How do you report on one of the most-covered events in recent U.S. history? That was the conundrum facing Boulder-based writer Dan Baum, then a New Yorker staff writer, when he arrived in New Orleans a few days after Hurricane Katrina. Baum and his wife and writing partner Margaret Knox’s…

Hear that? An angry “cluck” in the distance? The sound of a talon scratching anxiously in the dirt? That’s because there’s a chicken battle a-brewin’ here in Denver. And yes, the feathers are gonna fly. “The current process for obtaining a chicken permit in Denver is cumbersome and expensive and…

In the game of bureaucratic chicken between state officials and medical marijuana advocates, chalk one up for the stoners. In response to a growing Colorado medical marijuana community, and reports of abuses in the unregulated industry, state health officials proposed new regulations last month that could put a stranglehold on…

Spire, the 42-story condo tower going up at 14th and Champa streets, is all about the cool. From its energy-efficient design to its so-called attainable unit prices (60 percent of its cushy units will go for less than $400,000) to its strikingly illuminated facade, this ain’t your granddaddy’s high-rise. That…

Turns out that real-world crime fighters — folks such as the Colorado-based Wall Creeper, profiled in the Westword story “X” — do more than just rid the world of evildoers. They also review movies. In this case, not just any movie, but Watchmen, the new film adaptation of Alan Moore…

See photos of crime fighters around the world at westword.com/slideshow. Also, on the Latest Word blog, find a super discussion of Watchmen and a Q&A with a local supervillain. You don’t exist. You think nothing, you feel nothing, you are nothing. That’s the secret to becoming invisible, to becoming the…

This ominous video appeared in YouTube in late December. It was a response to one posted a few months earlier by New Jersey-based superhero Phantom Zero (yes, there are flesh-and-blood crime fighters out there; for proof, check out “The Astounding Adventures of the Wall Creeper, Colorado’s Own Superhero,” this week’s…

As noted in the blog “New Architectural Images Released of Denver International Airport. Oh, Wait, That’s Denver Union Station,” the developers behind the ongoing Union Station project recently unveiled new architectural concepts for the transit hub — including some ideas, espeically the train shed canopy, that seemed less than wonderful…

Robot lovers rejoice and wussy technophobes quake in fear (the latter includes you, robot hater Jason Sheehan): Basil, the revolutionary beer-delivering robot developed by husband-and-wife roboticists Louise and Jim Gunderson at Gamma Two, Inc., their Denver shop, just got a whole lot more powerful. In a recent e-mail update, Jim…

While debate continues over the planned construction of two wing buildings in front of Denver’s Union Station as part of the historic station’s transformation into a new transit hub, some of the attention — and debate — may soon shift to the train shed to be built behind the station…

So here I am, getting chased out of the Pavilions shopping center on the 16th Street Mall because I had the indecency to be hanging around with a guy in a fuzzy blue bear suit. How did my life come to this? It all started a few months ago when…

And you thought those arrowhead-like rocks you found in your flowerbed were cool. As several media outlets have been reporting, a cache of ancient tools, including knives and axes, has been discovered in a Boulder yard. University of Colorado researchers determined the tools, discovered by a landscaping crew in May,…

Hey, remember how Sunshine Megatron, a onetime Denver celebrity who nobody around here knew about (and who may or may not have been a big gay robot), declared a few weeks ago that he was shutting down his wildly successful and tasteless website T-Shirt Hell for no apparent reason? Yeah?…

After months of dispute and controversy, everything seemed to fall into place for the proposed Bell Tower, local developer Buzz Geller’s ambitious and striking 34-story condominium slated to rise at the corner of Speer Boulevard and Market Street, when the Lower Downtown Design Review Board gave it the go-ahead on…

Local political writer Ari Armstrong, author of FreeColorado.com and columnist for the Grand Junction Free Press, likes nothing better than to fire up his lowercase libertarian indignation against what he sees as the meddling of big government, abuses of personal liberty and the suppression of free-market ideals. And with President…

Denver International Airport’s giant blue “Mustang” sculpture — and the controversy surrounding it — has gone national. Public debate sparked by local realtor Rachel Hultin’s Facebook group “DIA’s Heinous Blue Mustang Has Got to Go” — a development first reported by Westword — has spread across news outlets and this…

Words cannot convey what watching this video of Jump Street fun center in Thornton does to my brain…

See photos of 12 strains of Cannabis Therapeutics’ supply at westword.com/slideshow Behind a locked, unmarked door in a Colorado Springs strip mall, the state’s largest marijuana dispensary is open for business. The operation’s aromatic showroom is packed floor to ceiling with pot and anything and everything related to it. “Welcome…

The Bell Tower is the most talked-about building in Denver that’s yet to be built. Ever since local real estate developer Buzz Geller proposed the strikingly angled 34-story condominium at the corner of Speer Boulevard and Market Street, folks have been buzzing about it — some grumbling, while others saying…

Oh, hell. Sunshine Megatron, millionaire titan of obnoxious Internet humor, name-changing scoundrel of dubious sanity and random Denver transplant is closing up shop on T-Shirt Hell, his notorious and wildly successful T-shirt site. That’s bad news for all those hoping to stock on up casual wear emblazoned with the likes…