As city council continues to consider Denver’s proposed urban camping ban — and constituents continue to debate it — the Denver Rescue Mission continued a twelve-year tradition yesterday by dispatching a crew of staffers and homeless people to collect trash in and around Coors Field before the Rockies home opener…
Editor’s note: This is the latest profile in Kelsey Whipple’s ongoing series highlighting local political activists. They were wearing black, and they carried coffins. This is Carolyn Bninski’s strongest early memory of political activism, a lifestyle she would later take up and pursue for more than forty years, and it’s…
Since Bobby Fischer trounced Boris Spassky in 1972, examples of exhilarating chess drama have been few and far between — at least in the United States. But the stage version might prove the exception: Chess, A Musical, presented by the Arvada Center, reinterprets the game of kings in a way…
Although John Carter, Disney’s latest entree into sci-fi, is set to lose a record $200 million, it earns serious street cred from one name on its writing roster. With both a Pulitzer (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay) and a Hugo Award (The Yiddish Policemen’s Union) under his belt,…
Packed with opposition in orange “Homes Not Handfuffs” buttons, yesterday’s City Council committee meeting initiated the first public discussion of Denver’s proposed, hotly debated urban camping ban. With the proposal come as many accusations as questions, many of them involving concerns it could criminalize the city’s homeless population. Key in…
“Everyone take a deep breath.” So began today’s first public meeting about the proposed urban camping ban, organized by City Council’s Land Use, Transportation & Infrastructure Committee in front of a group so large it breached fire code. While organizers stressed its purpose as an informational meeting — many more…
On Friday, for the first time in four years, Denver’s streets reached Critical Mass when the local branch of the national organization took downtown on two wheels. But the mass mobilization wasn’t all smooth cycling: As riders promoted consideration of a world without cars, eight members were ticketed on Denver’s…
The most startling aspect of Gotye’s sound is its sincerity. This is — as others have noted both about him and to him — very Phil Collins of him, quite broodingly Sting and earnestly Peter Gabriel. A fact that fewer tend to point out is that this isn’t Gotye’s first…
When it comes to the national Occupy movement, Blair Preston is less concerned with apathy than with access. In his time visiting Occupy Denver, it was the second issue that restricted his involvement, not the first, and he noticed the same problem gripping other protesters. To find a solution, he…
It is a truth universally acknowledged that there are few things more uncomfortable than a high school dance — unless maybe it’s an assembly. But that’s what the Colorado Queer Youth Summit, an annual conference that gathers more than 200 LGBTQ youth ages twelve to 24, occasionally felt like to…
Okay, so it’s not really a secret — although it is tucked away inside a printing shop. In an attempt to introduce their home to a wider group of people — and occasionally focus on something other than politics — the collective organizations at the 27 Social Centre, 2727 West…
After a year when it was christened the Angriest City in America, Denver continues to be a hub of national (and this weekend, international) activism. Tomorrow through Sunday, Amnesty International USA will bring its 51st Annual General Meeting to the city, with panels and workshops dedicated to some of the…
Neptune Krill Oil sounds like something you’d find on page 117 of the Kama Sutra. Still, it doesn’t actually matter if you’re unfamiliar with the dietary supplement — because John Elway will tell you about it. The Broncos legend turned football operations veep has put his John Elway on a…
It’s a tale as old as time travel. Three aliens from Zots, a planet on which romance destroys the atmosphere, travel to Earth to break their hearts and save their home. If they’re not in love, they’re not in danger of environmental collapse, right? As part of the Denver FilmCenter’s…
“Hello. I’m Johnny Cash.” That was enough of an introduction for the country legend himself, but Cash’s legacy has surpassed that simplicity. In his nearly fifty-year career, Cash played himself in dozens of film and television spots, but his death in 2003 opened the gates for others to take up…
As witnessed by a Westword item from October, Mayor Michael Hancock and Denver’s business and outreach communities have spent months discussing and debating a push to ban overnight camping on public property. Now that the issue is reportedly scheduled to be addressed in a City Council committee meeting on Tuesday,…
Alien meets girl. Girl falls for alien. Government agents track alien as she and her intergalactic friends attempt to save their home planet through heartbreak. The plot for Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same might be a little out there — actually, galaxies out there — but its creators weren’t…
Laurie Fitzgerald tried to tell her grandson about Trayvon Martin, about his hoodie, about his family, but it’s hard. So she taught him the basics. When asked why he’s carrrying a poster of the seventeen-year-old Florida student’s face, four-year-old Royce Edwards answers only, “Because Trayvon is dead and his daddy…
On Saturday, at age six months and one day, Occupy Denver rallied downtown to protest police brutality. More than 100 people gathered with signs and chants for one in a handful of protests dedicated to the topic in the past week. Although relationships between Occupy Denver and the Denver Police…
Editor’s note: This is the latest profile in Kelsey Whipple’s ongoing series highlighting local political activists. The worst day of Patty Skolnik’s life lasted 32 months. It started the day her son Michael, a 22-year-old college student, passed out. Doctors found a small dot on his brain, an asymptomatic cyst,…
Today, on Occupy Denver’s six-month anniversary, the organization is separated from its long-time home in Civic Center Park. Regardless of whether you expected the movement to make it this long, the past half a year brought no shortage of eye-opening events and preparation for the future. In order to contextualize…
On a particularly frigid night in the winter of 2009, Weslie Coleman, Kate Pleuss and Ben Turk were sitting in their collective home and talking about how cold they were. Incredibly cold, they decided. So the three members of the revolutionary theater group Insurgent Theatre decided to plan an escape…
