We took some time to interview Bryn Carter and Shayla Preeshl, to talk about the amazing girl power forward collective that they started. Bringing boss babes from all walks of life together, creating connections, promoting local businesses, and sharing good quality time together,

Tell me a little about the bad ass babes that created Safeword. What are each of your backgrounds? What brought the two of you together? What things started happening in your life that drove you to wanting a project of this nature? What was the turning point in your life that brought you to this thing that is Safeword.

B: I’m a Midwest girl, I moved here from a city outside of Chicago called Rockford after living in Australia for a while. The two of us actually met on a shoot a year ago – Shayla was styling and I was modeling. We clicked immediately and started hanging out after that. In all honesty, the idea for Safeword was really finalized one night at my house after a lot of wine haha. But before that, we had attended creative meet-ups (where we found a lack of female attendees) and women entrepreneur events (which we found to be full of cliques) and realized there was a real need for a place for female creatives and entrepreneurs to come together and network while growing alongside one another both personally and professionally. We refer to it as our coming-to-Jesus moment that night but between the two of us, we know so many amazing women in this city and our hope is to get these women working with one another and eventually take this to other cities as well.

S: I hail from small-town Montana, and have a background in wardrobe styling and marketing. I had lived in Denver for a few years, and found it difficult in my time here to connect with fellow creative women. Another turning point for us was when we had attended a local meetup, and it felt the opposite of welcoming for the babes who attended. We realized we need to do something for the ladies, there is too much talent here that is underrepresented!

Tell me a little about Safeword itself. What does the word mean/why did you choose this title?. Y’all have thrown some awesome events over the last few months, I attended the last at Ft. Greene and had an awesome time. What’s the purpose of events like these?

Well, we like to play a lot with words and their meanings. For example, on our website we have a section called ‘Centerfolds’ which has always referred to usually a sexy woman in the middle of some raunchy magazine. We wanted to reclaim these words that may have been used to degrade or to put down women and now our ‘Centerfold’ section is where we interview amazing creative women and entrepreneurs who share their stories. Safeword is the same – we wanted to use a work that represented a safe place that women could come together and feel comfortable.

The purpose of these events is to do networking differently – we like to have amazing artists and business owners there who can show their work, do their work, sell their products and meet some incredible women along the way. From our previous networking experiences, we had felt a sense of in-authenticity. Interactions felt robotic and forced. We always describe our events as hanging out with your girlfriends. We have a ton of ladies who come to them alone, and end up leaving with a babe squad worth of contacts and friendships by the end.

What was the goal in creating this group? How has it been going and how can local babes keep perpetuating the growth of that?

The goal is simple really – get all these amazing women together in one spot so they can network and build this business while also building their friend groups. We had a lot of women who just moved to the city come to our last event and reach out to thank us after because they were having such a hard time meeting women, and after our event they had some genuine new friends to hang out with. It’s things like those moments that let us know we are doing something right and hopefully will keep growing Safeword into something great. We hope to bring this to a national level, as we know of markets that are even more difficult to meet women in these industries than Denver. One other goal we focus on is creating an open dialogue amongst women, so instead of being pit against one another we can conquer avenues together through those relationships. The support we have received locally has been overwhelming. We launched this as a passion project, but had no idea how our audience would react. The fact that it has exceeded our expectations in growth by a long shot continues to motivate us.

What upcoming events do we have to look forward to? Any extra awesome stuff coming in the near future?

People always ask why we aren’t doing events all the time haha and we get asked weekly to partner with people on other events, but end of the day, we are not an event company and we really have to commit to why we started Safeword and stick to the quarterly networking events. Shayla and I also do this as a side hustle – she works full -time for a bad ass, women-owned and operated PR firm in town, I am a realtor and working to open a women’s co-working space (details coming soon babes). This is something we feel so strongly about and we are beyond thankful for all the amazing women we have met and the support we have been shown. Safeword is what it is because of the incredible babes of this city. Look for our next big event in the winter but might be one or two beforehand – we will be sure to keep you informed.

Follow the Safeword website here and follow these lovely babes on Instagram to keep up with the amazing things to come!

Food, fun, friends, music, local, libations, collaboration… These are things we are very fond of here at Ultra5280 and believe you, our readers, are fond of as well. Last weekend we discovered The Dinner Party Association, a new pop-up concept that brings all these wonderful things together once a month! Its founder, Megan Ranegar, and her “traveling supper club” are new to Denver as of this past December, but she didn’t waste any time acclimating her concept to the Mile High City. This first Sunday was the 3rd Dinner Party Association event, “The Taco Situation”, which took place three stories above the 16th Street Mall at a co-working space aptly named The Hive on 16th.

