Sometime after midnight Saturday, Spider-Man walked into Cheyenne's Crown Bar.
By 1:39 a.m., the drunk superhero's alleged less-than-super exploits spilled into late-night police dispatch traffic.
The scanner suggested an unconscious man was in the Spiker Parking Garage across the street from the bar. It was reported that he'd been hit in the head and that officers were looking for somebody dressed as Spider-Man.
What police found, however, left a lot of unanswered questions.
Trouble At The Crown
Cheyenne Police Department spokeswoman Alex Farkas said a man was found unconscious at the parking garage after he spent part of the night at the Crown Bar, where he'd become heavily intoxicated and attempted to fight multiple patrons.
He was dressed as Black Spider-Man, and eventually, bouncers removed him.
A friend then helped him into the back of his vehicle, which was parked nearby at the parking garage, and told him to “sleep it off," she said.
Police later found Black Spider-Man unconscious.
Officers tried to question him, but Farkas said he was heavily intoxicated and slurring his speech. American Medical Response was called, and he was taken to Cheyenne Regional Medical Center for treatment.
Police ultimately determined nobody had assaulted him at the parking garage.
The Other Spider-Man
Black Spider-Man had an explanation.
He told officers another patron involved in the trouble at the Crown was dressed as the traditional Spider-Man — red suit, blue accents, the whole Peter Parker package.
So, somewhere in downtown Cheyenne in the early hours of Saturday, police were sorting through a story involving a drunk Black Spider-Man unconscious in a parking garage and another red-and-blue Spider-Man reportedly mixed up in the altercation at a bar.
Brian Snyder owns Bohemian Metals across from the parking garage and lives above his shop. He told Cowboy State Daily he had, in fact, spotted a red-and-blue Spider-Man walking toward the Crown that night.
Snyder took careful mental notes.
“5-foot-10 approximately, too out of shape to be the real Spider-Man, kind of pudgy,” he said. “Just imagine Jack Black stuffed in a Spider-Man costume.”
Whether Snyder's Spider-Man was the same red-and-blue Spider-Man described to police isn't known.
In a story with two Spider-Men, it's difficult to assume anything.
The Crown Bar declined to comment Monday.
After Midnight
Snyder is unusually well-positioned for this sort of thing.
His home above Bohemian Metals gives him a near-permanent observation post across from the parking garage, where the weekend entertainment has occasionally exceeded anything envisioned by the people who designed a municipal parking structure.
Just days before Spider-Man arrived, Snyder said the garage can become a “dumpster fire” after dark, with engines revving, alarms sounding and people hanging around into the early morning.
Last year, a motorcyclist revving his bike inside the garage accelerated into a concrete wall and left by ambulance.
The city has added private overnight security, cameras, brighter lighting, speed bumps, emergency call stations and police patrols.
Police say the garage's reputation is bigger than its actual police activity. Farkas told Cowboy State Daily last week that overall call volume remains low.
Down At The Crown
Twenty blocks of municipal planning could not have produced a better setting for the beginning of this story than the Crown.
At 12:25 a.m., a little more than an hour before the Spiker dispatch, a scene posted from the bar shows the place humming.
Red-and-blue light spills across a packed dance floor. Bodies crowd together around the music. A woman in cat ears appears at the edge of the scene.
Somewhere in this nocturnal ecosystem, according to police, was Black Spider-Man.
Red-and-blue Spider-Man apparently was in the mix, too.
The Crown's own Facebook cover photo offers perhaps the best available field guide to what one should expect upon entering.
It features a five-star review from a man identified as Mike M., who wrote that anyone who has lived in Cheyenne long enough has heard about the Crown Underground.
“It exists in the vernacular,” he wrote. “Is it Shangri-La or is it the Temple of Doom? Well, my friend, it is what you make of it.”
His instructions were simple: “be cool,” pay attention to your surroundings and understand that “the Crown is a write-your-own-ending type of place.”
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
