“The time has come The time is now Just go, go, go I don’t care how.” –from “Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!” by Dr. Seuss I am standing by the Northern Shores exhibit at the Denver Zoo, watching media stars Klondike and Snow and thinking: Christ on…
The government’s latest reports show that crime is down in major cities across the nation. Not since before the advent of crack have the mean streets been so mellow. But don’t you dare relax! Westword has examined police blotters in small towns throughout Colorado and found disturbing evidence that crime…
The small house Ida May Noe shares with John, her husband of 52 years, is one fence line away from the hundred-year-old Noe Farm, run by John’s brother James. Both places sit just back from Noe Road, which cuts a two-mile dirt track through the southern half of Douglas County…
Al Pallone bought his 1975 Pontiac Grand Ville four years ago. Pallone, who had just made the change from industrial sales rep to middle school physical-education teacher, felt the car might make a nice change from the “sedate metallic four-door” his former company had provided as a perk. “I bought…
Of all the screaming, revving multitudes at the Malibu Grand Prix Race Track, only thirteen have made it into the Elite 49, a club that celebrates the 49 seconds (or less) it takes them to drive one lap of the half-mile Malibu track. Members of the Elite 49 get their…
When he arrived in court for sentencing, Alex Woods Jr. had a firm grip on his public image–innocent, though proven guilty. Dressed in a well-cut black suit, blond, handsome and only 24 years old, he stood calmly as Denver District Judge Doris Burd gave him “generally the sentence that is…
Another rum-and-Coke order at the Mercury Cafe. Bartender, brace yourself: Chances are good the customer will take a sip, look confused and say, “This tastes really funny.” “It’s not even close to perfect yet,” admits Marilyn Megenity, owner of the restaurant/dance hall at 22nd and California streets. “It’s the soda…
On game day at Coors Field, the canned accordion music blaring overhead barely registers with the fans streaming in through the main gates. But Doug Gilbert is fascinated. He stops in his tracks to inspect the speakers. “Certainly, just as I thought,” he says to himself. “Any of the speakers…
One week before the end of spring term at the Emily Griffith Opportunity School, the shoe-repair shop is not just deserted, but decimated. Where students once learned the footwear basics, nothing remains but a few wooden tables and the lingering smell of polish. One floor up, in the watch-and-clock-repair lab,…
Usually, Colorado’s wild animals mind their own business–but now flocks of government agents and self-appointed experts are doing it for them. This summer they will attempt to relocate, reintroduce and otherwise manipulate vicious carnivores, bad bears and smelly weasels. To find out what’s happening, you could sit through a bunch…
It is spring, and what could be more springlike than standing on the sidewalk outside Bob’s Build-A-Bike with twenty other boys, admiring everyone else’s bicycle while hoping yours is better? Pretending not to notice as drivers slow their cars and stare. Wishing you could afford just one treat inside Bob’s…
When Geno Marcovici went into the hair-plug business last year, he didn’t give much thought to demographics. “I could have really narrowed it down,” he recalls. “But then I realized it was simple. Who wants a hair transplant? A man. We see millionaires from Aspen and dishwashers from Mexico. Here’s…
“This is my home bar,” Joe Canavan says as he looks down into his bourbon and water. “I’ve been bitching about how uncomfortable these stools are since 1946. That’s when I heard about this place. I was working across the street from here, and we heard they’d opened a bar,…
Two faux-tiger-skin coats, one beehive hairdo and ten pairs of uncomfortable pumps have already passed beneath the giant cat-face sign and tiki torches of the Kit Kat Club. “We told them to please look nice,” says Darryl Stubbs. “Well, and they do look nice. But I’m all nerves. There should…
At first, Susan Pitcher had nothing planned but just another gay-beauty-pageant fluff piece. Pitcher, a lesbian reporter and producer for cable TV’s Lambda Report, was interviewing Greg Lowe, an organizer of the Rocky Mountain Mr. Leather contest, when she stumbled across a news tidbit she now sees as “a very…
It was a hot, uneasy afternoon on the plains. The women and children, left alone without menfolk, were finishing up their chores. There were goats, sheep and chickens to feed, turnips to hoe and salt beef to soak for dinner–what there would be of dinner. It being only June, few…
Stashed in the far reaches of Associates of Otolaryngology, a group of south Denver ear, nose and throat specialists, is a stack of autographed eight-by-ten glossies. At some point during every working day, nurse practitioner William “Buzz” Riefman will flip through them with a certain possessive glee. There’s Bonnie (Raitt)…
Here comes Mayor Wellington Webb. Look! He’s got four empty suitcases–three soft-sided vinyl, one American Tourister–and a very short pair of skis. No poles or boots. “Look’s like we’re all ready to take a trip,” he says. Then one of his aides rushes up with another, longer pair of skis…
Mable Mauser is sitting at her antique desk with the spindly legs when the phone rings. The man on the line is not one of the Denver society people with whom she’s worked for more than forty years. Nor is he a New York fur designer, or a rancher somewhere…
A woman enters the elevator at the extreme rear of the Jean Nicole department store on the 16th Street Mall. A choice is at hand. Either she travels up one floor, to 2, or down one, to B. In order to do so, she will have to select one of…
9 a.m., Main Terminal Flight attendant Eric Blake looks at himself in the mirror of Stapleton Terminal Barber Shop and waits to be noticed. “Pretty handsome, right?” he says, without a trace of irony. “I’m growing out a flat-top, I’ve got the greatest job in the world, it’s my first…
I’m kind of like a drag mother,” says Brandi Roberts, “in that I have a lot of drag children. I help with hair, makeup, shopping–it’s what I love.” In whatever passes for real life, Brandi is a 45-year-old man who lives simply, among his beaded gowns, with his twenty-year-old daughter…
