Like every late-night yakker, Jimmy Kimmel has made his share of Balloon Boy jokes; witness the skit above, in which his security guard supposedly floats over Fort Collins. But Kimmel claims a closer connection to balloonatic Richard Heene than most of his colleagues, declaring that a few years back, a…
City councilwoman Judy Montero worked up quite a sweat a couple weeks back over the planned privatization of the La Alma Recreation Center, comparing neighborhood reaction to the “Milagro Beanfield War.” And she got her way: The city will continue to fund the rec center for a year while it…
For decades, energy companies and the federal government have tinkered with ways of trying to extract the vast hydrocarbon fuel reserves buried in rock in western Colorado and eastern Utah. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar still has lots of questions about the process — whether the current oil shale…
Negotiators for union employees of King Soopers and Safeway are heading back to the bargaining table yet again in an attempt to break a contract stalemate that’s dragged on for months — and in an indication that things are getting serious, the left-leaning ProgressNow Colorado organization has created a searchable…
Halloween is rapidly approaching and we’re already a-quiver with excitement. Next to New Year’s Eve, Halloween is probably the biggest excuse of the year for adults to go out and act foolish and immature — good times! We can’t wait to see the parade of sexy witches, sexy vampires, sexy…
Our daily round-up of local bloggage. Colorado Pols has an interesting little bit about Josh Penry’s sudden and quite convenient about-face on water projects. He seems to like them better when there are a bunch of water geeks hanging out. And so it begins: 60 percent of Mile High Report’s…
Ever since word surfaced about a Facebook campaign to resurrect the once-wild (and long-dormant) Boulder Mall Crawl, the Boulder Police Department has attempted to dial down the prospect of a too-huge throng celebrating on the Pearl Street Mall this Halloween. First, BPD huddled with one of the Facebookers, Ryan Van…
In February 2008, as detailed in the recent Westword stories “Up in Smoke” and “Tales of the Dragon,” DEA agents and north metro narcotics detectives uncovered an indoor marijuana ring the likes of which Colorado had never seen. As part of “Operation Fortune Cookie,” investigators hauled more than 24,000 high-grade…
It’s already been a big week in marijuana. Yesterday, the Obama administration issued new, less strident rules about medical-marijuana, prompting Colorado Attorney General and anti-pot crusader John Suthers to demand tighter regulations on dispensaries. Meanwhile, 44 percent of respondents to a new Gallup poll advocated legalization of marijuana across the…
The amount of coverage generated by our quest for a medical-marijuana dispensary reviewer has proven conclusively that national media outlets such as the New York Times to National Public Radio have a heretofore unimagined ganja obsession. Less surprising is the latest publication to weigh in: Rolling Stone, which is now…
It’s only been a few months since Colorado casinos have been allowed to operate 24 hours a day, multiply the previous $5 betting limit by twenty, and offer up craps and roulette games to folks with either enough money to lose or so little that they’re willing to defy the…
View Larger Map At this point, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office hasn’t officially declared a couple found dead yesterday in unincorporated Jefferson County to have perished amid a murder-suicide. But given the scene on the 11100 block of West Oregon Place, an area captured in the graphic above (if you…
As we all know, Chargers QB Philip Rivers is a dick. Even most of the people who like him would agree — and given the Broncos’ performances against SD over the past several years, his dickishness has been able to reign supreme. So even more satisfying than Denver’s 34-23 victory…
@import ‘http://www.heyzap.com/elightbox/lightbox.external.css’; var heyzap_medium = new Heyzap( ‘heyzap_games_medium’, {“game”: “balloon-boy-game”} ); heyzap_medium.renderMini( null, ‘medium’ );heyzap.com – embed games Well, that didn’t take long, did it? Balloon Boy went from riveting story to Internet meme in no time at all — and now it’s reached the last, best level of all:…
We at Westword can’t help feeling a little bit responsible for prompting the spectacle that was Balloon Boy. After all, our cover story this last week counted down Denver’s top-ten reality stars, likely inspiring Richard Heene to try to join their number. Yeah, he lives in Fort Collins, but we…
With even defense lawyer David Lane acknowledging that charges are likely to be issued soon in the Balloon Boy saga, Richard Heene and the rest of his clan have stopped saying “yes” to every media interview request — and that’s probably for the best given the mistakes the family made…
Governor Bill Ritter’s modest proposal to parole hundreds of inmates a few weeks or months before their mandatory release date, thereby cutting millions from the state budget, has become the political whipping boy for his most opportunistic critics, from GOP legislators to Weld County District Attorney (and Senate candidate) Ken…
Turns out the correction Jim Spencer demanded and got last week from the Denver Post, the very newspaper that handed him his head in a cost-cutting move, was among his last official duties as communications director for the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine. Spencer hasn’t returned a series…
Our daily round up of local bloggage. Mile High Report is geeking out about tonight’s Broncos-Chargers game. As they should be. Betsy Markey’s defense of her congressional seat is shaping up to be one of the most expensive in the country. ColoradoPols breaks down the numbers. Colorado Independent rounds up…
The man who died of multiple gunshot wounds at the Garden Court apartments, 1150 N. Syracuse Street, on Friday has been identified as Keyru Mustafa Lolo, 24, a recent immigrant from Ethiopia. The Denver Police Department is offering a reward of up to $2,000 to anyone with “information on this…
I know, I know: Philip Rivers is one of the most talented young quarterbacks in the NFL, blah blah blah. But he’s also a classless dick — the kind of dick Broncos fans would love to see caught in a zipper à la Little Ben (Stiller) in There’s Something About…
