A thousand miles of highway from where I’d left Montana that morning, the blue Qwest signs welcomed me back to Denver. From gazing at stars, I was now reduced to seeing stars over corporate Colorado’s continued incursions on the skyline (a vision no doubt clouded by my inability to get…
The Boulder City Council just banned circuses, five years too late. The circus came to Boulder on December 26, 1996 — the day that six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey was reported missing — and it’s never left. Although the Ramsey action occasionally moves out of the center ring and into some lunatic-fringe…
Crested Butte is notorious for its nude ski days, its invention of the fat-tire bicycle — and its wildflower walks. This weekend, the old mining town is just the place to stop and smell the primroses. And the columbine. And the cinquefoil. Crested Butte is known as the Wildflower Capital…
First things first: The new Broncos stadium does not look like a diaphragm. A spaceship, maybe. A bedpan, sure. But a diaphragm? No way — unless it’s a diaphragm that’s just gone through your washing machine’s spin cycle, an activity not recommended by its manufacturer. The new Broncos stadium does…
Donta Page never should have been allowed to leave a Maryland prison, never should have entered a private treatment facility in Denver, never should have spotted 24-year-old Peyton Tuthill outside her Gaylord Street duplex that day in February 1999. Had Donta Page never come to Colorado, Peyton Tuthill would be…
Picture this wildly improbable scenario: Brilliant businessman who abhors publicity and favors conservative causes slowly buys up much of the known world — oil fields, Western art, real estate, railroads, sports teams, sports stadiums, a publicly ridiculed Baby Bell — then ventures into the entertainment industry with the stated goal…
Just two hours after Wellington Webb faced the cameras and confirmed that yes, Boeing had snubbed Denver in favor of Chicago, fourteenth windiest city in the country, the mayor received his consolation prize: a thirty-pound meatball. Chicago had landed 500 aerospace executives and major bragging rights to another Fortune 500…
My polling place was empty at 7:20 Tuesday morning; I was the first — and by all appearances, likely the last — resident in the precinct to vote on Denver’s charter amendments. Obviously, the rest of my edge-of-downtown neighborhood — home to almost as many proposed jail sites as District…
Back in the days when Denver fretted over its designation as a cowtown rather than a world-class city, the great city it had already imagined it could be, local boosters introduced a hospitality program known as Smile High Denver, which was intended to turn our frowns upside down. It didn’t…
Jack A. Weil surveys the street outside of Rockmount Ranch Wear. He’s been doing business here for 55 years, since the days when Wazee Street was lined with warehouses, shops and factories rather than restaurants and offices and lofts. The five-story Rockmount building at 1626 Wazee, built in 1908, housed…
When Barbies are outlawed, only outlaws will have Barbies. Life in Boulder isn’t all fun and games these days — although you might think otherwise, considering how much time the Boulder Valley School Board has spent playing with dolls. The games began when a precocious eight-year-old set up her exhibit…
By the fourth hour of dialing, I was ready to start drinking. It was not an appropriate reaction. My young friend, a 26-year-old with a good heart and bad judgment, had netted herself a DUI in another state, then moved to Colorado without a driver’s license but with a strong…
It’s just a name. It’s just a game. And now it’s over — with Denver the loser. But we have only ourselves to blame. We should have known the score the second Pat Bowlen’s lobbyists showed up at the Colorado Legislature three years ago, arguing that the Broncos’ owner needed…
In front of my house stands a bus bench painted by now-famous artist Tony Ortega as part of a long-gone benefit. In Westword’s entryway hangs a large red painting by Michael Pedziwiatr, who was one of the town’s most prolific — and generous — artists in the ’90s. On walls…
If only Linda Chavez had spoken more than English only, she might still be George W. Bush’s nominee for Secretary of Labor. If only Chavez had spoken Spanish, for example, she might have understood immediately that her new pet charity back in the early ’90s, Marta Mercado, was in the…
“I predict that a large city in Colorado will be the victim of a strange and terrible pressure from outer space, which will cause all solids to turn into a jellylike mass…I predict the name of the city will be Denver, Colorado.” — Criswell Predicts From Now to the Year…
You have three more days to become a part of history. Because after December 31, Denver’s electronic time capsule project will be history. Over the past thirteen months, Denverites have posted their memories of the city and made predictions for its future on the Celebrate 2000 E-Time Capsule portion of…
Nothing says lovin’ like a really big pair of men’s briefs painted in a festive theme. Although you’ve missed the opening-night reception, there are still many quality items left at the Zip Bazaar, a holiday invitational at the cooperative gallery that shares a northwest Denver intersection (not to mention the…
Jefferson Smith came out to Colorado when this state was booming — the first time. He tried Creede and Leadville but discovered he could make a much better living in Denver. His specialty? Squeezing suckers. It was in Denver, aka Suckerville, that Smith picked up the nickname “Soapy,” in honor…
This is the never-ending election. Because even after all the counts and recounts are completed, Florida finally sinks into the sea, and the U.S. at last has a new President-elect, Colorado won’t have the one thing that would prove a more lasting legacy than four more years: sensible growth control…
As this column went to press, the Metropolitan Football Stadium District announced that it was suspending naming-rights negotiations — at least for now. “Some things should just not be for sale,” said Wellington Webb. Denver’s mayor was talking — to just about anyone who would listen last week, including National…
Six dead women — the body count so far this month for Colorado’s victims of domestic violence — weren’t enough to lead local TV newscasts. Patrick Roy’s arrest early Sunday morning was, making the NHL’s most winning goalie ever an unlikely, and unwilling, poster child for Domestic Violence Awareness Month…
