“This is fucking unbelievable,” mutters Jason Flores-Williams as he observes another sweep of homeless encampments near the Denver Rescue Mission. The scene around him is chaos: police officers barking orders and cordoning off sections of sidewalk with yellow “Do not cross” tape, employees of the Denver Department of Public Works…
At the first Denver City Council meeting each month, there is a thirty minute public-comment session in which citizens are invited to relay concerns related to the city. At the latest meeting on Monday, December 5, the session was dominated by one issue: homelessness. Thirteen of the fifteen speakers, who were…
On Friday night, December 2, near the intersection of Colfax Avenue and 14th Street, a female spectator who’s watching the Parade of Lights is tapped on the shoulder by a man handing out fliers. “Thank you,” the spectator says, taking a flier. “Are you with a nonprofit?” “No, we’re just…
A decade ago, Denver set out to “end homelessness” through the Denver’s Road Home initiative — but the city has as many homeless individuals today as it did ten years ago. In the metro area, over 6,100 homeless men, women, and children are facing another winter without permanent housing. Within…
On Monday, November 28, PJ D’Amico of the Buck Foundation was arrested when he refused to leave an area of the sidewalk that Denver Police had taped off with yellow “do not cross” tape.
“For us, the same law enforcement that’s being employed to brutalize sovereign [indigenous] nations is simply an extension of the forces being used to brutalize and terrorize [black] communities.”
As snow began to fall on Thursday, at least two dozen homeless individuals located within a one block radius of the Denver Rescue Mission, at the intersection of Park Avenue West and Lawrence Street, remained camped out on the sidewalks. They remained despite not being allowed to cover themselves with…
Tension. On one side of Lawrence Street, a line of Denver Police officers, mid-level city officials and brightly clad public works employees standing with their arms folded, waiting.
The Stanley Film Festival, which attracted horror fans and industry professionals to the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, is canceled for 2017 – and perhaps permanently. After a three-year run, from 2013 to 2015, the “Sundance of horror films” was put on hiatus in 2016 after the iconic hotel, which…
Over the past two decades, Italiano and his wife, Pam, have hosted more than ninety nationally and internationally touring rock acts at FashioNation, a Denver clothing and shoe boutique that they’ve co-owned and run together since 1987.
Tired of waiting for the city, a group of service providers, faith organizations, and homeless advocates has been quietly meeting since the March sweeps to figure out alternative ways to help the 3,700 homeless people living in Denver.
The City of Denver is preparing its next major sweep operation to clear out homeless encampments. The focus of the operation will be along Park Avenue West and Lawrence Street, near the Denver Rescue Mission, where signs have been posted advising homeless individuals to remove their belongings from the streets…
Following Wednesday’s announcement by Mayor Michael Hancock of a new program called Denver Day Works, which aims to employ homeless individuals for three to six hour work shifts, some observers took to Twitter to question the program’s financing.
The floor of the Colorado Convention Center resembled a disaster-relief effort on Thursday, with volunteers in bright T-shirts scurrying across the room to various clumps of tables that were sectioned off with signs like, “Hep C Testing,” “Legal Services,” “Identification” and “Personal Care Items.”
Seven years after Colorado’s General Assembly passed the Regional Tourism Act (RTA) in 2009, allowing the state to award sales tax revenue to developers constructing large tourist attractions, the funding mechanism appears unlikely to be renewed.
In our current cover story about the Stanley Hotel, “Shine On,” we report that the historic landmark, which inspired Stephen King’s The Shining, was awarded $11.5 million in state funding for its vision of constructing a film center that would make it the epicenter of the worldwide horror-film industry. But…
The question on my mind as I prepared for the Stanley Hotel’s annual Shining Ball: Is my costume good enough? Every October, the iconic hotel in Estes Park, which is the focus of Westword’s current cover story, “Shine On,” hosts one of Colorado’s most exclusive Halloween parties. It makes sense…
The owner of the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park has a favorite story involving his flagship property. It involves a wedding and a couple of overly hydrated llamas.
The zombie invasion was sudden and swift. There were at least a hundred of them, with gaping flesh wounds and bulging eyes, moaning and dragging their feet as they scoured their surroundings for fresh brains. It was an alarming sight for the bride and groom who happened to be taking…
Takeaways from Second Hearing in Homeless Class Action Lawsuit Against Denver Thursday morning’s 10 a.m. hearing at the Alfred A. Arraj courthouse was significantly less crowded than last week’s for a class action lawsuit filed against Denver that alleges the city is violating the U.S. Constitution when it conducts regular…
When you think of Denver’s most nationally competitive sports team, the Super Bowl-winning Broncos probably come to mind (or perhaps not during these last couple of weeks). But in any case, you’d be wrong. That distinction belongs to the Denver Lady Bulldogs. Since 2010, the Lady Bulldogs have won six…
There was a look of surprise from Magistrate Judge Craig B. Shaffer when he saw the number of attendees at the first hearing in a class action lawsuit filed against Denver that alleges the city is violating the U.S. Constitution when it conducts regular sweeps of the homeless. “Thank you…
