The day started out like a fairly typical New Year's Day. I slept late after carousing around town last night, hitting the DeVotchKa show at the Ogden and visiting various inebriated friends at watering holes around downtown. (Being the designated sober chick on New Year's Eve was a strange and new experience, but that's another story.) After stops and Rockbar and Charlie Brown's to wish happy New Year to friends, hubby and I headed home, driving down 10th Avenue to Speer just before 2 a.m., right when all the South Broadway clubs were letting out. Only minutes before Darrent Williams was shot to death just one block away after leaving his own New Year's Eve celebration. I heard the news shortly after waking up; hubby is a huge Broncos fan so naturally he was shocked and sickened at the loss of such a young and talented athlete. Soon after that, my phone began to ring; various friends and colleagues were trying to piece together the story and were hoping I had dropped into the club on my rounds the previous evening, or that I had heard something, anything, to help them get to the bottom of what happened. From the sounds of it, a bit of run-of-the-mill bar blustering turned into something much more tragic, and I for one am starting off in 2007 with a lot less of the shiny optimism that typically accompanies the beginning of a brand new year.