The basic concept is simple Megan explains, “We dinner party in unlikely places, eat delicious food, and toast with local brews.” Their goal is to create a community between Denver residents, foodies, chefs, musicians, photographers and the like. “I feel like I always meet the coolest people and have the best conversations in a dinner party atmosphere; I want to spread that magic through The Dinner Party Association.”

If grassroots involvement is any indication a concept is gaining momentum, then we think it’s pretty obvious Denver digs The Dinner Party Association’s arrival. We found out about the event via a post on Instagram and other brunch goers heard from a friend of a friend, or via social media as well. And now, you can say you heard about it here from us! While Dinner Party Association’s Instagram page has nearly 3,000 followers, it also has many other people and businesses that are outwardly supporting the pop-up on their social media outlets. Before moving to Denver, Megan organized similar pop-ups in Los Angeles but wasn't sure she’d continue them here, “I was mostly hesitant because I didn't have any connections to chefs, venues, etc. but I can't believe how collaborative the Denver community is! I've been so happily surprised at the reaction and support my concept has received here.”

Megan shares the one thing that really helped turn her California concept into a reality in Denver was meeting Brooks Gagstetter of Logan House Coffee. “Brooks basically said ‘you're doing this’ and proceeded to provide a beautiful warehouse space for our first event in January, and I’ve just continued building relationships from there.” The events now take place the first Sunday of each month in a unique new venue, with a completely different lineup of food, drinks and ambiance each time. “The theme of each event is something I dream up and then reach out to different spaces and chefs who I think would be a good fit. Then comes the fun part - designing the event. I have a background in marketing, so creating content to promote the event is fun for me too.”

Their first event was a “Coffee Beer Brunch” in the Logan House Coffee warehouse, in RiNo. Megan explains it's their goal to find cool, unique spaces for an alternative dining experience. The first Denver bunch to brunch with Dinner Party Association ate Thai fried eggs, rosemary chia pudding jars, pork rillettes with preserved pear atop Apache fry bread, and aged Rocky Mountain beers from Beryl’s Beer Co. For their second event they held a dinner and beer pairing and added live music to the mix with a musician from Denver and one from Chicago. Megan is very good about setting a scene and weaving a theme to make the dining experience truly unique, “I love thinking of little touches that will make the pop-up feel special,” she tells us.

The third event, which we attended, was titled “The Taco Situation” and began at 11am with cocktails, coffee and time to chat. Everyone was seated and plated with their first round of tacos around 11:30am. The brunch featured Horchata with Jameson on the side, coffee, a delicious hand crafted Apple cocktail from mixologist Lawrence Mack, and a series of Water, Land and Air inspired tacos.

The first round was Rainbow Trout Escabeche atop blue corn tortillas with pickled root veggies with a salty and astringent flavor palette. The next was a savory grilled Elk tenderloin with caramelized onion and subtly sweet pear jam atop potato tortillas. The third round was a sort of salty, smoky roasted Duck with beans, bacon crumbles and crispy shallots on butternut squash tortillas. Chef Kyle Morgan of Morgan Handmade Rations created each of these dishes which were very different in flavors and allowed you to experiment with pairing each up with the variety of drinks most of us had in front of us…They were all so good it was hard not to horde!

For the sweet finish, we each got a little jar of chocolate Serrano and tequila-infused dulce de leche with fresh, fluffy churros from El Camino Community Tavern! We lingered over this delicious dessert while wrapping up conversations and exchanging contact info with our new friends.

With all the new dinner halls, open markets, and community dining options we’ve come to frequent in and around Denver, it’s no wonder The Dinner Party Association found a home here. The next three months of upcoming events are already posted on their online calendar and they have full intentions to make this pop-up concept bigger and better. “We're hoping to partner with many Denver chefs and creatives as we continue to make our events magical--the more the merrier.” Megan thanked everyone in attendance and invited us all back to the next event for a discounted price, something she always does for repeat guests. The next event is April 3rd “Beer and Blues Dinner” with New Belgium and live music from Dragondeer. May 1st is a Spring Brunch and June 5th is an Artisan dinner at Cheese + Provisions. More information on The Dinner Party Association and tickets to April’s dinner can be found through the links below.

http://www.dinnerpartyassociation.com/

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/blues-beer-pop-up-dinner-tickets-22935789564

By Tiffany Candelaria