Somewhere between the anecdote about wiring the Christmas tree to the wall when her son was a baby (“And he still knocked that hummer down!”) and the advice about properly styling a perm (“You can comb it through a dozen times and still find a snarl part”), Joni Chester has…

Leonard Carlo is so upset, he can’t even curse properly. He shakes his big bald head, slaps a callused hand on the bar, stutters through a four-letter invective, then strokes his long white whiskers. “Motherfucker!” he says at last. Carlo, proprietor of the notorious Leonard’s II tavern in Colorado Springs,…

In a crowded surplus store in downtown’s ragged, industrial backyard, Arturo Rascon hits pay dirt. “How much for these?” he asks, appraising two wooden crates of Russian pipe wrenches. “These?” replies Ralph Long Jr. “Well, let’s see.” Long, the store’s proprietor, holds up one of the tools, which promptly breaks…

On a terrace 5,500 feet above sea level, Ted Polito Jr. leans over and lets me in on a little secret: People pray up here, he whispers. They’re not supposed to, because this is Colorado’s Capitol Building, but they do anyway. They usually come on Fridays, two men and two…

To many who live at 37th Avenue and Lipan Street, Bernabe “Indio” Franco is little more than a name on a sign, someone who lived in the neighborhood many years, then died. Yet there are times when people who live in this corner of north Denver step into the park…

The thing about it is, Barry McDonald says, he doesn’t think he actually attracts weird and creepy phenomena. “But I do seek it out,” he explains. “And if you seek out something long enough, you’ll find it.” Back when he managed the Officers’ Club at the old Lowry Air Force…

So there he was, Eric Pabst, sitting behind the wheel of his hearse in a cemetery, wearing black jeans, black shirt and black boots, when a black bird flew in the window. “It came in the passenger side, bounced off the windshield, flew in front of me and my friend…

He is dying in here. He is sitting alone in his white prison cell with his library books and his Ramen noodles, losing control of his body. He is sleeping nine hours a night and waking at six the next morning but feeling like he hasn’t slept at all. He…

Storme Aerison walks to the front of the courtroom and selects an aisle seat. Gone is the heavy mascara, the lipstick and the thick layers of blush. Gone are the poses, the pouts and the sultry glances of Aerison’s Internet persona — Shannon Ireland, cover girl. On this afternoon, Aerison…

Paul Fox hits the brakes, and his pickup swerves onto the shoulder of 62nd Avenue, in the industrial fringe of Adams County. A dump truck roars by, shaking the ground as it passes, but Fox doesn’t notice. He’s pointing out the window toward a huge mound of dirt, weeds and…

The sun isn’t up yet, and already Ernie Cordova is sweating. He’s hunched over the grill at the Chubby Burger Drive-In, getting ready for the morning rush. A mound of hamburger sizzles to his left. A mound of scrambled eggs and chorizo sizzles to his right. Bubbling in an aluminum…

This might be a serious game and all, but there’s no getting around it — some big bellies are on the floor. “Skins got too many fat guys,” says one courtside critic, slumped on a bench at the downtown YMCA. “You’ve got big fat Jim and big fat Dave trying…

It’s hot out, damn hot. The lunch crowd is surly, the mall cops are cruising, and Denver City Council just banned “aggressive” panhandling. But none of that changes the fact that Mike the Hippie Bum needs your money. “Whatever I make today will finance my next adventure,” he says. “I’ll…

Looking back, Ernie Ferguson can see the deception. It’s all there in the photographs, as thick and smooth as the makeup on the con man’s face. But when Ferguson met the model now called Storme Shannon Aerison, he wanted to believe. He wanted the blonde in the red dress, black…

John Horan has handled a thousand bodies, but even now, after 25 years, the forgotten ones still get to him.”This was an eleven-year-old child,” he says, examining a green cardboard package no larger than a deck of cards. “I can’t imagine how anyone could abandon the remains of an eleven-year-old…

In the days of eating catsup and bread for dinner, Raul and Sylvia Vasquez dreamed of this. The Suburban with the TV, VCR and Nintendo set; the four-acre country home with the swimming pool, pasture and pet burro; the people, the applause and the conga line. This was thirteen years…

Kim Chlumsky was returning from lunch when her mom heard the shots echo in the backyard garden. As Kim approached the school, which is only a few blocks from her Littleton home, the streets were already blocked off by police. She thought it was a car wreck until her mom…

The phone rang. It was a Littleton woman who said her kids’ candy had been disappearing. Jack Murphy smelled a rat. He fired up the Dodge van and headed over. “I get under the sink and look under there, and there was really no place where the rat could go,”…

There are many secrets, but you can never underestimate the importance of good blush. As any drag queen worth her mascara will tell you, everything starts with foundation. Then it’s contouring, highlighting, accentuating and blending. Blending, blending, blending, with special attention to the area under the chin to smooth the…

Whenever someone asks Marcus Roybal about her ethnicity, which seems to be happening a lot these days, she simply glances at the back of her 82-year-old hand and checks the color of her skin. “Chicano,” she says. But if you really want to know the truth, she’s part Sioux and…

Even the Whoppers had to go. My wife and I have decided to eat “better,” so to speak, and for the next six weeks that means more protein, more veggies, more complex carbohydrates, no fat and no sugar. So she came home the other day with two Wild Oats grocery…

Those who know Viviane Le Courtois-Mitchell have come to expect those moments when she reaches into a garbage pail, plucks out a crusty banana peel — and frames it. Last November, for instance, she squeaked open her refrigerator door, rummaged around and, in the back by the bread and veggies,…