There is art that is perceived as a metaphor for death, and then there is art that has killed. When it’s finally installed at DIA later this year, “Mustang” will be saddled with a backstory almost too bizarre for conspiracy theorists: The piece was actually responsible for the untimely death…

With the sudden clamor from local news outlets over the scheduled August 24 opening of the controversial Sugar House, you might get the mistaken impression that Scottie Ewing’s west-side nightclub is the first and only swinger-friendly joint in town. You might also think that his prolonged effort to secure a…

Carla Madison could have chosen a different place to meet. A more obvious location might have been St. Mark’s or Fluid or any of the numerous other coffee shops closer to where she lives in City Park West. City Council District 8, her district, encompasses new luxury high-rises in the…

Just like the district he represents, Chris Nevitt contains two seemingly contradictory sides. First there’s the hardcore union activist: “Unions built the middle class. Historically, when unions were strong, America was strong. And, frankly, over the years many union-supported politicians have sold working people down the river over and over.”…

The first stop on the Paul D. Lopez District 3 sightseeing tour is a dirt alley. It’s craggy and rutted, and I grip the armrest as his two-door Honda creeps down the residential corridor. Already his suspension is fucked from bringing observers here — and he’s only been a Denver…

A Denver Police Department officer who refused to allow the victim of a possible hate crime to press charges will face disciplinary action. On March 17, Nima Daivari, a 24-year-old law student visiting from New York, was strolling down the 16th Street Mall with friends. When a passing male called…

It was barely ten minutes into the mediation session before the first cooperative agreement was reached: I was to be kicked out of the meeting. The consensus was that participants would not feel comfortable with media in the room — and by media, they meant me, the guy in the…

I was seventeen years old when I first encountered bum wine. My friend Chris and I were in an alley behind a Capitol Hill liquor store, waiting for a local wino whom we would sometimes enlist to buy us a twelve-pack. I remember it was an unusually hot afternoon, so…

He is tattooed and pierced, with heavy, sad eyes and a translucent mustache. He walks with a combination of swagger and caution, his hands sunk deep in the pockets of his baggy jeans. He is in his mid-teens — not a little kid and not an adult. Old enough for…

Elizabeth Vick knew that the contractions she’d been having for the last month were normal. The official name for them is “Braxton Hicks,” after the nineteenth-century doctor who first recorded the intermittent uterine spasms that often accompany the final trimester of pregnancy. But Elizabeth liked to think of the involuntary…

On April 6, Jeff Trott, the most industrious burglar in Colorado history, was sentenced to 32 years in prison. It was the maximum the judge could impose after Trott pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree burglary — a mere fraction of the more than 500 break-ins that he admits…

In his small handful of years as a conservative politico, Brad Jones has been called many things — childish, a racist, a “back-door politician in training” — but never “news-gatherer.” That was before the 23-year-old launched www.facethestate.com on March 26, however. And before the end of that week, when his…

Nima Daivari looked very gay on the night of March 17. “I had cornrows in my hair — and I’m white,” says the 24-year-old. “I was wearing a necklace that had a fairy on it with green wings, a tight-fitting V-neck sweater, white pants with chains hanging off it, and…

The first time Alana McCoy was labeled a dyke, the sophomore was walking back to her car in a Regis University parking lot. From a distance, she could see that a word had been scratched — in large, crooked letters — twice into the hood of her early-model Accord: D-I-K-E…

By the night of February 23, everyone in Denver knew who Michael Andre was. For eight hours, the popular criminal defense attorney had been enmeshed in a standoff with police SWAT units that ended when Andre was found dead in his Cherry Creek townhome, killed by an apparently self-inflicted gunshot…

Architecturally, the rectangular brick building at 1778 Gilpin Street is about as interesting as a three-story cardboard box. For apartment developer Grant Barnhill’s objectives, however, the aesthetic emptiness is the equivalent of a blank canvas. Last fall, while construction crews were tearing outdated carpeting and bathroom fixtures from the upper-floor…

FORM I-9 EMPLOYMENT ELIGIBILITY VERIFICATION PLEASE READ ALL INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY BEFORE COMPLETING THIS FORM. Maria Tinajero never thought much about her number before it was stolen — at least not in the tangible way you think about a necklace or a photograph or any other prized possession. It was just…

Every city has bargain-basement pitchmen: TV and radio hucksters who launch themselves into our living rooms with high-decibel sales pitches that confuse poor Grandpa and cause toddlers to shriek for quality pre-owned vehicles. The Pleasures Dudes may have carved their own peddling-porn niche, but their shtick follows a time-honored practice…