For those following the recent travails of Mary Louise Starkey, who’s been accused of mismanagement and physical altercations at her world-famous Denver butler school (“At Your Disservice”) and was recently arrested for allegedly attacking one of her students last February ( “Mary Starkey Got Served”), here’s the latest news: In…
October 20: Maranatha Christian Center Crusaders vs. Nederland Panthers W-I-N. That’s the acronym that head coach Aaron Jones has repeated for months to his high school football team, the Nederland Panthers, when they’ve needed to get their heads in the game. W-I-N: What’s Important Now. And what’s important right now…
As the head of the prominent Denver-based Starkey International Institute of Household Management, Mary Louise Starkey has long been recognized for bringing professionalism to the butler industry. But the city’s “First Lady of Service” has also become known among former students, staff and industry colleagues for alleged mismanagement, turmoil and…
As described in the Westword story “The Legend of Leeroy Jenkins,” Colorado resident Ben Schulz’s World of Warcraft character Leeroy Jenkins has become one of history’s most famous video-game screw-ups, inspiring Jeopardy questions and appearing on schoolgirls’ T-shirts in Korea. Now, two and a half years after Leeroy first garnered…
So you’ve put away your Elmo costume, and you’re coming down off your candy-corn-fueled sugar high, and you’re asking yourself, “Why exactly do we go door to door in silly outfits, demanding that outright strangers give us vast quantities of candy?” If you’re looking for a macabre holiday with a…
In the middle of a table in Konrad Steffen’s office at the University of Colorado at Boulder sits a strikingly beautiful globe made of hand-carved gemstones. Steffen, a geography professor, knows very well that sooner or later the globe will have to be revised. The coastline will shift, swallowing the…
For Alek Komarnitsky of Lafayette, Colorado, holiday decorations aren’t just a hobby, they’re a way of life. A very, very insane way of life. Komarnitsky became a local hero four years ago when, as part of his neighborhood Fouth of July parade, he drove his nine-foot-tall inflatable Incredible Hulk doll…
If politicians like anything better than flag-waving, it’s pennant-waving. Over the weekend Denver school board candidate Arturo Jimenez papered west Denver with these purple door-hangers. The back features a cut-out bat you were supposed to wave while cheering on the Rockies. Not much cheer followed; if you’re going to kiss…
Denise and Alan Fields have encountered a lot of ludicrous baby gear while writing and updating Baby Bargains, the number-one baby-product book in the country. So when they say a particular product is one of the most outrageous they’ve discovered, you know they mean business. Here are a few of…
At closing time on a recent Sunday evening at the Westminster Babies “R” Us, the front doors are locked, the Sunny D is cracked open, and the superstore begins its monthly “Babies, Bellies and Booties” seminar — an after-hours class that helps expecting parents sign up for a baby registry…
“Welcome to the high temple of baby-gear consumerism.” Alan Fields spreads his arms to encompass the entirety of the Babies “R” Us superstore in Westminster — a cavernous expanse saturated in pink, purple and yellow and filled with two-story-high shelves stuffed with play yards and diaper bags, bouncy seats and…
To all those who’ve been rallying around the Rockies’ mythical performance, I have to hand it to you. Maybe even give you a pat on the head. Nice job. Really. You’re cute. You see, I’m a Red Sox fan. Not even a top-echelon fanatic; a minor devotee in the cult…
The story goes like this: Corridor 44, at 1433 Larimer Street, was once a brothel owned by a reformed showgirl and her ornery husband. When the couple’s daughter began dallying with a city lowlife, the irate father sent a hit man to rub out the boyfriend — except the plan…
Who would have guessed downtown development stirs up such passion? It appears that someone read the Westword story “Evan Almighty” and became so worked up about the Fontius Building, the long-lasting downtown blight at the corner of Welton Street and the 16th Street Mall, that they decided to plow their…
When Robert Frank developed his Wall Street Journal column “The Wealth Report” into the non-fiction book Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich, there was only one place for him to learn about serving the newly affluent: the Starkey International Institute of…
In this town, everyone seems to know Mary Louise Starkey, head of the Starkey International Institute of Household Management. She often invites local luminaries to her Logan Street mansion, one of the preeminent butler schools in the country, for formal dinners served in grand style by her Jeeveses-in-training. These social…
J.S. Bach hasn’t topped the charts at Amazon or iTunes recently. “Frankly, if we don’t start doing something, we are going to lose our classical-music audience in future generations,” says Jennie Doris, a Boulder musician and writer. So she and her colleagues are injecting a little David Sedaris into their…
Whatever grand plan developer Evan Makovsky comes up with for Block 162, construction won’t start for several years, at least. In the meantime, the Downtown Denver Partnership has launched the “Ultimate Urban Space” initiative. The non-profit organization is asking community members to e-mail suggestions for creative temporary uses — including…
Pedestrians are the key to downtown Denver’s future, which is why they’re such a big part of the new Downtown Area Plan, a twenty-year growth strategy released in July. “Every decision is focused on how to facilitate pedestrians and bicycle usage in downtown,” says John Desmond, vice president for urban…
One spring night in 2006, Evan Makovsky and his wife, Evi, walked the 16th Street Mall from the Residence Inn on Champa Street to California Street on their way to a fundraising dinner at the towering new Hyatt Regency Denver at the Colorado Convention Center. The couple, who live in…
Colorado lacrosse is down one living legend. Two weeks ago, Colorado Mammoth coach Gary Gait announced he was leaving to pursue other interests. Gait was more than just the coach who led the Mammoth to a 2006 National Lacrosse League championship in his first year at the helm; he was…
During the first two years of Boulder’s International Fringe Festival, something about its “Pick of the Fringe” component didn’t seem right. A panel of judges chose the Fringe’s best works for an end-of-festival showcase, relying in part on audience votes that were prone to ballot-stuffing mischief — not the kind…
