FEB 20, 2025 | FEATURES | By Grace Gassel
On a recent Friday, Richard Skorman ‘72 was in a black apron, beanie and glasses, casually greeting employees of Rico’s Cafe and Wine Bar, which he has owned and run along with a toy store, gift shop and restaurant for nearly five decades, all extensions of Poor Richard’s.
But Skorman’s impact goes beyond just business.
“Well, I love this community,” Skorman said. “I fell in love with it when I moved here in 1970. I couldn’t believe the access to the mountains…I always enjoyed the mix of people here.”
Skorman talked with The Catalyst about his career, community engagement and personal experiences during the second week of Donald Trump’s second term in office, where chaos has reigned, people are polarized and discourse is polluted.
Despite periods of social unrest, Poor Richard’s remains a popular spot for Colorado Springs residents.
The idea of a bookstore and coffee shop was novel at the time, according to Skorman. Downtown Colorado Springs in the 1970s did not have the wide range of shops it does now. Poor Richard’s was one of the first to breathe modern life into downtown.
As a senior design major at Colorado College and employee at a bookstore that went out of business, Skorman worked without pay for an extended time. As payment, he was offered books. He accepted.
“And then I had this idea, why not start my own?”
He rented a home for $100 a month and filled it with books stored in old ammunition cases. Poor Richard’s Used Paperbacks opened for business in 1975.
Poor Richard’s has grown immensely since then. Poor Richard’s Feed and Read opened in 1977 for $8,500 in a new space downtown, equipped with old restaurant equipment donated by Skorman’s father.
“Lo and behold, it just took off and there was no place quite like it,” Skorman said.
In 1982, Skorman began showing movies in his space. At 55 seats, it was “the smallest independent movie theater in the country.”
In 1992, Kimball Bayles purchased Skorman’s theater. Bayles went on to open the iconic, now closed theater, The Peak.
As the years went on, Skorman noticed that customers were bringing their small children to Poor Richard’s, hatching the idea for a toy store. Little Richard’s Toy Store opened in 1995. Rico’s Cafe and Bar was further developed to include live music performances.
Skorman’s closest partner is his wife, Patricia Seator. Seator is the leader of the retail and creative design pieces of the business. Skorman manages finances, the restaurant and the cafe. They try to divide up the work to prevent overlap.
“It can be a challenge, but sometimes we say to each other, God, we’re business partners and we’re life partners, we’ve been together for 35 plus years,” Skorman said. “We love each other and we just feel like somehow it was meant to be.”
Skorman is a staunch advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and representation. He has lost LGBTQ+ friends and family to suicide and AIDS.
Poor Richard’s was one of the few establishments in the Springs to hire a transgender employee in the establishment’s early days. Community members were upset, but Skorman didn’t flinch.
“We’ve been so lucky to have good employees,” Skorman said. “It’s not been perfect, we’ve had to let people go. But over the years, so many good people who care about us, care about our business, care about our customers…. A lot of places don’t have it.”
Skorman won the Spirit of Colorado Springs Lifetime Achievement Award in September 2024. He served 13 years on the city council, two years as vice mayor and one year as regional director for Sen. Ken Salazar. He also ran for Mayor in 2011.
Former Colorado Springs Mayor Mary Lou Makepeace encouraged Skorman to run for city council but requested that he cut his ponytail.
“And I did, thinking nobody would notice,” Skorman said. “And then of course, every story in the newspaper was Skorman, who just cut his ponytail, the gay rights candidate. And I barely got elected.”
Skorman’s work on city council ranged from LGBTQ+ advocacy work and open-space preservation to a collaboration with a CC class to study the temperature differences between regions of Colorado Springs.
In 2002, Skorman achieved health benefits for LGBTQ+ identifying partners of city employees. It was overturned with the succession of the new council. Eventually, the benefits were restored.
Skorman also worked on the disaster response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and on initiatives to find housing for people experiencing homelessness.
Skorman cites his passion for the environment as one of the driving forces behind his business, political career and community engagement.
“The environment’s always been a huge thing for me,” Skorman said. “And certainly helping people in need. My roles have been manyfold in terms of that.”
In the late ‘90s, Skorman led efforts to write and pass The Trails Open Space and Parks Sales tax (TOPS) to preserve land. After failing to pass in 1995, it succeeded in 1997. To save Stratton Open Space from developers, Skorman raised $1.6 million for the Colorado Springs government to purchase the land from developers. Recently, voters approved TOPS for another 20 years.
“So many of these beautiful places, Red Rock Canyon, Cheyenne Mountain State Park, Stratton, were gonna get developed and we just came in at the last minute,” Skorman said. “It’s so much a part of who we are here.”
Skorman also founded the United States’ first environmental film festival in 1990, attracting figures like Caeser Chavez.
Upon success in the city council, others encouraged him to run for higher positions in government. He resisted, crediting the accessibility and impact of local government.
“People came to me with a problem and I tried to help fix it,” Skorman said. “You can go and try and solve it. Sometimes they said it when I was at the fish counter at King Soopers.”
Skorman pushed Poor Richard’s towards sustainability as well. They added 117 solar panels, shifted away from gas, sourced food and ingredients from local vendors and utilized sustainable cleaning supplies, among other changes. These practices continue today.
Throughout the years, Skorman and Seator have faced attacks on them and the Poor Richards establishments. In 1982, someone believed to be a resident of the rental above the cafe broke in, stole, doused the place in honey and flour and lit it on fire, according to a 2015 profile on Skorman from The Independent. While running the theater, Skorman received bomb threats for showing a particularly controversial movie at the time. While running for city council, people who opposed his beliefs called his home landline with death threats. Skorman was also targeted in smear campaigns for his allyship and advocacy with the LGBTQ+ community and his Jewish identity.
“It’s [the hatred] part of what you live with,” Skorman said. “You don’t wanna be held hostage to it. But, you know, sometimes you think about it in the back of your mind.”
Skorman remains open to conversation with those he does not agree with. Skorman and Seator have dined with James Dobson, founder of the fundamentalist Protestant organization Focus on the Family, and they have spoken in front of an evangelical church about their LGBTQ+ allyship.
“I was very clear about how I felt,” Skorman said.
Skorman is proud that he has stayed true to his values and the progress that Colorado Springs and its residents have made over the past five decades.
He plans to end his time as the head of Poor Richards with Seator in the next few years, but his ambitions to better Colorado Springs have not slowed.
Skorman has witnessed, been a victim of and participated in social unrest. In a time fraught with conflict, Skorman and Poor Richard’s are a hub of connection, acceptance and tolerance in Colorado Springs.
When prompted to advise young people, Skorman said, “Try to find people where you are, even if it’s not here, who are doing good things. Try to follow them around a little bit and understand what they do and where they could use your help. And don’t be afraid to speak up and innovate and talk about your ideas, but follow your passion. To me, that’s huge.”