The number of people who could not imagine missing the fiftieth-anniversary celebration of Tosh’s Hacienda restaurant is about 500. The menu is ready. The mariachis are on deck. Where everyone will park, though, is a bit of a mystery. The valet parking guys, who are somewhat out of their element…

An inventory of the disappearing tattoos of Nina Bonifacio: 1. On Nina Bonifacio’s right wrist–when she makes change in her job as a Target checker, you can see it very well–is the word “payasa,” injected under her skin in bluish ink by a friend five years ago. Nina was thirteen…

If you decelerate just past the 20th Street exit going north on I-25–although you really shouldn’t, as this creates “curiosity slowing”–you will see a simple sign: Fortieth Anniversary Valley Highway. One recent Friday morning, a time capsule was buried beneath the sign. Assembled on a grassy bank just east of…

The breeze moves across the creek, turns the corner by the old porch swing, dallies with the ancient lilac bush and settles where the ladies sit in rockers with their quilting hoops: A mother, an aunt and three daughters, all taking refuge from the heat of the eastern plains. The…

If you are sixteen-year-old child-prodigy gardener Jonah Bradley on your day off, think polite reserve. Otherwise, just as you begin loading your cart with white petunias and nicotiana–and maybe the strange lime-green nicotiana known as “Starship,” which you have been thinking about privately all winter–some old lady will come up…

“Anything’ll set you off,” says garage-door repairman Jerry Sutliff. It was a conversation in a restaurant that set Sutliff off one day last December. Another man was talking about his mother, who’d just died. “What got me,” Sutliff remembers the man saying, “was that Mom’s house was full of rooms…

After a long run, an athlete is chewing the fat. “Fifty-two-point-five miles,” Matt Reilly reports from Portland. “Yeah, I finished the race. It took me eleven hours, and I seem to have run until my butt cheeks chafed. You want a quote? Here: Chicks dig guys who run ultra-marathons.” “How…

Tony Carpenter sells cell-phone service, plays with his two kids, finds his wife a nice Valentine’s Day remembrance, contemplates the occasional acting job. Because he injured his shoulder six months ago, he hasn’t tried flying lately. In fact, he hasn’t even heard that the Y’s nearly seventy-year-old trapeze program was…

If I had it to do over again, I would use dry ice,” Shaun Gothwaite says. “Louie began to turn a little purple without it.” Other than that, it was the perfect wake. No one who knew Louie Aran could imagine him filled with embalming fluid or laid out among…

The teenage snowboarders lie scattered under the lift like discarded socks. “Count them,” Myron Knapschafer suggests. “At any given time, 25 percent of all snowboarders are sitting down. Victims of the wet-butt syndrome. Count them, multiply by four, and there you have the number of snowboarders out here today.” His…

Andrew Wilson, lingerie explorer, homes in on the peach-hued camisole. Moving a strap from its padded hanger, he murmurs, “Hmmm…satin weave or charmeuse?” Of the silver satin robe he encounters next, he says, “Nice, but the work on these seams is borderline.” To a green crushed-velvet bodysuit, he says, “Ah…

Daylight inventory of the holiday items decorating the Denver City and County Building: Three miles of lights, unlit. Several hundred yards of faux-pine garland strung through green chain-link anti-vandal fencing. Six red faux-velvet bows, two lopsided. One neon angel, blowing horn. Two large, slightly listing nutcracker men supporting arch. One…

Buck Oletski is digging carrots in the garden he’s tilled for almost 57 years. When he straightens up, he has a clear view of the house he was brought to as a baby in 1917. And whether he looks left, right or directly ahead, all he sees is Oletskis. His…

After 63 years in the turkey business, Don Peterson isn’t squeamish about much. But when it comes to grabbing a turkey chick and squeezing it until its rectum pops out, he’d just as soon call in the experts. “I can do it, but it sure isn’t easy,” says Peterson. Unfortunately,…

For decades, faithful readers of Ladies’ Home Journal have turned to “Can This Marriage Be Saved?,” a monthly column billed as “the most popular, most enduring women’s magazine feature in the world,” in which troubled spouses tell all, then are counseled by a wise, real-life therapist. In the November issue,…

Not to be outdone by Ladies’ Home Journal, Westword concocted the following therapeutic scenario to put the Schnarch crucible theory to the test: Consider the case of Carlos and Helga, who say they have been happily married for seven years. Both say they enjoy pleasant sex but that something is…

In the beginning, there was beer. “About three hundred beers,” remembers Bill Jones, who owns and manages Reiver’s restaurant on Old South Gaylord. “We got to chatting over at least that many drinks. I don’t drink anymore and neither does Neal, but that was then.” Then was a culmination of…

“I guess I need to give you the right metaphor,” says Jesse King, program director of Denver’s Outward Bound School, who can’t answer a question like “How safe is rock climbing?” without resorting to a metaphor. “Skiing comes close,” he decides. “You can ski slow and safely and not push…

part 2 of 2 Art Higbee was nineteen when he met Jim Erickson, via Erickson’s girlfriend, via Erickson’s dog. “I lived right down the street,” he recalls, “and she brought the dog over because their landlord didn’t want pets. She asked if I could keep Jim’s dog for a while.”…

part 1 of 2 It wasn’t so much that Duncan Ferguson made peace with death; it was more that the novelty had worn off. The fact is, if you are going to climb very difficult rock faces without a partner, a rope or any kind of protection, death will be…

In September, cheerful trolls still stand on the Park Hill neighborhood fence, though their magenta hair is bleached white from the rains of summer. A giant plastic slug eyeball, once a gumball-machine treasure, is disintegrating into a pile of sludge dotted with once-live flies–a poignant contrast to a nearby array…

Pronghorn Gifts, the Denver Zoo Number of polar bear items on display: 18 Overall theme: Noble, endangered, anonymous adult polar bears meet personality-laden juveniles Klondike and Snow in a fluffy yet environmentally aware display. T-shirt situation: Too many to count, ranging in price from $13.95 to $18.95, with a choice…