My cell phone rang around one in the morning. For most people, this would be a harbinger of bad news — kid in jail, someone in the hospital. For me, it almost always means work: a debriefing, confession, eleventh-hour emergency like a restaurant on fire or, worse, dead cold on…
My cell phone rang around one in the morning. For most people, this would be a harbinger of bad news — kid in jail, someone in the hospital. For me, it almost always means work: a debriefing, confession, eleventh-hour emergency like a restaurant on fire or, worse, dead cold on…
The Micky Manor is back. That’s Micky, without an “e.” In 1932, when the old firehouse first became an eatery, Walt Disney didn’t look too favorably on a joint being named after his star cartoon character. But dropping a letter seemed to do the trademark-respecting trick, and no one ever…
Big Beef. Tiny Tim. First Lady. Early Girl. Better Boy. Kenny Vetting laughs at the notion of “heirloom” tomatoes that are only fifty years old. But then, the seed business that his grandfather started is 87 years young. And sometime in early August, the Rocky Mountain Seed Company will finally…
“The truth of the matter is that history really does repeat itself,” says Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, a Crow Creek Sioux writer and scholar. “America has become a place where there is no middle ground. There are many dangerous countries in this world. America is now one of them.” She’ll explain why…
The Colorado hills are alive with the sound of music every summer, in venues as spectacular as Red Rocks Amphitheatre and as posh as the Aspen Music Festival tent. But the most charming setting of all could be the Cherokee Ranch & Castle, the stunning property in Sedalia that longtime…
Is that glass half-empty or half-full? Just in time for the next First Friday — the gaggle of gallery openings around town tomorrow, July 6 — Colorado Lawyers for the Arts has posted a summary of liquor laws compiled by the Denver Department of Excise and Licenses and the Office…
Those of us who live near Invesco Field are used to humongous, obnoxious fireworks displays this time of year. I’m not talking about the official ooh-aah stuff at Coors and after lacrosse games at the stadium; I like a brief shower of phosphorus as much as the next guy. But…
Two months into Gustavo Arellano’s book tour for ¡Ask a Mexican!, a collection of many of his weekly columns, the U.S. Senate killed immigration reform — again. Arellano didn’t need to hear the news to know what had happened; he could tell just by the intensity of his e-mail. “When…
Early Friday morning, London police discovered a Mercedes wired to explode outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub – where “Sugar ‘N’ Spice,” a popular ladies’ night, was in full swing. Is nothing sacred?…
After years of being studiously – insultingly – ignored, I was finally called up for jury duty in Denver District Court a few years ago. I was eager to do my civic duty, particularly since the courtroom where I was sent along with dozens of other potential jurors was set…
Mayor John Hickenlooper has found a replacement for Stephanie O’Malley, the former director of the Denver Department of Excise and Licenses who now has her hands full as the newly elected Clerk & Recorder. Yesterday Awilda R. Marquez was named to head the department – and she’s going to have…
Steve Horner did not attend the monthly meeting of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission on Monday. I knew this without even talking to Horner, because the meeting actually concluded — and if he’d been there, the seven appointed commissioners would still be stuck in their conference room, listening to Horner…
I’m beginning to feel like Carrie Nation, that busybody Prohibitionist who came from Kansas to Denver “because it was the nearest big city,” surmises local historian Tom Noel, “and it was filled with vice.” And not only did Carrie swing her hatchet at liquor bottles in local saloons, but she’d…
In his first book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins told the story of a high-paid consultant who strong-armed world leaders into creating policies favorable to the U.S. government and corporations — “the corporatocracy.” It was a true story, alarming in its sordid detail, and it was all…
In June 1947, Don Aymami, a half-Basque, half-Irish Denver native, bought Flanagan’s Club, a joint at 723 East Sixth Avenue, and transformed it into Don’s Club Tavern. He ran the place for more than fifty years before he finally passed away and his family sold the bar two years ago…
06.09.07 Zambia, Africa Chief, I made it into the chicken shack of an airport last night after a twenty-hour travel day. City very dark, just gaggles of young men squatting on the corners. Too hard to make anything of the place in the gloom and smell of burning tires. Too…
All of the rain and snow we’ve had has created “a really good year for wildflowers,” says city naturalist Gayle Weinstein, “but it’s a really good year for weeds, too. The flowers are outnumbered a billion to one.” And we’re pulling for the wildflowers, which will be the focus of…
When the city’s performing-arts complex was still wishful thinking, planners anticipated that the swath of park along northbound Speer Boulevard between Champa and Arapahoe streets would become an expansive entrance into downtown, an introduction into this city’s cultural life. More than thirty years later, that vision is about to be…
Mike Jones’s fifteen minutes of fame just got extended. He knows all about billing by the hour. In the days before last fall’s election, the male escort’s revelation that Ted Haggard had been a longtime client exploded in Colorado, and the fallout spread across the country. On November 1, Jones…
The past catches up with the present at the Colorado History Museum, when Tribal Paths: Colorado’s American Indians, 1500 to Today joins a lineup that already features Ancient Voices: Stories of Colorado’s Distant Past, an exhibit that opened in 2005 and traces Native American history back more than 10,000 years…
For those of you who just can’t get your fill of talking shit right here in town, there’s quite a lively discussion on the Food Media and News forum here at chowhound.com . The focus appears to be primarily about how much I suck, how crooked / deluded / psychotic…
