really just trying to drive good traffic down Welton street which, at times, can be really devoid of that.”

These small events are wonderful in concept and offerings, bringing people to little-known sides of the city and filling bellies.

But they are no real replacement for the colossal festival that used to crowd downtown.

“I think that weekends like this have a lot of outflow of people leaving the Denver metro area,” a spokesperson for the Denver Police Department said. “In my past experience, I would say it’s been a little bit slower.”

DPD community relations officers are usually out in droves at events like A Taste of Colorado. When asked if they’re out at any events this weekend, the spokesperson said, “Not that I know of.”

But, if many Denverites are heading out to the mountains to enjoy the final days of summer heat, what is there for us to do in the metro? What is there to do for me, a reporter in the city?

Maybe next year we can place A Taste of Colorado right on the side of a mountain, bridging the gap between those that want to stay near their homes and those with a final summer wanderlust.